PHILIPSBURG:--- Member of Parliament representing the Democratic Party faction Sarah Wescot Williams and the party's advisor Emil Lee told reporters on Monday that they are not amused by the request sent by the State Council to St. Maarten regarding the voting on the draft integrity law. Wescot Williams said it is even more astonishing for Members of Parliament to get the information from media reports and not from the government themselves. Wescot Williams outlined several areas in the draft law that she said has to be changed or amended. She said at first government sent parliament the wrong draft but later realized that and they submitted the correct draft on the last day of the Central Committee meeting.
Wescot Williams said while it is clear that the Parliament of St. Maarten is divided on the draft ordinance she submitted a letter to government pointing out several areas that needs to be changed or amended. Wescot Williams said that the article that says that the integrity chamber could go back to 10/10/10 to conduct investigations was removed but government did not replace it with anything. That she said has to be addressed. Furthermore, she said the government of St. Maarten chose a Kingdom entity to oversee the Integrity Chamber and that too cannot be so. She said the definition in the article has something that should not be there especially with the words used when government tried to define integrity, in that article they mentioned informal and relational networks which she said created a storm in parliament when the draft ordinance was discussed in the central committee last week since St. Maarten is a small community that has people and their families that could be affected. Wescot Williams made clear that particular statement in the definition is not suitable for an integrity breach.
She said that government referred to the PWC report that has the same information but it was not mentioned in the definition but stated as a fact. Wescot Williams said in the definition government went on to itemize what they believe should be considered as an integrity breach which she said is alright but the informal and relational networks cannot be in the definition. She said in her opinion while it is a fact that people are related and there are networks it must be mentioned as a fact and not in the definition.
Wescot Williams said that article 34 gave government the opportunity to rebut to any advice submitted to government by the integrity chamber even though those advices are binding.
Wescot Williams also announced that she will not be attending the Parlatino meetings because the Parliament of St. Maarten has to address how these meetings benefit St. Maarten especially since parliament did not get the amount of monies it desired. She said another set back the Parliament of St. Maarten is facing is the lack of information from government. She said that Members of Parliament have to attend the IPKO meeting and if they do not have information then St. Maarten will not be able to address or defend several issues.
In another issue Wescot Williams also informed the media that on Wednesday a meeting on the contract awarded to Checkmate Security by the St. Maarten Harbor Group of Companies. She said that meeting was requested by the National Alliance and while the Democratic Party posed several questions on this subject but never got a response.
Wescot Williams said she was not amused with the statements made by the Prime Minister of St. Maarten regarding the governing program, while she touched on the counterpart policy which made headlines a number of times. Wescot Williams said she got a letter from government regarding this topic but still her questions on the specifics on how the counterpart policy will be implemented, further to that she wants to know exactly where government stands with the counterpart policy. In her opinion she felt that the government of St. Maarten is still scrambling with this issue.
