~Peterson Records 35% Central Committee Attendance as PFP Ranks Last Overall~
PHILIPSBURG:--- The Party for Progress (PFP), which has built much of its political identity around integrity, transparency, accountability and holding public officials to a higher standard, ended the 2025–2026 Parliamentary Year with the lowest combined attendance rate among the seven factions represented in Parliament.
According to the official Parliament of Sint Maarten Annual Report 2025–2026, PFP faction leader MP Raeyhon Peterson attended only 12 of 34 Central Committee sittings. That gave him a 35% attendance rate and a 65% absence rate—the lowest attendance record among all 15 Members of Parliament.
A Question of Standards
The figures are particularly significant because Peterson and the PFP have repeatedly presented themselves as champions of integrity, accountability, transparency and good governance.
Holding ministers and other public officials accountable is an essential part of an MP’s responsibility. However, accountability must also apply inside Parliament, starting with an elected representative’s presence to do the work taxpayers are paying for.
The annual report recorded 40 Public Meeting sittings and 34 Central Committee sittings, creating 74 attendance opportunities for each MP.
Peterson attended 29 Public Meeting sittings and 12 Central Committee sittings—a total of 41 out of 74, or approximately 55.4%.
His PFP colleague, MP Ludmila de Weever, attended 29 Public Meeting sittings and 23 Central Committee sittings, for a total of 52 out of 74, or approximately 70.3%.
Together, the two PFP MPs recorded 93 attendances out of 148 possible Public and Central Committee attendance opportunities. That produced a combined faction attendance rate of approximately 62.8%—the lowest among Parliament’s seven factions.
How the Factions Compared
Calculations based on the official attendance figures produced the following combined faction attendance rates:
- URSM: approximately 82.4%
- DP: approximately 80.6%
- NOW: approximately 79.7%
- SAM: approximately 75.7%
- UPP: approximately 70.3%
- National Alliance: approximately 68.9%
- PFP: approximately 62.8%
PFP therefore trailed the sixth-ranked National Alliance by approximately 6.1 percentage points and finished nearly 20 percentage points behind URSM, the faction with the highest combined attendance rate.
Fifty Percent Attendance on Integrity Committee
Parliament’s formal attendance table also shows that two Ad Hoc Committee Integrity meetings were held during the parliamentary year.
Peterson attended the first meeting on October 7, 2025, but was absent from the closed-door meeting held on November 7, 2025. His attendance rate on the Integrity Committee itself was therefore 50%.
The annual report also lists several informal Integrity Committee meetings, but these were not included in Parliament’s formal attendance table or percentage calculations.
Attendance figures do not explain why an MP was absent on any particular occasion, and attendance alone cannot measure every aspect of parliamentary performance. They do, however, provide an objective measure of one of the most basic responsibilities attached to elected office: showing up.
For a party that has repeatedly asked the public to judge political leaders according to the standards of integrity and accountability, Parliament’s official figures now leave PFP facing the same standard it has demanded of others.
SMN News independently recalculated the faction percentages using the Public Meeting and Central Committee attendance totals published on pages 68 and 69 of Parliament’s Annual Report 2025–2026. The Integrity Committee figures appear on page 70.