Parliament Stops Facebook Stream for Unkown Reasons

On Friday June 25 and without announcement to the public, the presidium of Parliament decided to cease the live streaming of the Parliament meetings on Facebook. The Parliament Facebook page now has a link to Vimeo's livestream site and the agenda points of the meeting. The Parliament's digital stream is now without ease of access given that a significant portion of St. Maarten residents are active Facebook members. As a result of this decision it restricts public information and debate being shared in real time which is a form of censorship. This also comes at a time when the representatives of the people are discussing the nation's budget which is a paramount legal document that yearly determines what gets done and what doesn't happen in government.

 Ironically several Members of Parliament (MP) actively engage the public in the Facebook stream. Using Facebook as a livestream platform also allows people to be notified when meetings take place if announcements elsewhere are not seen. Therefore Parliament meetings are somewhat shelved since no alerts of it being live is broadcasted digitally. Questions were sent to Parliament's presidium however an answer was received only from MP William Marlin. In his response he was under the impression that the stream was still on Facebook which is not the case and referred to Chairman Rolando Brison for further questioning. A response from MP Brison is still pending.