Dear Reader
"De kogel is door de kerk" goes a typical Dutch expression. Meaning an irrevocable step has been taken. The Governor has signed the national decree into effect. Snap elections are now slated for Monday, January 8th, 2018.
The urgency for holding elections on such short notice may have much to do with the Dutch
intention to hold off on extending reconstruction aid until a new cabinet is appointed after January 31st, 2018.
Apparently, the Dutch Kingdom government does not trust an interim cabinet to make binding decisions and is afraid that a newly elected Parliament and appointed Government may reverse decisions taken and agreements made.
So the question is if appointing an new interim government would make any sense. Apparently, it doesn't seem so. The Marlin-cabinet may very well get to continue its demissionary status ad interim until a new government is appointed in 2018.
We are definitely going into
a new period of uncertainty the coming weeks and months. We will soon be getting a seventh government in over seven years since 10-10-10. Read Hilbert Haar's
opinion piece for a recap of the successive governments and the reason each fell since the carnival coup in 2012.
Let's try to put aside politics for a minute because we are tempted to harp on the issue of the young MP Chanel Brownbill being the latest shipjumper as we are certain he will once again be in the spotlight this coming election period, if he chooses to indeed align himself with the DP party as a candidate, as we delved into our
news archives and found articles about his
arrest and release in March of this year, because the only three factors that seem to be constant in the past 7 years is that our parliamentarians have only managed to encourage shipjumping, pass motions of no-confidence and suffer from short term memory. But we linger.
We wanted to look at a total different topic. Our colleagues in Curacao have published the results of an interesting survey done by the CBS in the form of an
infographic: 70.3 percent of the Curacao population use social media. WhatsApp is most commonly used (67 percent), followed by Facebook (55.5) and Youtube (51.5).
Other communication tools remain popular: 69 percent of the population use a computer, 69 percent watch television, 68.1 percent use the internet and 67.8 percent listen to the radio.
The number of newspaper readers is by far the lowest: 54.4 percent read the newspaper. 90 percent of this read the morning newspaper, only 17.9 percent the afternoon newspaper and 11.2 percent the evening newspaper.
Obviously, StMaartenNews.com will not be publishing an evening edition anytime soon. However, we will be bringing you breaking news and news headlines via Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger and you will soon be able to see our newscasts live on Facebook and on Youtube. We are simply going with the times. We will keep you updated as developments progress.
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