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By Hilbert Haar
There is a weird Dutch tradition that has found its way to the Caribbean. It is harmless and it does not solve anything but it cost at least some money. Let me explain: if there is a problem, the Dutch tend to establish a committee that has to analyze the situation and (hopefully) come u with a workable solution. I cannot remember a single committee that actually achieved what it was expected to achieve.
This thought came to me after the Interparliamentary Kingdom Consultation decided to charge a committee of experts with the task to come up with proposals to diminish the democratic deficit in the kingdom.
I always thought that experts knew more than anybody else and that in this sense, the establishment of that committee was a good idea – but it isn’t.
The phenomenon of the democratic deficit has been singing around in the Caribbean for decades. I cannot imagine that there is some magic formula that has escaped everyone during that time, a formula that would eradicate, or at least diminish said deficit.
Even better, some years ago the parliaments of the four countries in the kingdom already came up with a possible solution. These parliaments agreed: this is the way to go, conveniently forgetting that the Dutch government is in control.
And the Dutch said: no way, we are not going to do this.
It is a bit like the history of the dispute regulation, another measure that will not see the light of day within the next hundred years. Why? Because the Dutch government does not want an independent body to issue binding solutions for disputes between the Caribbean countries and the Netherlands.
We can establish committees all year long and we can make all kind of reasonable proposals but the Dutch government will never agree to anything that takes a bite out of its authority over the islands.
So why would proposals to diminish the democratic deficit do any better? I think it is naïve to think that there is a solution.
This thought is mainly based on numbers. The Netherlands has something like 18 million inhabitants. Curacao, St. Maarten and Aruba together have just a bit more than 300,000.
Imagine that the Netherlands would be daft enough to give all islanders the right to vote in Dutch parliamentary elections and that – let’s stay positive here – 60 percent of the people indeed cast a vote. In the unlikely scenario that they would all vote for the same candidate, they would not even begin to have an impact on the decision making process in the Dutch parliament.
There is no way you can win in a democratic system if you are up against an opponent that is sixty times your size. And there is no point in fighting a battle if you know beforehand that you are going to lose it no matter what.
There is, of course, an alternative. Forget voting for the Dutch parliament, forget fighting for narrowing down the democratic deficit. Instead, focus on what we should be good at: taking care of our own affairs in a responsible manner.
But maybe, just maybe, that is too much to ask.
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