St. Maarten Private Eye

I think it important when discussing the issues to know where someone is coming from in his or her thinking and argumentation. Hence I hereby present, what I call the Macgee Manifesto, introduced above.

Politicians must full give disclosures.
Politicians must give full disclosure of their net worth, assets held and holdings in onshore and offshore companies. The close family members and relatives of government officials should also be annually scrutinized by the Tax Inspectorate as an added precaution. (Now don't go screaming about privacy issues, because politicians and their families have to submit their tax returns just like everyone else. Country St. Maarten will need to enforce this to ensure proper tax collections from everyone if we are ever going to present a balanced budget. Furthermore, higher supervision also entails scrutiny of tax returns. So don't be surprise when we all start getting claims from the tax office now that the Island Council has approved the higher supervision requirement.)

Island Council members should not be Executive Council members.
One person should not be able to fulfill both positions. The biggest vote getters of the winning party/coalition can choose to accept Executive Council (ExCo) positions and the seats won in the Island Council by the parties should be filled with other party members on the lists. The Island Council (IC) members must be able to do their jobs and be critical and vigilant of their colleagues in the ExCo who must give full accountability to the IC.

Professionals should be appointed to supervisory and advisory boards.
Shareholder’s Representatives and board members of government owned companies and affiliated foundations should be selected from the pool of local, preferably retired, professionals who do not have political affiliations or family ties with politicians on the Executive Council.

Appointments to boards should be minimum 2 years, maximum 3 years.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Need I say more? Appointees should have enough time to get a job done, then move on. Make place for another with new blood. Avoid stagnation and complacency. (The board of SCDF is a prime example.)

Compulsory local counterparts and training of staff.
Any foreigners or consultants (temporarily; see previous point) hired for government positions or in government owned companies have to have a local counterpart who they must train to replace them when their contract expires. As a matter of fact, every civil servant in a supervisory, management or senior position should adhere to the rule of training their underlings to replace them, else they do not qualify for promotions and salary raises. This would immediately dispel with the problem of certain civil servants holding down positions for years with no career possibilities for lower echelon civil servants to move up.

Complete transparency in awarding of contracts.
Complete transparency in awarding of contracts by government and government owned companies and affiliated foundations is required. Especially for lucrative contracts where the potential for double dealings may exist. (Too often we hear after the fact that a contract was awarded to a company out of short list of three companies, but you never know who those other two companies were nor when the invitation to tender (aanbesteding) took place. This wall of non-transparancy in tender proceedings has got to come crashing down.)

"No work, No Pay".
Just as the Executive Council can expediently fire a civil servant for refusing to carry out an order of a superior, so must civil servants who do not nor ever show up for work but still collect a salary every month should be fired with immediate effect with the same procedure and expediency. (Long term sick-leave situations should be investigated with same expediency.)

Ombudsman Office.
Set up an Ombudsman Office immediately.
According to Wikipedia an Ombudsman is an official, usually (but not always) appointed by the government or by parliament, who is charged with representing the interests of the public by investigating and addressing complaints reported by individual citizens.
An ombudsman need not be appointed by a legislature; they may work for a corporation, a newspaper, an NGO, as an organizational ombudsman, or for the general public. So what are we waiting for here in St. Maarten?

Feel free to discuss this openly. (SXMPE may want to create a seperate thread for this discussion. I will repost.)