Behind a verdict that shifts an oath from moral rhetoric to legal liability

GREAT BAY--With one judgment, the Court of Appeal has done something unusual in St. Maarten politics: it has treated the parliamentary oath not as ceremony, but as a legal trigger with a price tag.

In the case of former MP Akeem Arrindell, the court did more than confirm his conviction for co committing election fraud on 11 January 2024. It treated the oath he took on 10 February 2024 under Article 56 of the Constitution as the decisive act that unlocked his salary as a Member of Parliament, and then concluded that because that oath was false, the salary itself became an unlawful benefit that must be paid back.

In an earlier editorial, The Peoples’ Tribune questioned how a judge could strip a former MP of months of salary when the work had, in fact, been performed. The Judge has effectively replied: "hold my tea." The issue is not whether the work was done, but whether the entitlement to do that work ever existed.

There is a broader political question. If the oath is now treated as enforceable in this way, what happens in other situations where candidates or MPs have arguably shaded the truth about conflicts of interest, financial holdings, or past conduct when taking the same oath? Is the system prepared to apply this standard consistently, or does it risk becoming a tool that is only used in the most publicized cases?

The Court has not answered those questions, and perhaps it does not need to. Its task was to decide one case. Yet the ripple effects are real. MPs, ministers and future candidates will now know that what they say in the oath is not just symbolic. It can be revisited, parsed and, if necessary, used as the basis for clawing back their pay.

For a political culture that sometimes treats the swearing in ceremony as something to photograph rather than something to fear, that is a significant shift.

Lets get into what the Court actually decided....

The starting point is election fraud. On 26 November 2025, the Court of Appeal convicted A.A. for co committing election fraud on 11 January 2024. The court found that he bought a number of votes and that he ultimately obtained 353 votes, enough to secure a seat in Parliament.

However, the judges faced a technical problem. They could not establish how many of those 353 votes were bought, nor whether he would still have been elected if he had only obtained lawful votes. Because of that uncertainty, the court said it could not treat his entire parliamentary salary and transition allowance as “unlawfully obtained benefit” that flowed directly from the election fraud itself.

So the court shifted to a different legal route that exists in forfeiture law: benefit obtained from “other facts”. Here the rules are looser. The strict rules of criminal evidence do not apply and “indications” can be enough. The question becomes: is it plausible that the convicted person committed another offence from which he obtained financial advantage?

Looking at the forfeiture file and public sources, the Court said yes. It found there were sufficient indications that A.A. committed perjury.

Perjury and the oath under Article 56

To take his/her seat, every MP must make a pledge or oath as described in Article 56 of the Constitution. One part of that oath is a clear statement: the MP has not given or promised anything to anyone in connection with his election. The Court notes that Arrindell took this oath on 10 February 2024, knowing that he had in fact given gifts and made promises tied to his election. In other words, the oath was not truthful.

That single act, the Court says, “secured his place in Parliament.” Without taking the oath, he could not have sat as an MP at all. No oath, no seat. No seat, no parliamentary salary. From there, the legal conclusion follows. By committing perjury at the moment of swearing in, Arrindell received salary that he would not otherwise have received. That salary therefore qualifies as unlawfully obtained benefit from “another fact”: not the election fraud itself, but the false oath that followed it.

The Court also notes that if he had not become an MP again, he would have remained entitled to transition allowance based on his earlier parliamentary term. So the measure aims to put him back in the financial position he would have been in if he had not lied under oath: someone receiving wachtgeld, not a sitting MP drawing a full salary.

How the money was calculated

The Court then did the math. It looked at the period from 10 February 2024, the date of the oath, to 23 September 2024, the date he resigned. Because the first week of February and the last week of September were left out, it treated the relevant period as 7.5 months. It set the unlawfully obtained salary over that period at Cg 78,975.50.

Defense counsel argued that if there were bought votes, there were also costs. She suggested 352 purchased votes at 300 US dollars per vote. The Court rejected that scenario as unsupported by the file, which it said pointed to a smaller number of bought votes.

Still, the judges accepted that money had been spent and estimated the number of bought votes at 10, with amounts between 100 and 200 US dollars per vote. In the defendant’s favor, they took the higher figure of 200 US dollars, and deducted 2,000 US dollars, or Cg 3,602.93, from the total benefit. That is how they arrived at Cg 75,372 to be forfeited.

In other words, the Court recognises that some money was spent to obtain the unlawful advantage, but treats the remaining salary as profit earned on the back of a false oath.

When formality turns into liability

Ethically, the oath of office should always have been significant. Politicians swear it in public, often with family present, and invoke it in speeches. “We took an oath” is a familiar line in parliamentary debate. What this verdict does is shift that phrase from moral rhetoric to legal liability. The oath is no longer simply a reminder of duty, it is now a potential anchor for financial sanctions.

Does that make sense?

From one angle, yes. If the oath is the legal key that opens the door to public office, and if that key is used dishonestly, it is not strange for a court to say that whatever is earned by walking through that door is tainted. You did not simply do wrong in the campaign, you lied at the very moment you claimed the mandate.

From another angle, the verdict raises questions that are worth asking in a small democracy. If “indications” are enough to find perjury for forfeiture purposes, how robust does the evidence need to be when the consequence is not only reputational damage, but a six figure repayment and a reshaping of how we understand the oath itself? Where is the line between proven lies and political spin that many voters might already expect in a campaign?

The Court is clear that this case is based on concrete findings: there was a prior conviction for vote buying and the content of the oath is not in dispute. Still, by using perjury as the legal hook, the judge has expanded the space where an oath can be tested after the fact.

A verdict that answered more than one challenge

When The Peoples’ Tribune previously asked how a court could try to reclaim salary from a former MP who had “worked” for it, we were looking at the issue through a labour lens: services rendered, salary paid.

The Court of Appeal has taken a constitutional lens instead. It has said, in effect: you only had the legal right to perform those services because of an oath you did not take truthfully. The problem is not the work you did, it is the way you obtained the badge that allowed you to do it.

You can agree or disagree with that reasoning. You can ask whether similar energy will be applied to other integrity issues that do not involve vote buying. You can wonder whether a system that accepts “indications” as proof in forfeiture matters should be more tightly defined when it touches constitutional offices.

What you cannot say after this judgment is that the oath is just words. For better or worse, this verdict has turned that brief moment at the swearing in ceremony into a point of legal exposure. That may be uncomfortable for some, but for voters who have long suspected that the oath meant little, it is also a reminder that, at least this time, a judge was willing to treat those words as binding.

Lastly, if one would stop to think about it, while this verdict is surprising and interesting, it is not a "parliamentary first" by the court. The court has in the past convicted another former MP (in part) for having "oversight" into the port as a result of him being the chairperson of Parliament's TEATT Committee. In other words, because he was Chair of the committee under which the port fell, he had means and opportunity to exert influence and leverage his oversight. Even though no such direct influence as a Committee Chair was proven.

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