~ Winners, losers and food for thought ~
PHILIPSBURG — Political scientist Julio Romney has assessed the results of the August 19 snap parliamentary elections in St. Maarten, where he believes some politicians have to begin considering their political future.
Romney was positive about the Unified Resilient St. Maarten Movement (URSM) and the Democratic Party (DP), as these two increased their seat counts from two to three seats. “I think that the electorate felt somewhat comfortable with the leader of URSM. URSM didn’t do much campaigning at all. They were busy trying to out fires dealing with St. Maarten problems and the electorate felt he was doing a good job and he was rewarded,” Romney said of Prime Minister Dr. Luc Mercelina, who incidentally was the highest vote getter with 1315 votes.
In assessing the Democratic Party (DP), the oldest political party in St. Maarten, Romney suggested there may been some nostalgic support for the 70 year organization. This, especially seeing the DP celebrated their 70th anniversary this year in the lead up to the election. “I think the cause of that is that the electorate was looking for someone to vote for other than the UP party and the National Alliance. The Democratic Party, during the election cycle were rather aggressive in campaigning and they were bringing issues to the forefront, which they would consider once they got elected. I believe based on that, as an option, persons would turn to the Democratic Party because as you know, years ago, the Democratic Party was a dominant party,” he explained.
In the meantime, Mr. Romney had sound words of caution for the NOW Party and the United People’s Party; both of which lost a seat each in the elections. NOW he believes was punished by the electorate as one of their MPs defected which triggered the snap elections just 17 days into the new government. He also believes there is a lack of trust between the current parties that form the government and the NOW, which is why they have not been included in this new government. “The leader of the NOW party, sort of threw his own coalition under the bus. (He) was not there to support them in a number of motions during the time they were in power. (The electorate) punished them for that, where you see the leader of the NOW party has lost significant amount of votes, to the point where he is not going back to parliament,” he said. Lyndon Lewis, the current justice minister secured majority of the votes on the NOW party and has been elected to parliament.
As for the UP and the NA, Romney believes they have some soul searching to do, as both have lost support and seats along the way. The NA still remains the largest party in St. Maarten, but its leader lost her seat and eventually resigned from the party. “(Silveria) has been losing support for some time. If you recall the last election, one of the candidates got more votes than she did and that candidate thought that he was the one to deserve to be prime minister so there has always been that bickering within that party,” Romney said.
He also believes the GEBE issue hurt the NA as the electorate felt they should have done something to solve the problem for the time they were in government. “I think much of their campaign had a negative approach and I think the electorate as a whole had no interest for a negative approach for this campaign.”
For the UP leader, Romney believes he too was punished by the electorate as they saw the party as somewhat responsible for some of the problems St. Maarten is faced with. He pointed out that the UP leader “bashing” the URSM leader and prime minster for the ills of St. Maarten, did not help his case at the polls. “I think the electorate, in a sense, just held (UP) accountable for that,” he said.
However, Romney is not happy with the election turnout, which was just over 60%. He believes the short turnaround time of the two elections frustrated the electorate, which led to the poor turnout. Based on the final results, 13,886 voters turned out to vote from the 22,750 eligible voters.
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