Questionable future
By Hilbert Haar
Is Rolando Brison going to be the next minister of public health, social development and labor (VSA)? Who knows. There are plenty of rumors but there is not enough solid information to answer this question one way or the other.
But the process that leads to the appointment of any minister is very clear. For Brison the dilemma seems to be that he would have to resign as a member of parliament to set his appointment process in motion. Once you give up that seat, somebody else is going to come in and you will never get it back.
Word on the street is that not everybody within his own party – the United People’s party – is ready to agree to Brison’s appointment. His recent antics, whereby he allegedly interfered with the work of inspectors of the economic department cannot have done his reputation any good. His chances of getting sufficient support for his call to the VSA-ministry were already questionable to begin with and now they have weakened ever further.
Related article: MP Christophe Emmanuel lashes out against MP Brison
A fair question is whether somebody who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder is fit to become a minister. I would not bring this up if Brison had not declared publicly that he suffers from this disorder and that he is undergoing online treatment for it. This way, his psychological condition has become part of the public domain.
Brison will remember very well what happened to Richard Gibson Sr. when he was about to become minister of finance. He resigned as a member of the Progress Committee and from a few other functions and then something came up during the screening that prevented his appointment.
The simple truth is that Brison has no guarantees. If he steps down as a member of parliament, he steps into a void where it could turn out to be very dark indeed. He needs the support from his party to become a minister and furthermore he needs to overcome the screening process.
There are definitely some whispers that Brison will not survive such a close inspection of his personal life. If there is any truth to the allegation that he has a ‘questionable habit’, Brison’s “ass will be grass” and he would find himself up shit creek without a paddle, to quote the words of an insider.
We all know that politics makes strange bedfellows and Brison seems to fit the profile of such a character.
The question is: why does this candidate have to become a minister? Is the coalition unable to find candidates with fewer scratches on their personal history? Or are all the rumors just a lot of hot air designed to run Brison’s political ambitions into the ground?
Sooner or later we might learn what the real holdup is with Brison’s appointment – if this happens at all – but one thing is for sure: it has nothing to do with the Main Voting Bureau.
