Election of the Day: Sint Maarten

Thursday, the voters in Sint Maarten will elect a new Estates, their 15 member parliament. Since the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in 2010, Sint Maarten as been a semi-autonomous constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. A number of referenda on the political future of the Netherlands Antilles were held in the aughts, with a variety of options. Ultimately, Sint Maarten, along with Curaçao, chose the path of greater autonomy, both from Amsterdam and from their neighbors, and became independent constituent countries on the same model as Aruba (who left the Netherlands Antilles in the 1980s), while Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba choose the route of closer ties, and were integrated into The Netherlands proper as “special municipalities” (although, unlike French Oversees Departments like Martinique, Reunion and French Guiana, they do not use the Euro and are not technically part of the territory of the EU). Sint Maarten is easily the smallest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom–Aruba and Curaçao have well over 100,000 residents while Sint Maarten hovers around 40,000. As Sint Maarten has no devolved government nor any other elected branches of government, the 15 members of the Estates are the only elected officials in the Country. The 15 seats are elected via a single constituency proportional representation election.

Sint Maarten makes up the southern half of the island of Saint Martin, while the Northern portion is comprised of the French overseas collectivity of Saint Martin. Trivia time: it is the least populated of the world’s 10 inhabited divided islands, coming in just behind the three other minor inhabited divided islands of Usedom (Poland/Germany), Sebatik (Indonesia/Malaysia) and Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego (Argentina/Chile). Interestingly, they are the only remaining municipality to continue to use the Netherlands Antilles Guilder as their currency (The rest of the former Netherlands Antilles jurisdictions us the US dollar, and French Saint Martin uses the Euro). Later this year, apparently fulfilling a condition of the treaty that dissolved the Netherlands Antilles, Sint Maarten and Curaçao will launch a new joint currency, the Caribbean Guilder.

This will be the 5th estates election since the current political configuration came to pass, and it’ll only be the second non-snap election, as elections in 2016, 2018, and 2020 came early for various reasons. The largest party in the Estates right now, with six seats, is current PM Silveria Jacobs’ National Alliance, a center-left social democratic coalition. Their governing partner has been the second-largest party, the center-right United People’s Party, with four seats. One of the minor parties, The United St Maarten Party (2 seats last election, 1 currently) appears to be advocates for the cause of unification of the French and Dutch portions of the island. This widely popular cause was largely dormant prior to 2020, when the island experienced a brief attempt to place restrictions and checkpoints on the border, in an effort to control and reduce the spread of COVID-19. This effort was not well-received among residents of the island, whose inhabitants have enjoyed free movement across the international border since the treaty of Concordia in 1648. So one outcome to watch for is the level of support for this party. (I have no idea if this 3+ year old incident is still salient).

At this point one might reasonably wonder when I’m going to get to the point, and ask what this election is about, which party or parties are positioned to make gains, and other various substantive questions. Dear reader, I do not know. The only substantive coverage of this election I’ve managed to track down includes a hard-hitting piece of journalism about how election day may involve some traffic congestion, a seemingly rather alarmist story about the scourge of campaign sign vandalism, and….that’s all I got. I’m not sure if this warrants a post, but I’m not going to let those doubts stop me from smashing that “publish” button since I went to the trouble of writing this. If our highly knowledgeable reader base has any analysis of substance of this election, I hope they’ll share it in comments.