ExCo takes political vengeance
against civil servant, says NA
PHILIPSBURG--The Executive Council is recruiting young St. Maarteners with one hand and chopping down young local workers with the other hand.
This is the conclusion National Alliance leader and Councilman William Marlin reached when dealing with the dismissal of Judy La Paix in Monday’s Island Council meeting.
He said Personnel Affairs Commissioner Maria Buncamper-Molanus had known about a problem brewing in the Personnel Affairs Department, but instead of trying to solve the problem, she had seen the opportunity to take political vengeance against La Paix.
He believed the reason for this had been purely political. “If you don’t wave the flag of the right politicians they take repercussions against you. It seems that the civil servants who do support the right Commissioner are allowed to do anything,” Marlin said.
La Paix was dismissed because she had refused to do a job interim head of the Personnel and Organisation Department Ronald Speld had asked her to do – a job which she had contended should have been done by the more senior officer, in keeping with established practice within the department. It was a document that former interim head Luud Hakkens had left on his desk for more than a year.
However, no measures were taken against Hakkens and when La Paix refused to do that job, a case was built against her claiming that she had refused to do her job, and the Executive Council had been advised to dismiss her.
La Paix was dismissed immediately without pay and without being called at least once on the phone for her side of the story. “Even civil servants suspected of committing a crime keep 70 per cent of their salary until the court reaches a verdict,” Marlin said.
Head of Resources Hiro Shigemoto and Speld were in the Executive Council meeting to answer questions when the decision was taken, but La Paix was never given a chance to defend herself.
Marlin hopes that during the court case which La Paix has filed against government, the judge will ask the same question that one of the Commissioners had asked during the Executive Council meeting: “What measures have been taken against Hakkens?”
For Marlin, the Executive Council’s actions suggest a clear-cut case of wanting to get rid of somebody. She was given memos and deadlines and when she spoke out and asked why Hakkens had not finished handling the dossier she was “nailed to the cross.”
“Where did the right to equal treatment go?” Marlin asked.
The entire La Paix issue has the NA outraged, especially because it was a Dutch consultant who was brought in and paid 21,000 euros a month who had started the dismissal process, according to the opposition party.
“Government pays companies 21,000 euros to advise how to fire our people,” Island Council member Frans Richardson said. He also pointed out that there were a lot of friends and family members of Commissioners who did not show up to work, but were paid every month and never received this type of treatment. He too pleaded for equal treatment for all civil servants.
Councilman George Pantophlet had several questions for the Commissioner, not only about La Paix’s dismissal, but also on the 21,000-euro contract.
However, Buncamper-Molanus said that for reasons of privacy, because there was a court case pending and in adherence to rules of good governance, she could not furnish most of the information requested.
This sounded strange to the NA, because the party was convinced that the Commissioner had thrown every rule of good governance out of the window when she appointed her spouse to the board of directors of TelEm and defended his act of requesting a donation from TelEm for The Sky is the Limit Foundation while he was founder of the foundation and while Buncamper-Molanus was politically responsible for TelEm.
Pantophlet was also bitterly disappointed that the Commissioner still could not even answer his questions asked four months ago about consultants hired by government.
