A lot has been said in recent days about buying votes, paying off potential candidates, etc., in St. Maarten. While some of the concerns are certain justifiable, the call to invite foreign observers to come here to monitor the elections (see front page Tuesday) is not a good idea.

For one thing, doing so would give the undesirable impression also to the outside world that something is amiss with democracy on the island, while up to now there has been no real evidence of that. After all, stories about people receiving airline tickets, bills paid or appliances for their votes have been circulating for decades, yet one cannot conclude that elections have not been fair and free over the years.

In addition, the role of election observers traditionally has been limited to making sure the actual process of voting and determining the result is correct. They do not go into what motivates people to vote for a certain party or person.

Detecting whether voters have been rewarded somehow for their support would in any case be difficult, if not impossible, even for local authorities, let alone foreign visitors. In the end, phenomena such as vote-buying and -selling are practically impossible to control, while they are not formally forbidden by law either.

When it comes to the actual counting of the votes, several recounts in St. Maarten over the years have shown hardly any difference from the provisional results. There is also no reason whatsoever to doubt the integrity of the members of the Electoral Council and the various voting bureaus.

All in all, the hard truth is that if local politicians really want to put a stop to some of the dubious election practices on the island they should look inward first and foremost. If all parties and individual candidates simply agreed to stop this bad habit of offering material things in exchange for support, people would not come to expect it either.