Tit for tat

Reality set in yesterday for the Marlin-government. Parliament voted 8 to 6 on a no-confidence motion. The Marlin-cabinet subsequently resigned and used their trump card and submitted a national decree to the Governor to call for new elections and dissolve Parliament in January 2018.

These are the facts. However, the coming days as we await the decision of the Governor, political and constitutional pundits will be debating the merits of this situation. Arjen van Rijn is the first to outline the positions in a comprehensive Antilliaans Dagblad opinion piece we have published under the title ” The risks of the game“.

Our own Hilbert Haar describes the consequences of this situation in his own opinion piece entitled ” A volatile situation“.

That the situation is indeed volatile can be seen in the brazen armed robbery that took place the other night at the Le Grand Marche supermarket where six armed gunmen robbed the establishment of a large amount of cash. This does not bode well for the island as the economic uncertainty continues unabated by the recent political developments.

Whether Parliament is justified in sending the Marlin-government home or the Marlin-cabinet in calling for new elections, only time will tell. At some point hopefully, history will record that eventually shipjumping was curbed due to the ‘tit for tat’ policy of successive governments dissolving parliaments each time a motion of non-confidence was enabled due to shipjumpers. We can only hope that that one day becomes a reality. Until then, we have to accept the reality of the present situation. Good or bad, it is all part of the growing pains of an infant country in development.