PHILIPSBURG–United Democrats (UD) Member of Parliament (MP) Sarah Wescot-Williams is seeking answers to a number of questions from the newly-formed coalition majority.
Wescot-Williams said on Monday that she is also awaiting the governing accord of the recently formed coalition. “Will we get the true answers to this government’s formation from that accord or must we go by statements made by the individual MPs, who now make up the coalition?” she asked.
Wescot-Williams asked whether matters that members of the new coalition have hammered consistently and “threatened” the Leona Romeo-Marlin cabinet with, would be pulled back. She asked whether the Trust Fund agreement would be turned back; whether Dutch liquidity budget support would no longer be accepted and whether the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) recommendations would be retracted. She also asked whether the hospital project would be halted; whether the Dutch government and the European Investment Bank (EIB) loans from the Airport project would be refused and whether a waste-processing contract would be given without any bidding process to Envirogreen, as suggested by a Member of Parliament, for the garbage dump.
She also asked whether general health insurance would be shelved and whether the Integrity Chamber would be supported.
“Will the William Marlin proposal to punish ‘ship jumpers’ be enacted? Will the management of our seaport be outsourced to Global Ports and if so, under what conditions?” she asked.
In the meantime, Wescot-Williams said she is on record stating that a shift in Parliament’s majority should not automatically be counteracted with dissolution of Parliament and calling elections.
“I have maintained this stance much to the chagrin of other politicians in the past, depending on which side of the fence they found themselves. I look at the most recent change in Parliament and the arguments those now supporting a new coalition are using and I wonder, looking at the immediate political future of the country: there will be a new coalition, with the usual instructions to the sitting government. What will these instructions be?”
She continued: “The Jacobs coalition wants a formateur to propose new ministers and look for common ground between the MPs forming the new coalition. So, we will have a caretaker government, ordered to do or not to do by the new coalition; a screening process for ministers, in the most optimistic case, taking 4-5 weeks and a new Parliament to sit within three months of its dissolution. In the meantime, not one step forward can or will be made in the general interest, at a time when so much is at stake.”
THE DAILY HERALD
