PHILIPSBURG, Sint Maarten — Independent Member of Parliament Christophe Emmanuel on Tuesday questioned why Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs is running from answering yes or no on the question of the UN petition on decolonization.
Emmanuel noted that every time the Prime Minister is addressing the subject she uses a “word salad” to confuse the people and never gives a clear answer about where she stands on the petition.
“I have asked the Prime Minister, in Parliament and publicly to tell the people if she supports the petition yes or no. We don’t need a convoluted answer using a lot of words signifying nothing. All we get is running and deflecting and dancing around the question. Just a simple yes or no. Do you support the petition?” Emmanuel said.
He said the only thing the Prime Minister has said is she has not read the petition, just the conclusion. He also wondered if the PM has finally read the document now that State Secretary Raymond Knops has used the petition as a reason to freeze liquidity support. “Did the Prime Minister also tell Knops she only read the conclusion? Or has she finally read it and can now present a position,” he asked.
MP Emmanuel said the PM and the coalition tried to create a false narrative that everything connected to liquidity support from the Netherlands are separate affairs and should be treated as such. This false narrative, he said, has consistently been contradicted by Knops who pointed out on numerous occasions that he had received assurances from the PM and the Chairperson of Parliament that they have majority support for the country packages and COHO. He added that the Prime Minister and her Faction Leader in Parliament also admitted in their press conference that everything is linked.
“So the games have to stop. Everything is connected. The country packages, the three laws on cuts, the COHO, everything has the same end result: the realization and establishment of the entity to administratively take over St. Maarten and change our way of life. Now even the petition is connected because the COHO is a central part of it. Government can twist and turn and dodge all it wants. Knops has made it clear that he considers all of it as one, ” MP Emmanuel said.
