By Hilbert Haar
At times you have to be careful what you wish for. It is amazing (or maybe not so) how our politicians have managed to cook up a political hurricane and how they are now all pointing at each other – the traditional blame game.
What happened? The Democratic Party and the United People’s party managed to form a slim majority with the help of United St Maarten party MP Chanel Brownbill. They wanted to work together but they did not want elections.
So they adopted a motion of no-confidence against practically the whole cabinet (with the exception of DP-minister Emil Lee), while they knew in advance what the Marlin-government would do: dissolve the Parliament and call elections.
So whose fault is it really that we are now stuck with elections that nobody wants? Does it really matter? The rather unpredictable voter-sentiment will be the judge of this question.
The question is, in my mind: did this really have to happen this way?
The moment you bring in the argument that there are egos at work, everybody goes in denial. No sir, this is not about ego. It is not about me.
The Marlin-cabinet kept up its resistance for a long time against the conditions the Netherlands wants to impose as a requirement for receiving recovery funding. It is true that the decision to bend came only on October 30, based on an advice from the Council of Advice dated October 23.
Too little, too late, was the response from the other camp. Oh, there was also something about the mutual agreement for border control. That piece arrived at the government on Friday, October 27 – after 5 p.m. according to Marlin and Boasman.
If we assume that this stuff arrives via email, the timing seems rather odd, given the fact that it is five to six hours later in the Netherlands.
But anyway: the government suddenly agreed to the conditions, the new majority had already earlier indicated that it would also agree to the conditions.
But the motion of no confidence to send the government home still became a reality.
Does everybody really fall for the argument that this was about those Dutch conditions? Well maybe not everybody, but a lot of people did. There are however other scenarios.
Nobody wonders for instance how young Chanel Brownbill came to play such a pivotal role in this story.
Brownbill rose to political stardom in 2016 when he won an astonishing 424 votes as a candidate for the United St. Maarten party. Two years earlier, as a candidate for the UP he managed just 94 votes.
The Prosecutor’s Office started a criminal investigation into election-fraud in December of last year. Brownbill, not yet earmarked as a suspect, was heard as a witness in this investigation.
What is the true story behind his political success? The one I heard recently goes like this: Brownbill’s election campaign was financed by O’Neal A., the director of Checkmate Security who has been labeled a suspect in two separate criminal investigations by the prosecutor’s office.
The Emerald-investigation focuses on the contract Checkmate signed with the port authority and the Mahi Mahi investigation is about money laundering linked to a shooting that took place in the parking garage of the Westin hotel in Dawn Beach on May 28, 2016.
According to the story I heard, O’Neal A. invested 600,000 in young Brownbill’s rise to political stardom. I don’t know if that’s guilders or dollars but that does not really matter: it is a lot of money.
So what’s the payback? In a new government, Brownbill is expected to name a candidate-minister for the Ministry of Public Housing, Urban Planning, Environment and Infrastructure. That minister in turn, so goes the story, has to make sure that O’Neal A. gets favorable contracts from the government and MP Brownbill has to make sure ‘his’ minister performs accordingly.
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this story, but it is obviously an interesting and also a credible premise. If you follow the money, you will almost always find the correct answers to your questions.
In this case it is all still wide open and actions speak louder than words. So watch out for this in the coming period: will MP Brownbill get to nominate the minister of VROMI? And will O’Neal A. – or one of his companies – suddenly get attractive contracts via this minister?
These are interesting times but people should not let themselves be fooled by smoke screens that have nothing to do with the real reason for the fall of the government.
