By Hilbert Haar
There is no meeting scheduled for Monday, December 14, on the Parliament’s website but that could still happen with a last-minute announcement. Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs needs that meeting for a final attempt to get guaranteed political support for an agreement with the kingdom about the conditions for the third tranche of liquidity support. The deadline for such a guarantee expires due to the five-hour time difference with the Netherlands on Tuesday morning shortly before 5 a.m. local St. Maarten time.
Without political support, the Kingdom Council of Ministers will not sign an agreement with St. Maarten next Wednesday. That means that the country will soon go into a technical default, and that it will no longer be able to pay its employees or its creditors. Will Parliament play hardball and let this happen? That is of course the crucial question.
The Dutch offer for liquidity support has always been on a take it or leave it basis. St. Maarten does not have to accept the conditions (like the establishment of the Caribbean Reform Entity) the Kingdom has put on the table but in that case liquidity support will not be forthcoming. It is hard to see how the country can afford this without putting the livelihood of its employees and the well-being of its citizens in jeopardy.
Prime Minister Jacobs finds herself between the proverbial rock and a hard place. She has made clear in the past that she is not willing to sell her country down the river, though she must be well aware of what happened to the political career of her predecessor William Marlin in the wake of Hurricane Irma when he went for a collision course with the Dutch.
Jacobs cannot – and the Kingdom will not – sign an agreement about liquidity support if Parliament does not support such a decision. So what’s most likely to happen?
Jacobs can expect opposition to an agreement with the Kingdom from several corners: Independent MP Christophe Emmanuel, NA-MPs William Marlin and George Pantophlet, United St. Maarten party MPs Claudius Buncamper and Akeem Arrindell and probably the complete faction of the United People’s party (UP). In other words: forget it.
Then what? Jacobs has seemingly one option and that is to resign.
While she does not favor selling out St. Maarten to the Dutch, letting the whole place go bankrupt under her responsibility does not sound like an attractive alternative either.
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Unconfirmed reports suggest that UP-MP Rolando Brison somehow passed the screening to become the next minister of Public Health, Social Development and Labor (VSA). In that case, the current minister, Richard Panneflek, would get the soft job of Deputy Minister Plenipotentiary in The Hague.
But there are also rumors about a totally different scenario that describe Brison as “Cupecoy Boy” (the messenger boy of the Cupecoy shadow government) and as a potential candidate to succeed Jacobs.
The rumors are not exactly encouraging for Brison, as they describe him as someone “with heavy private debts, a dubious reputation and other questionable character traits and habits” while leaving out his self-confessed Borderline Personality Disorder condition.
Impeccable sources let me know that Jacobs has sent a letter to Parliament saying that the Netherlands is “unreasonable” that it has “put a knee on her neck” (a cheap metaphor politicians have abused countless times since the untimely death of George Floyd) and that she nevertheless asks for political support to sign an agreement with the Dutch.
Maybe she will get that support from the two members of the Party for Progress. Sarah Wescot-Williams is off-island so she won’t be there to give Jacobs even a sliver of perspective for political survival.
All this, my sources suggest, opens the door for Brison to become the next Prime Minister. Is that good or bad?
Since Brison reportedly has passed the screening for a ministerial post, the only one who could still stand in his way is the Governor. It is highly unusual to drag the governor into any political quagmire, but as the final guardian of what is good and proper he may have no choice in this scenario.
The governor could block Brison’s appointment to the top job based on reputation-risk due to what one impeccable source describes as “high personal debts, proven dubious integrity and open flirtations with the Cupecoy shadow government.”
All this suddenly brings back into focus the letter Denicio Brison sent to the governor about the screening process for candidate ministers. Brison is a legal advisor to the UP-faction where his namesake Rolando has a seat. As far as I know, the governor has not bothered to answer Brison’s screening-questions yet. But in case I missed something, I welcome a copy of that letter. I expect its contents to be either highly entertaining or a justified and blunt referral to the existing legislation where Brison can find all the answers to the questions he posed.
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