~How Knops got the Parliament of St. Maarten to fire their international lawyer. Mental gymnastics for the legal minded politic~
We are all, some more than others, acquainted with the Gordian Knot from Greek mythology. It refers to an intricate problem, requiring subtlety of thought and suppleness of mind. This week State Secretary Knops placed the Parliament of St. Maarten before exactly such a conundrum.
By forcing them to jump through a series of hoops and make certain irreconcilable choices, he has in effect forced them into firing their international lawyer without them being able to discern that carefully laid stratagem. I do not know if this was the result of a brilliant tactician at work, or merely an inevitable outcome of a simple though tacit objective: Get the Parliament of St. Maarten to retract their petition to the UN.
Knops chose an indirect route to achieve his objective and thus concealed his true ambition: Force the Parliament of St. Maarten to fire their international lawyer. In Statia, this was done directly. They kicked the Clyde van Putten administration out of office as soon as the international lawyer made his appearance. Next, they installed a puppet regime, whose first official act, was to write the international lawyer a brusque letter terminating his services. Since the lawyer had already pocketed his US$40,000 fee upfront for writing one single letter, he bowed out a winner.
On St. Maarten, the objective is the same but the method different. Whereas in Statia brute power was employed, on St. Maarten financial power was unleashed. Knops introduced another true and tested routine in his act: the carrot and the stick. The carrot was liquidity support, without which the Honorable Members of Parliament will not collect their paychecks at the end of the month. The stick was the suspension of that liquidity support until the Honorable Members of Parliament performed their first acrobatic maneuver: Give their full-throated support for the Consensus law introducing the much-maligned COHO. Once they approached the hoop they had to make a choice. Abandon the petition or risk liquidity support. The thought of mobs of angry civil servants, and teachers clamoring at the doors of Parliament, when they went to the ATM to collect their salary and the balance showed zero available, must have crossed their minds. Parliament cannot give full-bodied support to the Consensus Law and at the same time support the petition which denounced the consensus law and COHO as a racist complot. Knops again forced Parliament to choose. The Honorable Members of Parliament will of course take the path of least resistance and give COHO their full-bodied support. The next hoop-up will be retracting the petition. If all goes well before good Friday, April 2, (Good Friday at that) that letter would have been sent or at least agreed upon by the new majority in Parliament that is forming as we speak. Once that letter to the UN has been sent, Parliament will realize that there is one final hoop to jump through. With the petition withdrawn, there is suddenly no need for any international lawyer. Instead of a Dutch regime writing a brusque letter, it will be the Parliament of St. Maarten, the same Parliament that engaged his services, writing him that letter, terminating his services.
D. Brison
SxM – 3.27.21
