Agreement is agreement

Elton Jones made an interesting observation in his opinion piece submitted to us which we published as a column on our website under the title “Vengeance“.

He wrote and we quote: “It appears that the previous coalition members had assigned their signature to an agreement to dissolve Parliament should there be instability caused by ‘ship jumping'”.

So as the Dutch saying goes ‘afspraak is afspraak’. Agreement is agreement. Certain coalition members of the NA-DP-USp combination did not live up to that agreement and therefore per the agreement, Parliament was dissolved after a ‘ship jumper’ caused the government to be given a vote of non-confidence.

We wonder how binding an agreement signed between politicians can be. No doubt any such agreement lost its validity the minute the ink was dry. As as we have written before, politicians suffer from short term memories. It is certain they will have even forgotten about signing such a document, much less felt any obligation to honor it.

Something to remember during the upcoming election campaign: a politician’s word nor his signature is his bond.