WILLEMSTAD — Judge Mauritsz de Kort is per November 4, 2025, the new Governor of Curacao. He succeeds Lucille George-Wout. His 6-year term can be extended once. Ruthsella Agueda Jansen has been appointed as deputy governor. She succeeds Michèle Russel-Capriles, whose term ended on September 1, 2025.
De Kort (51) is Curacao’s youngest governor since the island became an autonomous country within the kingdom the Netherlands on October 10, 2010.
De Kort was born in Oranjestad, Aruba, in 1973. He attended VWO at the Colegio Arubano, and HEAO in Arnhem. He then went on to study law at Leiden University and obtained his masters at the University of London.
Curacao’s new governor worked in the past as a lawyer in Aruba, Curacao and St. Maarten. In 2007 he began a raio-study to become a judge. (Raio is a Dutch abbreviation for judicial civil servant in training). He completed this study in 2011 and worked the next four years as a judge in Curacao. In 2015 he transferred to St. Maarten where he was the contact for the media until March 1, 2025. Earlier, between 2004 and 2006 he worked as a lawyer on St. Maarten.
In St. Maarten, De Kort also was a member of the supervisory board for the Pointe Blanche prison In this function he monitored the conditions inmates had to endure not only at the prison, but also at the police cells in Philipsburg and Simpson Bay.
On April 1, 2017, De Kort became vice-president of the Common Court of Justice. In 2022 he became the court’s president.
Ruthsella Jansen (66) was born in Curacao and has been appointed as deputy governor. She retired in February 2024 from her post as deputy director of Maduro & Curiëls Bank. Previously she held the post of Canada’s honorary consul for Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire. She was also a member of the Common Court of Justice’s complaint committee.
The governors that preceded De Kort since 1990 were Jaime Saleh, Frits Goedgedrag and Lucille George-Wout. In his new function, De Kort is the highest representative of the Dutch King and he is formally the head of the government in Curacao. The Kingdom Council of Ministers approved De Kort’s nomination for the job in June of this year.
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