Who will lighten it?

When Prime Minister Dr. Luc Mercelina said in October 2025 that St. Maarten has too many institutions and too little capacity, it should have forced a national reckoning. At the time, in this same space, we asked the obvious question: what now?

Months later, Maria van der Sluijs-Plantz has essentially said the same thing at IPKO. St. Maarten, she explained, is a small country carrying a structure too large for its size and capacity. Her most telling reminder was a quote from a St. Maarten politician after the 10-10-10 negotiations: “Maria, we fell in love with a date, but we are not ready.”

That sentence captures much of St. Maarten’s post-10-10-10 reality. The country fell in love with the symbolism of becoming a country, but the machinery that came with it was heavy, expensive and, in many areas, beyond our human capacity to properly operate.

The Prime Minister said it. Now the chairwoman of the evaluation committee is saying it. Many in the public service know it. The private sector knows it. The public feels it every time government says it wants to reform but cannot find the people, money or structure to do so.

So the question remains: who will act?

It is not enough to keep saying St. Maarten is overburdened and the government apparatus is too large for the country’s capacity. Someone has to start naming what must be merged, reduced, restructured or removed. That includes entities and institutions that were not born out of local design, but imposed as part of conditions, pressure or crisis management.

This is where political courage is required. This government came into office on a wave of “we will make tough decisions,” but  the size of the structure remains. The burden remains. The people still pay for a system that even its own leaders admit is too heavy.

That is why the old talk of full autonomy sounds more disconnected by the day. You cannot preach complete autonomy to people who are suffering under the weight of their own government institutional burdens and a system that is not, many feel, working for them. St. Maarten must stop pretending that constitutional pride alone can staff departments, modernize systems, fund institutions, regulate sectors, reform justice, execute capital projects and deliver basic services.

People are beginning to accept the reality of the situation. They are starting to understand that the issue is not just bad politics, although there is plenty of that. It is also structure, scale and capacity. The country model we adopted may not fit the country we actually are.

St. Maarten needs a serious and honest review of its government apparatus, its entities, its imposed institutions and its constitutional load. A real decision-making process with timelines, names, costs and consequences.

Because if everyone now agrees that the burden is too heavy, then the next question is unavoidable.

Who will lighten it?

‍