An unhealthy practice

By Hilbert Haar

Buying votes to win a seat in parliament is of course an unhealthy practice. So why do political candidates keep doing this?

Everybody ought to know that the answer to that question is straightforward: money. As a member of parliament, you get a royal salary and you don’t even have to show up for work or to keep the promises you made during the election campaign. If membership of parliament paid just one dollar per year and you would not even get that dollar if you dared not showing up for meetings, nobody would touch that job with a ten-foot pole.

We all know that the reality is different. Parliamentarians do get plenty of money and – in some (not all) cases, they don’t do anything for it. Buying votes is obviously against the law, but not everyone doing it gets caught. And if you got caught you mostly got off with a slap on your fingers.

That is now history, due to a court ruling that shows crime does not always pay. Sure enough, courts cannot lay their hands on your money for buying votes but lying under oath is another matter altogether – and rightly so.

Former MP Akeem Arrindell found this out the hard way. When he took the oath on February 10, 2024, it enabled him to take his seat in parliament and receive the associated salary. That oath is part of our constitution. It states for instance that you did not give or promise anything to others in exchange for their vote. (Well, not literally, but that what it comes down to).

Parliamentarians who take that oath, based on article 56 of the constitution, solemnly swear – in front of the Governor – allegiance to the king and to the constitution. One would think that such an oath carries some weight and that you have to take it seriously.

Maybe that is true in other countries, I don’t know. But in our sweet St. Maarten that oath is more often than not taken for a ride, as a ceremonial happening that does not really mean anything.

That is what Akeem Arrindell must have thought when he took the oath in early 2024, thus opening the door to a very well-paid job. Maybe he thought that lying did not really matter, because nobody – with the exception of the governor – had ever paid serious attention to it.

But Arrindell must now regret his lie and even better, he has to pay dearly for it: a sum of around $42,000. And if he does not pay, assuming he does not have that kind of money in his bank account, he will have to go to prison for a year. If he pays it off at a pace of $500 a month, he will feel the consequences of his behavior for the next seven years. To make his situation even worse, he is banned from working as a police officer for six years and he has also lost his passive voting right (the right to be elected) for six years. Therefore, chances that he will end up serving time in prison, are real.

The court ruling against Arrindell finally does justice to the malpractice of buying votes. In itself, buying these votes still does not have consequences that are harsh enough, but the next step – taking the oath of office as a parliamentarian and lying while doing this, has now become an event that could lead to financial ruin or to time in prison.

Asking the question: but what about others? does not hold water in my opinion. Judges deal with the facts that are put in front of them, not with rumors and vague allegations that will never hold up in court.

In the meantime, I doubt very much that Arrindell’s conviction will have a meaningful effect on the vote buying-industry.

Just remember what the American criminal Willy Sutton told a judge when he was asked why he was robbing banks: “Because that’s where the money is.”

Unfortunately, that is the exact reason why political candidates will continue to buy votes if they think they can get away with it.

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