By Hilbert Haar The Common Court of Justice has ordered Aruba and Curacao to allow marriages between partners of the same sex. That order had not gone into effect yet, because both countries could appeal the ruling at the Supreme Court. Would that change anything? Damn good question. Freedom of choice is a fundamental principle in constitutional states. We have freedom of religion. Freedom of education. Freedom of association. Freedom of speech. And so on. But countries that make it impossible for its citizens to marry the person of their choice are somehow still living in the dark ages. The…
Author: The Publisher
WILLEMSTAD — Curacao and Aruba can no longer prevent marriages between partners of the same sex. The Common Court of Justice ruled on December 6 in two separate, though identical cases, that refusing to marry same sex partners violates an article in the local constitutions that prohibits discrimination. The court has ordered civil servants in both countries tasked with conducting marriage ceremonies to cooperate with marriages between same-sex partners by issuing marriage certificates. The ruling goes into effect once it has become irrevocable. Both countries could still challenge it by submitting an appeal at the Supreme Court. The case in…
THE HAGUE — Prof. Dr. Gert Oostindie has been appointed as the chairman and lead researcher of a committee that will investigate the role of the royal family in the colonial history. King Willem-Alexander has ordered the investigation. The investigation will take three years. In 2026 the findings will be made public. The king’s announcement comes shortly before the Dutch government plans to offer apologies for the country’s slavery history on December 19 on eight different locations: in the Netherlands, in Suriname and on the six islands of the former Netherlands Antilles. Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health) is scheduled to…
Dear Editor, Students who go away to study are doing so for particular reasons, whether they know or not the ranking of the reasoning. But what guarantees do students have of a different life from those who came before; and if that is a good enough reason for such supercilious adventures. Their dreams at times are pilfered brazenly under the hot sun, as one returns to their native lands of an imagined community. In this quest lies a certain cantankerous ideal. Froth with the politics of the ability to climb the ladder, one goes on this Sisyphusian journey. Of not…
By Terrance Rey The time-tested and true use of a front man in business on Sint Maarten is a well-known phenomenon. This phenomenon is in line with the strategy: Own nothing, control everything. Unfortunately, this usage comes from the need to misuse many of the loopholes found in the island ordinances of Sint Maarten when it was just a pristine island consisting only of beaches, lagoons and ponds and investors were looking for prime properties to develop on the island. When I migrated back to Sint Maarten in 2007 and wanted to establish a company on the island, I was…
This week Minister Doran caught my attention with a very interesting statement. He said during an interview on Thursday with Lady Grace on The Breakfast Lounge that and I quote “There is a systematic approach to keep me busy and to prevent progress.” See related article: Minister Doran: “There is a systematic approach to keep me busy and to prevent progress” That statement was enough to inspire me to listen to the rest of the interview and to publish an article about it. Listening to the rest of the interview confirmed a phenomenon I have been noticing with other ministers…
PHILIPSBURG — “If it were up to me, I would fix all infrastructure. But it is all about the money and about prioritizing. Financing is one of our major issues,” Minister of Public Housing, Urban Planning, Environment and Infrastructure (VROMI) Egbert Jurendy Doran said during an interview with Grace Blijden (Lady Grace) in the radio broadcast The Breakfast Lounge on Thursday. “We have to pick and choose. We would need 10 million guilders to properly resurface all our major roads, but we only have 2 million in the budget for road maintenance. We have a list of deplorable roads. We…
PHILIPSBURG — More than six years ago, Alegria Real Estate, owner of what is now the Morgan Resort in Burgeaux Bay, asked for long lease rights to a water parcel adjacent to its property. VROMI-Minister Miklos Giterson had no objections, but his successor Egbert Jurendy Doran had different ideas. The appeals court has now vindicated the minister. In September 2020, the Court in First Instance ruled that the country’s attorney, at the time Aernout Kraaijeveld, was authorized to approve an agreement with Alegria about the issuance of the long lease rights. The country, now represented by Zylena Bary, appealed this…
PHILIPSBURG — More than 6,500 inhabitants in Caribbean Netherlands (Saba, Statia and Bonaire) are living under the poverty line. This appears from a study by the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS), entitled Monitor Broad Welfare and Sustainable Development Goals. The study deviates from listing income per capita by presenting the median income of the islanders. Median income eliminates the effect of high income earners on the average income per capita. The median income is the highest on Saba ($21,200), followed by Statia ($18,400) and Bonaire ($17,500). By comparison, the median income in the Netherlands is $34,756. The study defines…
PHILIPSBURG — Parliament elected MP Sidharth Bijlani (UP) as the successor of MP Grisha Heyliger-Marten for the function of chairman. MP Rolando Brison (UP) was elected as the second vice-chair. MP Heyliger-Marten was “relieved of her function,” as vice-chair MP William Marlin put it, on October 27. While that event was surrounded by quite a lot of (political) drama the election of her successor was stripped of all emotion. Not a single MP wished to speak before the voting took place, most likely because there was not much to say anyway, and because the decision about Heyliger-Marten’s successor had already…
