Great Bay — After remaining undefeated in the preliminary matches, Teddy Berry emerged as the undisputed champion when the curtains went down on the 2022 Governor’s Cup Table Tennis competition Friday evening at the LB Scot Sports Auditorium. The Governor, Drs. Eugene Holiday, was not present at the event as he had traveled to the Netherlands, where he received a royal decoration from State Secretary Alexandra van Huffelen (Kingdom Relations) on behalf of King Willem-Alexander: Commander in the Order of Orange-Nassau. During the reception a short video showed the contributions Holiday made to the community of St. Maarten. The video…
Author: The Publisher
By Hilbert Haar Kadushi, the weekly column on the website of DossierKoninkrijksRelaties.nl, touched on a sensitive issue last week: the value of democracy and the question whether the Caribbean countries still want to share the Kingdom with the Netherlands where everything under the sun seems possible in the name of democracy. Damn good question, but before criticizing others, St. Maarten, Curacao and Aruba should have the courage to examine how they deal with the powers given to them by a flawed democratic system. Kadushi neatly sums up a series of Dutch failures: the child allowance scandal that financially ruined thousands…
PHILIPSBURG — Former Port-director Mark Mingo and his attorney Cor Merx are preparing a multi-million dollar claim for damages against the Government, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Harbor Group of Companies.
PHILIPSBURG — André Haakmat, the former vice prime minister of Suriname, defends his thesis ‘Corruption and the fight against corruption in Suriname’ next week at the Open University in Heerlen. The conclusion of his research is remarkable and it could have been written about St. Maarten with the same outcome: “The promise of Queen Wilhelmina in 1944 that the colonies would get the authority to handle their own domestic affairs independently has sown the seeds for the corruption-promoting ethnic political system in Suriname.” Haakmat researched the roots of the widespread corruption in Suriname and checked whether this is the result…
Dear Editor, You will not meet a more nationalistic person than me. I bleed St. Maarten through and through. So when you hear me say that it’s time for the Dutch to step in, you know it’s serious. We have had so-called self determination for 12 years now. In the first 5 or 6 years we could expect some ups and downs as we learn to navigate through this new system but after 12 years you would think that we would learn by now how to run the island with the minimum amount of competence. We already went through the…
PHILIPSBURG — President of Parliament MP Grisha Heyliger-Marten no longer sees eye to eye with the leader of the United People’s party (UP), MP Rolando Brison. “If he is elected as the party leader for the next elections, I will not be running with the party,” Heyliger-Marten said in an interview with Lady Grace on the radio broadcast The Breakfast Lounge. At the same time Heyliger-Marten seems to be at ease with attempts to remove her as the President of Parliament. If a majority votes in any upcoming meeting against her, she will step down, though she expects her critics…
PHILIPSBURG — Mark Mingo is back and he wants everybody to know that he is not going anywhere. Despite his trials leading up to his acquittal for complicity in robbing the port of millions of dollars, Mingo has maintained a positive attitude. He has used his time studying law and is currently contemplating option for his future. In an interview on the radio program The Review, Mingo declined to answer the question whether he will be a candidate in a future election. At the same time, he has emphasized that he is not going away and that he expects the…
PHILIPSBURG –Just as Hurricane Exercise 2022 (HUREX 2022) kicked off today, Friday, September 16, and is scheduled to last until September 26, the local authorities of Saba and St. Eustatius have made a request to the Dutch Marines to provide military assistance in connection with the passage of tropical storm Fiona. Fire Chief and National Disaster Coordinator of the Office of Disaster Management (ODM) Clive Richardson (see photo) announced the start of the HUREX 2022 on Friday today. Richardson said that the training exercise was already scheduled and not linked to the current weather system approaching the Leeward Islands. The…
PHILIPSBURG — Rising food prices pose a huge problem for many families on the island and the government is feverishly looking for alternatives. Recently, Minister Ottley (Economic Affairs and Tourism, as well as Public Health) announced that he is researching options to lease land for agricultural purposes in other countries, like Suriname. Whether that will do anything to bring food prices down, remains to be seen. In the meantime, parliamentarian Chanel Brownbill (United St. Maarten party) has jumped on the food prices bandwagon with a press release that does little more than stating that there is a problem. Nevertheless, the…
Julio R. Romney Political Analyst With one-third (5 out of 15) Members of Parliament having declared themselves as “Independent Members of Parliament”, this clearly undermines the fabric of our statutory Election System of Proportional Representation and endangered the application of proportional representation. It presents a danger for several reasons. Chapter 4 of the Constitution clearly states that the composition of Parliament shall be based on proportional representation within the limits to be laid down by national ordinance. This means that the make-up of Parliament is required to reflect or “represent the entire populace of Sint Maarten”, elected by proportional representation.…
