SINT MAARTEN (GREAT BAY) - In a press release issued on Sunday afternoon, Member of Parliament (MP) Grisha Heyliger-Marten commended Minister of Justice, the Hon. Anna Richardson for coming to Parliament to provide an update on two important pending matters last Friday. In the press release, MP Heyliger-Marten also slammed the coalition for not providing quorum for the meeting to go ahead.
“What we witnessed past Friday was yet another unfortunate and shameless display of this Government coalition’s disrespect for itself and its Ministers, the Parliament, and the people of St. Martin. It seems that when meetings are finally called, coalition MP’s leave the Minister high and dry without a valid explanation”, according to Heyliger-Marten.
In the meeting of Parliament’s Justice Committee the Minister of Justice was to provide updates on the following two topics:
- The draft national ordinances and decrees related to the legal position of police and the Justice organization Function Book and recognized calculations of the retroactive and future financial obligations to Justice personnel
- The draft Criminal Procedure Code.
“I was truly looking forward to this meeting, and particularly to getting an update on the calculations related to the total amount that Government owes to the employees of the Ministry of Justice.
In a press release on August 18th, 2023, Government indicated that the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Finance, presentied computed calculations for Justice employees to His Excellency Ajamu Baly, the Governor of Sint Maarten.
However, taking into account St. Martin’s overall debt situation and the fact that the budget amendments for 2023 still have not been presented to- and approved by Parliament, the civil servants entitled to these payments still cannot legally get paid. This roller-coaster saga has been dragging on for over two years now, and it needs to be finalized once and for all. We are already in October, so if the overdue payments cannot be legally paid this year, then the recipients and the people of St. Martin have the right to know”, Heyliger-Marten stated.
According to Heyliger-Marten, the opposition in Parliament is often admonished by coalition MP’s for playing politics and not working in the general interest of the people. “But last Friday we saw all opposition Justice Committee members signing in on time, while the NA faction seemingly had more pressing matters to tend to then support its own Minister”, she said.
“Some important questions therefore are: why did the NA faction leave its own Minister hanging in Parliament without a valid explanation, and what does this mean for the Justice workers? Was the NA’s absence meant to emphasize that the Minister herself requested to provide the updates? Wouldn’t these matters be cleared within the coalition beforehand?
The public deserves some clear answers from this coalition. Or as one NA MP once put it: the people need to know. Regardless of the answers, the fact that the Justice Committee Chairman had no indication if coalition members would be late, says a whole lot about this “longest serving government”, Heyliger-Marten concluded.
https://www.soualiganewsday.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=52151:minister-of-justice-to-host-2nd-annual-anti-counterfeit-and-intellectual-property-conference&Itemid=450
