PCCA meeting on draft
constitution cancelled again
PHILIPSBURG--The scheduled meeting of the Permanent Committee for Constitutional Affairs (PCCA) did not take place yesterday. Constitutional Affairs Commissioner Sarah-Wescot-Williams cancelled the meeting after receiving notice that all National Alliance (NA) Island Council members would be absent.
“I was not going to have the meeting with only the Democratic Party (DP) political faction. That would have been a farce,” she said.
Following the notice of NA leader William Marlin that he would be off-island, the Commissioner said she had received cancellations from the other four NA Island Council members, but without stating reasons for their absence.
The Commissioner said she would propose to the Executive Council next week to agree to forward the draft constitution and organic laws that are ready to the preparatory committee of the Round Table Conference V-RTC.
NA Councilman Frans Richardson said in a reaction that the DP party had to get its act together. He said NA was not going to be present in a meeting while one DP Commissioner was off-island (Theo Heyliger), one was sick (Maria Buncamper-Molanus) and another was being detained for investigation (Louie Laveist).
He said too often it had been the NA political faction sitting in these meetings with only one or sometimes two DP Island Council members present. “The rest sign in for the meeting and disappear again,” Richardson said.
It was the second time the PCCA meeting had been called on the same topic and Wescot-Williams said the meeting therefore could have continued without a quorum.
Contradicting reports that it should be the Island Council that has to approve to the draft constitution and organic laws before sending them to the V-RTC, Wescot-Williams said the fact was that, according to the resolution governing the PCCA, it was a body with representation of all Island Council members that could take decisions.
The intention of yesterday’s PCCA meeting was to deal with outstanding matters concerning the draft constitution, such as whether age 18 was not too young for someone to become a member of Parliament and whether judicial review should be part of the constitution, considering that this was the case nowhere else in the Kingdom.
Other matters on the agenda to have been discussed were the period before parliamentary memberships expire in case a Parliamentarian is off-island for a lengthy period of time (more than eight months), suspension or dismissal of a Minister or Member of Parliament after conviction, and whether something additional should be stated in the constitution with respect to preventing same-sex marriages taking place in St. Maarten.
