By Hilbert Haar The court case of a French teacher against the St. Maarten Academy offers a candid insight into the way this school is going about its business. It fired the teacher, who’d been employed since 2004, on such shaky grounds that the court ordered it to reinstate him, or to compensate him with a payment of 84,000 guilders. That’s not the most remarkable issue in play here. Related article: St. Maarten Academy had to rehire unjustly fired teacher – or pay What did the teacher do to get himself fired? He was training the school’s French third form…
Author: The Publisher
PHILIPSBURG — The St. Maarten Academy has to reinstate a teacher French or otherwise pay compensation of 84,000 guilders ($46,927), the Court in First Instance ruled on February 23. The school dismissed the teacher on August 11, 2021, based on arguments that did not hold up in court. On June 6, the teacher trained for the end of year exam with the French third form. The real questions that would be posed during this exam were displayed on a so-called smart board; when the board malfunctioned, the teacher allowed one student to take a picture of the screen. The student…
PHILIPSBURG — Next week Tuesday, April 19, the parliamentary committee for Constitutional Affairs and Decolonization organizes a round table panel discussion with four experts about the Kingdom Charter, its relation to the United Nations in terms of decolonization and the democratic deficit in the kingdom. The invited experts are former Ombudsman Dr. Nilda Arduin, attorney Reynold Groeneveldt, prof. dr Gerhard Hoogers and political analyst Julio Romney. The position papers of the first three experts are available on the parliament’s website. Arduin kicks off her paper with the statement that “St. Maarten is far from being de facto decolonized.” She advocates…
Faction Requests Committee General Affairs Meeting to Discuss PHILIPSBURG – Party for Progress (PFP) Members of Parliament (MPs) Melissa Gumbs and Raeyhon Peterson took aim at the recently published Media Accreditation Policy 2022, calling the policy as contradictory, inflammatory, and improperly thought-out. The MPs are calling on members of the media to unify under the banner of a press association, and for the Government to work with journalists to amend the policy in a way that guarantees press freedom. “A press association is the norm in other Caribbean countries to ensure that policies, such as the one recently issued by…
By Hilbert Haar If something gets me really going, it is a government that imposes all kinds of silly rules on journalists. DCOMM certainly got me going with the publication of its media policy. Don’t get me wrong, the government is fully within its rights to set rules for attending the weekly press briefings of the Council of Ministers. But they’re overdoing it. Related article: DCOMM media policy triggers widespread criticism When you want to get access to the Second Chamber (Tweede Kamer) in The Hague there are also rules. But they are simple: from the age of 14, visitors…
PHILIPSBURG — After more than 38 years of imprisonment, Ashton Lake will become a free man again on July 1. On May 9, 1984, the Court in First Instance sentenced Lake, who turned 59 on January 18, to life imprisonment for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Amy Velasquez in St. Maarten. The Velasquez-family vehemently opposed Lake’s release, but the court ruled that continued detention does not serve a reasonable purpose. Father, mother and two sisters of Amy Velasquez told the court that they are still traumatized by the crime Lake committed all those years ago. “They are of…
~ A StMaartenNews.com review of Kaiso Jacko’s 2008 calypso song’s take on corrupt politicians in St. Maarten – 14 years later, nothing has changed ~ PHILIPSBURG — The anti corruption task force TBO is not the only one keeping an eye out for undermining criminality. Calypsonian King Beau Beau has brought out a song that is akin to the one Kaiso Jacko performed in 2008 under the title Who Next? At the time, Police Commissioner Marcel Loor and Chief Commissioner Derrick Holiday were in hot water. But in the almost decade and a half that followed, a rather impressive lineup…
PHILIPSBURG — “This is the right time for transitioning to low carbon and renewable energy solutions,” Sol Antilles General Manager Robert Jan James said on the occasion of the opening of the rebranded Sol Causeway service station. The company also opened service stations at Bush Road and in Simpson Bay on the same day. All three stations are operated by first time female business owners. There are now eight Sol-branded service stations in St. Maarten. James focused on the skyrocketing energy prices and on alternatives to combat them in his speech. The price of crude oil hovered around $66 a…
By Hilbert Haar The parliament is supposed to control the government. Right? Says so in the constitution. But the parliament has no clue about the way the government is spending tax payers money – and apparently it does not give a damn either. The opinion of the government’s accountant bureau SOAB about the country’s financial statements for the years 2013-2018 leaves no doubt about the mess our national financial household is in. The SOAB gave a negative opinion about all of these financial statements. In other words: these statements are unreliable. Now the General Audit Chamber had put the 2019…
PHILIPSBURG — The General Audit Chamber confirms in its compliance audit of St. Maarten’s financial statement for the year 2019 what has been a headache ever since the territory obtained autonomy within the kingdom – and probably longer: the country’s financial management is a mess and the only perspective for improvement is the execution of the country package. Here are some hard figures: on the balance sheet (totaling a bit over 1.6 billion guilders, or close to $894 million) there is uncertainty about 522 million ($291.6 million or 32 percent) of the total. There is also uncertainty about 56 million…
