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Published On: Thu, Mar 15th, 2018

The real chess master

Theo Heyliger - Sarah Wescot-Williams - United DemocratsBy Hilbert Haar

While the formation of a new government is a work in progress the results of the February 26 elections are still interesting enough for further analysis. What changed compared to 2016, the year when the United People’s party (UP) and the National Alliance (NA) each won 5 seats, the United St. Maarten party (USp) 3 and the Democratic Party (DP)  2?

In the new parliament the merger of UP and DP (United Democrats0 has 7 seats, the NA stays stationary on 5, the USp loses a seat and holds 2 and newcomer St. Maarten Christian Party has 1.

So who benefited from the merger between the UP and the DP?

If we look at the candidates that made it to parliament for the UP in 2016, we see that two MPs lost their seat: Claret Connor and Tamara Leonard. So the UP had in the new constellation not five, but three representatives – party leader Theo Heyliger, Franklin Meyers and Sidharth Bijlani.

The DP increased its political clout within the merger if we adhere to the notion that newcomer Luc Mercelina would otherwise have been a candidate for the DP. The other two DP-MPs are party leader Sarah Wescot-Williams and Emil Lee, who had another DP-MP (Perry Geerlings, who won’t return unless Lee joins the new cabinet) nipping at his heels just a few votes behind.

The seventh seat in the UD-faction is for Chanel Brownbill, imported so to speak from Frans Richardson’s United St. Maarten party.

So who is the real winner in this political chess game? When I asked before the elections whose idea it really was to merge the DP and the UP into the United Democrats, the answers I received were somewhat evasive. Maybe that was because nobody wanted to rock the boat before the elections.

Considering the results, I start thinking that the chess master in this game is MP Sarah Wescot-Williams.

Not only did she do better herself in these elections, she also brought a new candidate to the field with a strong voter appeal – Luc Mercelina. That Perry Geerlings just missed the boat because of an unexpected strong showing by USp-transfer Chanel Brownbill is probably thought of as an unforeseen and unfortunate part of the new political reality. Without Brownbill, the DP-color of the United Democrats would have gone up from three to four out of seven seats.

So while five plus two is still seven, the supporters of the old Democratic Party seem to be the big winner of these elections. The combination does not have more seats, but the DP-influence has become stronger.

The decision by the DP to merge with the UP was therefore a brilliant move on the political chess board.

Without the merger, the DP would most likely not have been able to hold on to two seats, let alone get a third one.

The report informateurs Arduin and Beaujon released on Monday spoke of the human factor in politics. The report refers in particular to issues between politicians in the UD and the NA.

How this hangs within the UD is currently unclear. Remember, for years MP Heyliger was second in command at the Democratic Party behind Wescot-Williams until he started out on his own in 2010 with the UP. While he never managed to become the leader of the party his grandfather Claude Wathey founded, Heyliger now leads  a party that could be considered the DP in a new outfit.

After all, both Heyliger and MP Franklin Meyers were in the past members of the DP as well. They are now reunited with their former party-leader.

As long as the human factor does not get in the way, the UD will stand as a true political powerhouse with only one potentially weak link. That would be MP Chanel Brownbill, who jumped ship last year to facilitate – together with the DP-faction – the fall of the Marlin-government. Will he do it again? Time will tell.