St. Maarten – The five newly established political parties have, as they announced last week, sent a protest letter to Governor Drs. Eugene Holiday, demanding that the elections on February 9 of next year take place and will not be postponed. The letter is dated November 30, but its authors are still awaiting an answer from the Governor.
“We are hearing rumors that the new government will first seek a decision from parliament on the postponement of the elections,” the five parties write in their letter. The parties – Christian Party, Hope, SDM, MAP and Beyond SXM – wrote to the Governor that they have established themselves “as an alternative to the established politicians.”
“There is no doubt whatsoever,” they wrote, “that there is great dissatisfaction among the population about the functioning of the established political parties and more concretely, about the politicians in power, most of whom seem to be self-serving. The dissatisfaction does not only concern the phenomenon of the ship jumpers; that is merely a symptom of the actual problem, which is the deficient functioning of established politics.”
The five parties argue in their letter that a postponement of the elections does not make any sense, because “one cannot expect that the present majority in parliament wants to put an end to ship jumping.”
The parties note that the Marlin-Cabinet does not have the two-third majority in parliament required to bring about electoral reform, and that the new team “has no intentions at all to function as an interim cabinet.”
New parties urge governor to hold February elections
