MP Heyliger Marten: Make the New Parliamentary Year a Better One | SOUALIGA NEWSDAY

SINT MAARTEN (PHILIPSBURG) - Member of Parliament (MP) Grisha Heyliger Marten delivered the following closing statement for the parliamentary year 2021-2022 delivered on Monday, September 12, 2022, in the House of Parliament. 

"Many of the speakers before me today, were able to summarize 2021-2022 in great detail. My complete summary can be found in my foreword of the Annual Report 2021-2022 of Parliament.
And as a subsequent thereof, I choose to address you my follow colleagues today with words that would hopefully resonate with everyone and inspire all of us in Parliament to make the coming Parliamentary year a better one for the people who we serve.

"The past year has been extremely eventful and has seen many distractions from within and outside of Parliament, including personal attacks and questionable individual actions. These distractions in my humble opinion have damaged the image of this honourable House. They have also kept some of us from focusing legislatively, in addition to supervising and holding the Government accountable, some of us were not able focus on amending and creating new laws that could potentially be beneficial for our people.

"As a Parliament, we need to give the people the representation that they deserve. Both individually and collectively, we need to do more, and do better. And I don’t exclude myself from that assignment.
We have just one more parliamentary year left before elections, let us raise the level of this honourable House in every sense of the word, to the benefit of the people who we serve.

"Let us all show up, and sign in, on time, and ensure that there is always quorum for meetings. Let us to our homework on certain topics, deliberate and ask the pertinent questions to help our people get a better understanding topic at hand.

"Let us work hand and hand with our secretariat and facilitate them by sending the questions in writing, responding to requests in timely manner in order to have an efficient and effective working of parliament.

"Let us be accountable for our actions in and outside of Parliament at all times. The people who elected and pay us, deserve nothing less! So, while I call on us as MP’s to restore the respect that Parliament should command, I am also calling on Government to honour and respect Parliament as the highest legislative body of the nation.

"In previous years on Sint Maarten, Ministers would immediately come to Parliament when requested to do so. They were always prepared and would answer most or all questions on the spot, sometimes without any notes and without needing advisors and/or civil servants. Some of those former Ministers are still in Parliament today, so they can testify to this.

"Just a few days ago in Curacao, Prime Minister Pisas answered more than one hundred questions of Parliament during one session, after an adjournment of only four hours. Why shouldn’t we be able to do the same?

"So when parliament request the presence of Minister, I implore each Minister to be readily available and ready to answer…. Because as one senior MP would repeatedly say, many times in the past: “The people have the right to know!”.

"And we need to respect that, this is their house, not ours. In closing, my fellow colleagues, in addition to discipline, efficiency, and transparency, I call on all of us to also show respect, dignity, and maturity as we take care of the people’s business in all seriousness."