PHILIPSBURG, Simt Maarten – Party for Progress (PFP) Members of Parliament (MPs) Melissa Gumbs and Raeyhon Peterson have sent questions to Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs and Minister of Public Housing, Spatial Planning, Environment and Infrastructure (VROMI) Egbert J. Doran about the ongoing leadership saga at government-owned water and electricity company GEBE.
In their letter, MPs Gumbs and Peterson mentioned several media articles that revealed new information about the dismissal of interim manager Mr. Mauricio Dembrook and the court case against the expected incoming chief executive officer (CEO) Ms. Sharine Daniel.
Mr. Dembrook – in a letter to the Sint Maarten Government on October 15, 2021 – highlighted disturbing information he had uncovered about Ms. Daniel and her potential installation as GEBE’s CEO.
The PFP faction is curious as to why GEBE’s Supervisory Board of Directors removed Mr. Dembrook from the interim position after they received this objection letter. The MPs have thus asked Ministers Jacobs and Doran to explain the Supervisory Board’s official position about the letter. They also questioned if the Supervisory Board had investigated the concerns mentioned in the letter, or simply dismissed the claims and got rid of Mr. Dembrook as retribution for speaking out.
“We hope that the Supervisory Board actually looked into the claims with due diligence, and is not acting out of political favouritism and vengeance,” MP Gumbs said. “Good corporate governance does mean investigating the kind of serious claims made in that letter. This is why the Corporate Governance Council noted the necessity for legal and financial minds to be on the GEBE Supervisory Board. This is a necessity that the Government does not seem to care about, given the competencies of recent appointees, all of whom, while being professional in their own fields, are not financial and legal experts.”
PFP also questioned the two Ministers about the court case against Ms. Daniel, noting that media reports have claimed that Mr. Dembrook was removed because he appealed the original verdict. The MPs asked if the Supervisory Board had given instructions to Mr. Dembrook regarding the court case, such as explicitly forbidding him from lodging an appeal. PFP also asked for copies of any Board resolutions related to these decisions.
“It’s unclear to me why the Supervisory Board would not want to appeal the verdict, especially considering that whether to appeal a court case involving GEBE is the prerogative of the CEO, interim or not,” noted MP Peterson. “The judge spoke of a toxic working environment at GEBE. If the content of Mr. Dembrook’s letter to the Supervisory Board is true, then the appointment of the new CEO is not in GEBE’s best interest, as it would only perpetuate the toxicity. This again highlights why the Corporate Governance Council made it a point to say that the board of GEBE needed to have a legal expert as one of its appointed members. Any lawyer worth their hourly fee would have informed them that an appeal was the way to go in this instance.”
At the heart of PFP’s letter is the concern about the troubling instances of political games being played in the country’s Government-owned companies.
“Sint Maarten has been plagued by a culture where CEOs of crucial government-owned companies are being used as tools for personal and political gain. When trying to appoint a person to lead our only utility company – the company responsible for the basic necessities of every household – you would hope that politics would not play a part in it, but in Sint Maarten it’s the opposite. From some media outlets becoming part of the obvious games with biased ‘news’ articles, to interim CEOs being suspended for following the normal legal trajectories set forth by law, one cannot help but wonder if we are ever going to take the positions of board members and CEOs seriously, especially those whose appointment is (partially) decided at the discretion of our Council of Ministers,” the PFP faction concluded.
