PORT ST. MAARTEN – Port St. Maarten made history once again servicing CMA CGM Fort Fleur d’Épée, the largest container ship to ever call at the Dr. A.C. Wathey Cruise & Cargo Facilities. The vessel arrived in port on Friday, November 6, 2020. Measuring 219 meters in length and 36 meters in width and over 37,000 gross tons, the CMA CGM Fort Fleur d’Épée can hold a maximum capacity of 3,504 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). “The arrival of this vessel also highlights the success of Port St. Maarten’s operational excellence platform that continues to ensure excellent service to our clients.…
Author: The Publisher
PHILIPSBURG – The Court in Basse-Terre (Guadeloupe) sentenced Grenada-born Kathron Fortune in October to 30 years of imprisonment for the rape and murder of Angélique Chauviré in 2006. Fortune is currently serving a life sentence in a high security prison in the Netherlands for the manslaughter and murder on Luis Sarante Diaz and Edwin Rosario Contreras on December 5, 2016 after his escape on February 15 from the Pointe Blanche prison where he was serving a 19-year sentence for the execution-style murder of Aruban Ervin Margerita on May 11, 2006, in Rice Hill Estate. If Fortune ever gets released from…
~ Statements by MP André Bosman have now become our frame of reference ~ PHILIPSBURG – With all the pressing matters before us, such as the financial position of Government, the state of our Government agencies such as SZV, our healthcare and our fragile economy, the Parliament spent much of the past week discussing DECOLONIZATION! The Presidium of Parliament decided to quickly rush a Central Committee meeting and the following day a public meeting of Parliament to “establish a permanent decolonization committee” of Parliament. Only after objections from my part and others about the need for such a committee at…
By Hilbert Haar Before anyone wants to hold it against me, let me say this: I support the notion that slavery was wrong for one hundred percent. We may however have different opinions about who was responsible for the slave trade in the past and who should be held accountable for it today. I am not going to throw numbers around, because they do not change anything about how people on different sides of the fence perceive this ugly part of human history. There is no doubt in my mind that the parties involved in the slave trade included West-Africans…
PHILIPSBURG – The motion approved by eleven members of Parliament on November 5th is yet another indication of the crossed signals currently bouncing around the governing UP/NA coalition and an unfortunate preview at the lack of cohesion and collaboration being forced down the throats of the people. The public meeting had been called to formally establish a Permanent Committee for Constitutional Affairs & Decolonization for the Parliament of Sint Maarten. During the meeting to discuss the establishment of the Permanent Committee, Gumbs and Peterson expressed their support for the committee and praised the approach taken to create open dialogue and…
PHILIPSBURG — A multi-disciplinary team consisting of Immigration, Customs, Police (KPSM), Coastguard and Department of Maritime and Shipping, carried out a joint inspection on a sailboat that had entered the island on in the evening of November 4th 2020. This control was carried out on information received from several sources that the captain of the boat would be smuggling illegal immigrants into St. Maarten. The control that was carried out at the harbor in Point Blanche on the sailing vessel took several hours. It later turned out that nothing illegal or illicit was encountered on board the vessel. This investigation…
PHILIPSBURG — The Alpha team has been kept busy with the ongoing investigation into drug smuggling that have taken place earlier this year. On Tuesday November 3rd, 2020, the team arrested a man with the initials E.A.B. (59) for his involvement in drugs transport. Before being transported to the police station, a house searches were conducted at the residence of the suspect. During the search, several items relating to the investigation were encountered and confiscated. The suspect remains in custody, pending further investigation. This investigation into drugs smuggling via the airport and harbor is still ongoing. The Alpha Team is…
PHILIPSBURG – Members of Parliament approved a motion on Thursday that instructs the government to complete the de-colonization process by hiring lawyers that should also pursue reparations for Dutch violations of international law and treaties. Even before the meeting started there was already a draft agreement with the Peter Choharis Law Group in Washington, DC., that aims to involve Curacao and Aruba in this process. While this agreement does not mention the term slavery it seems that the supporters of the motion want to turn its slavery-history into a financial bonanza. Choharis sent his draft-agreement on October 1 to United…
~ Motion to finalize decolonization, organize RTC by July 2021 ~ PHILIPSBURG — A joint proposal by MP’s Solange Ludmila Duncan (NA) and Grisha HeyligerMarten (UPP) to establish a Permanent Committee for Constitutional Affairs and Decolonization was approved unanimously during a public meeting of Parliament on Thursday. “Decades ago, the highest body in the world, the United Nations, made decolonization one of its core objectives. And up to this day, it continues to repeat the call to finalize the decolonization in all its forms. We as a young island nation are now finally giving decolonization its rightful place,” according to…
~ MP Wescot: Any “Decolonization” Petition can not be seen separate from the status we presently have and from the Charter that governs the Dutch Kingdom relations. ~ Philipsburg, St. Maarten, 4 November 2020 – I put the word “decolonization” in quotation marks, because many things are being said regarding decolonization, but seemingly meaning different things to different persons on St. Maarten. While this is good and healthy for the public discourse, when the Government weighs in, it takes on another dimension, stated MP Wescot-Williams on the proposal for the establishment of a Permanent Decolonization Committee in Parliament. The MP…
