PHILIPSBURG:--- The leader of the OSPP, Lenny Priest and the President Mr. Lloyd Beaton were privileged to have attended a meeting on Wednesday, July 30, 2014 with the other political parties and the St. Maarten Clergy at the Holland House. This meeting was called by the clergy in order to present and discuss a Code of Ethics that the parties can agree to and will follow during this campaign period. There were many remarks and observations made by the leadership of the various political parties and the clergy.
The OSPP has signed on to this document because we believe that this is the way that campaigns should be held following the code of ethics presented by the clergy and that as an elected representative you must be held accountable for your actions.
We also support the fact that the clergy within short will present a code of ethics that the voting population must hold themselves onto. If this is not done and followed by the voting population then we will be shooting ourselves in our foot, to buy a vote there must be a buyer and a seller. It must start from the top, the leaders should instruct all their candidates to follow the Code of Ethics that we signed on today. As a matter of fact all the leaders of the various parties should request that all their candidates signed on to this document and make it public via their web page, face book; other media and it should also be sent to the clergy.
The OSPP has made it very clear that we must have a monitoring device to conduct these assessments based on those that may have broken the rules. The investigations should be done on a weekly basis and the findings reported to the parties immediately and to the general public. If this is not done then all we have done is created a nice photo shoot and politics will continue as usual. Next election we will go through the same exercise without any type of changes. St. Maarten, let's get serious.
