On St. Maarten we have now replaced the Main Voting Bureau with the Electoral Council whose task is to organize the Parliament election until their term of 7 years allotted to them are expired.
The Electoral Council which is the body that would comprise of a Chairman, a deputy chairman, members and substitute members would have the responsibility in making sure that we have a smooth running election campaign and that rules of political parties and their candidates are adhered to. Unfortunately this council has not been appointed as yet and falls under the responsibility of the Prime Minister Sarah Wescott Williams. My question to the Honorable PM is the following. What is the hold back in appointing the members of this Council. We have one more year before elections and we cannot wait any longer because these appointed members must have sufficient time to prepare themselves for the task that is ahead of them for the next election not forgetting that there will be new laws regulating the registration and financing of political parties which they would have to be brought up to speed with. I therefore appeal to the PM to speed up this process so that Political parties as well that will be contesting the next election will have the proper information made available to them on time so they would be informed by knowing what is expected of them. The people will also have an idea of who sits on this Advisory Council so that information that is needed can be provided to them. Let us not continue to always be late and take for granted the responsibilities that is entrusted to us just like the continuous late budgets that are submitted to the CFT and then to Parliament for their approval. Let us raise the standard. We are now a country and a lot more is expected of our elected officials since obtaining our new status. Let us raise the bar and become the country we all envisioned before 10-10-10.
Jeffrey Richardson