Especially in today’s topsy-turvy world, any country worthy of its salt is expected to have a professional and well-functioning national security organisation dedicated to protecting the integrity of the state and its democratic institutions. It is therefore heartening to know that National Security Service St. Maarten VDSM seems to have found its legs and is fully engaged in fulfilling its mandate.
Historically, institutions of its ilk everywhere are known to be rather secretive, intrusive and shadowy entities. That is as it should be. However, in the bid to pre-empt excesses perpetrated by some of these organisations, laws and mechanisms intended to keep them honest and true to their specific mandate are evolving constantly.
Increasingly, greater store is being placed on ensuring that the state does not use the pretext of “national security” to intrude unnecessarily and illegally into people’s lives and does not use these secretive state entities as tools to suppress freedom of expression, hide wrongdoing and protect itself from embarrassment.
It should be no different here in St. Maarten and we look to the VDSM oversight committee in particular, and the public at large to leave no stone unturned in their bid to keep VDSM honest.
Right here in the Caribbean, there has been much talk in recent years about the excesses of which some of these state institutions, and/or persons associated with them, have been guilty – excesses some of which are of an Orwellian nature and which do not inspire the trust of populations ever wary of possible illegal intrusion into their private lives and of blatant violations of their human rights.
The framers of the local laws governing the establishing, staffing and functioning of VDSM must have been very conscious of the need to establish clearly defined parameters within which VDSM must operate. In this regard we endorse fully remarks made by Prime Minister Sarah Wescot-Williams in her address at the opening of VDSM’s offices in Harbour View Executive Center in Philipsburg on Friday.
The Prime Minister, we note, was careful to stress the importance of political accountability for the work of VDSM and was equally careful in emphasising that in pursuit of its mandate, VDSM should guard against even the slightest semblance of partiality or bias against (or for) anyone or any group.
Indeed, operating in a small society such as St. Maarten, the task of VDSM operatives becomes even more challenging and the temptations to breach the golden tenets governing their jobs exponentially greater.
In the interest of the integrity of the state and of its democratic institutions, we wish VDSM and its operatives, honesty and much success.
