By Hilbert Haar
My, my, what a thing! As if our little island does not have enough headaches on its plate, now VROMI-Minister Miklos Giterson has been arrested on suspicion – I repeat: on suspicion – of drunk driving. As an integrity-freak, I was of course interested in what was to follow and I was not disappointed; after his release from custody, the good minister denied that he had been intoxicated.
While this may very well be true – or false – it does not really matter what the minister says. What matters is what he does after having become the subject of what I would call public disgrace.
What he should have done – but didn’t – is immediately step down. He could have claimed his innocence, adding that under these circumstances it is impossible for him to function as a high ranking government official. That would have earned him at least some respect.
Let’s see how they do this stuff elsewhere in the Kingdom – say, in the Netherlands.
In November of last year Jos van Son, an alderman in the city of Den Bosch, stepped down after he caused an accident while he was under the influence of alcohol. According to the Algemeen Dagblad (AD) he admitted that he had an alcohol problem and said that he was getting professional help. But his job went down the tubes.
The AD found ten cases of mayors and aldermen who lost their job due to alcohol abuse. One of them is Bert Smallenbroek who was in 1988 – I’m not making this up – the mayor of Smallingerland. He got involved in an alcohol-induced fight with a group of youngsters; he was also on his way to a brothel, the AD reports. It was enough to send him home, though he later still became mayor in another city.
Another example: in 2016, a picture circulated of Jean Paul Gebben, the mayor of Renkum. He was in the company of a 17-year old girl and he was also drunk as a skunk. To make matters worse, he was on call for calamities. Bad idea: it cost him his job.
One more: In November of last year Reint-Jan Auwema, alderman in Noordenveld, got drunk at a party and started abusing a guy. Rumors are that the dispute was worse than Auwema wanted people to believe. Still, he thought it wise to quit his job with this statement: “In the near future I am going to eliminate the lesser sides of myself.”
These examples show that in the Netherlands alcohol has a tendency to end political careers, even if there is no police investigation and the risk of a court sentence.
In St. Maarten, politicians are innocent until proven guilty. That is a wonderful premise – and it is certainly a principle to be respected for ordinary citizens who have been accused of a crime – but it does not work the same way for public figures – at least, it shouldn’t.
And here we come to the crux of the matter: integrity. I read a post on stmaartennews.com from an anonymous author who stated that the country does not need an Integrity Chamber, given all the institutions that are already in place to correct wayward behavior. We need integrity, the author wrote. Damn right.
The problem is that you cannot buy integrity and you cannot regulate it either. Integrity has to come from the inside, from people who will do the right thing no matter what. Unfortunately, those characters are hard to come by in St. Maarten.
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Referenced articles:
“We need integrity” by Anonymous
“Systematic corruption” by Hilbert Haar
“Integrity” by Hilbert Haar
