Scholar of Comparative Government & Politics, Acknowledging and assessing Sint Maarten's 15 years of autonomy as a constituent state of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, characterized by Parliamentary Democracy, this odyssey can be best described as turbulent and pessimistic in nature. Turbulent and pessimistic in nature bearing in that over the past 15 years some 10 members of Parliament have engaged in the unconstitutional act of declaring themselves as ‘Independent Members of Parliament’; after declaring themselves as independent at least 3 members (on different occasions), joined forces with the opposition party/ parties with the intent to form a new government, affectionately know as ‘ship-jumping’, while the others just sat in Parliament as an independent causing government to fall on 4 occasions, with the most recent instance being one year ago (August 2024); the calling for new/ snap elections 5 times, and; further resulting in the realization of forming 12 governments over the past 15 years. Effectively eroding our autonomous statehood and the efficient function of our Parliamentary Democracy (as a result of the constant declaration of independence and ship-jumping). Notably, there are those who might disagree that the act of members of Parliament declaring themselves as independent members of Parliament is unconstitutional, arguing that Article 61.3 of the Constitution, which states that ‘Members of Parliament shall not be bound by a mandate or instructions…”. Thereto, contending that parliamentarians have a ‘free mandate’ to do as he or she wishes including declaring themselves as independent members of Parliament and ship jumping. Ignoring the ‘imperative mandate’ of Article 47.1 of the Constitution and as further laid down in the Election Ordinance. Which states that the [our] electoral system “is based on a system of list (political parties), not a system of persons (candidates) and “political parties taking part in an election is assigned a number of seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for that political party. Constitutionally, the directives of imperative mandates supersede free mandates, without contradiction. To address the mitigating factors related to the turbulent and pessimistic autonomous statehood outlook of Sint Maarten (i.e., members of Parliament declaring themselves as independent and ship-jumping, thus, constantly causing the collapse of government), there is much talk about amending (or doing away with Articles 59 and 33 of the Constitution. Focusing on curbing or extending the process for the dissolution of Parliament and equally that for the no-confidence vote on ministers, with the hope that this would stop the constant collapse of the government. Notwithstanding the difficulty in making changes to the Constitution, until the Kingdom government signified its agreement (See Article 44 of the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands), the amending of Articles 59 and 33 would have little to no bearing on stopping the collapse of government and motivating autonomous statehood. To the contrary, emphasis should be placed on modifying Article 59, Article 96(1) and (2), Article 98 of the Election Ordinance, and Article 2 of the National Ordinance Registration and Finances of Political Parties. And the insertion of an imperative mandate Article in the Election Ordinance, making it abundantly clear that the declaration of independence and ship-jumping shall not be permissible, in accordance with the Constitutionally mandated proportional representation composition of Parliament. On the other hand, there is much belief that the autonomous statehood of Sint Maarten is also seriously affected by its Constitutional governing structure within the Kingdom and referred to as ‘democratic deficit’. Contextually, a democratic deficit is “a situation where the governing body falls short of providing proportional representation to the governed”. At the onset, this seems to be the case for Sint Maarten and the other Dutch Caribbean parts of the Kingdom. However, taking into account the reality that approximately 98.2% of the Kingdom’s population resides in the Netherlands and only 1.8% resides in the Dutch Caribbean, with approximately only 0.2% on Sint Maarten, clearly there is no democratic deficit in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Democratically, one cannot expect a polity of 337.5 thousand people (43.9 thousand in the case of Sint Maarten) to govern a population of 18.6 million. (source: www.worldometers.info) However, there is a ‘Democratic Legitimacy’ issue, which arises “whenever the set of those involved in making democratic decisions falls short of coinciding with the set of those affected by them”. This is indicative of the Dutch Caribbean representation in the Kingdom Council of Ministers, which is the primary decision-making body for the entire Kingdom. Professor Veenendall of Leiden University proposed that by “adding 3 seats to the current 150 in the Parliament of the Netherlands (House of Representatives) would address the so-called democratic deficit. A concept also called for by the Netherlands political parties Groenlinks-PvdA and D66. This is an empty concept. Empty in its application, mainly, because by adding 3 Dutch Caribbean representatives in the (Netherlands) House of Representatives, the Dutch Caribbean parts will be faced with the insurmountable 3 to 150 odds in the influencing and passing of Legislation (that will affect them), and would have absolutely no effect in the Council of Ministers where Kingdom policies are formulated and the decision-making occurs. An alternative scenario would be to allow for the seats in the Council of Ministers to increase from 18 to 27, with the Netherlands seating 18 (67%), Curacao, Aruba, and Sint Maarten each seating 3 members (11% each), where a majority of 22 members (4/5) will be needed to make decisions for the entire Kingdom. As such, no one constituent state can dominate the decision-making process. And so, the alleged democratic deficit, more appropriately, the occurrence of the democratic legitimacy anomaly will be addressed, bringing into perspective Sint Maarten’s autonomy within the Kingdom (of the Netherlands).
