PHILIPSBURG – The Dutch parliament approved the motion of Chris van Dam that asks the Kingdom Council of Ministers to take control of the Pointe Blanche prison for the next five years with a large majority on Tuesday. How State Secretary Drs. Raymond Knops is going to execute the motion remains unclear; Knops said last week that this would involve intervening in St. Maarten’s internal affairs. Attorney Geert Hatzmann, the Dean of the local Bar Association has welcomed the motion’s approval. “The essence of this motion is that the Pointe Blanche dossier is taken away from St. Maarten and that…
Author: The Publisher
PHILIPSBURG — The highly anticipated opening of the Princess Juliana International Airport on July 1, has been deferred to July 15, 2020. The Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs and Telecommunications Ludmila De Weever announced this at a virtual press conference on Tuesday afternoon. She said that the original plan was to open up to the islands of the former Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica, the United States, Canada and the European Union. However, because of changes that took place in just a few days regarding the United States, they have decided…
Who is the victim and who is the victimizer? Who’s playtoy in who’s playpen on whose plantation? Country ST.Maarten has been developed as the CARBON COPY of ST.Maarten back in the days of slavery. The roles of the slave masters have been taken over by their descendants. Whereas the slave descendants are chiefly the working class in today’s society. Today’s era is called: modern economic slavery. The “wealth” oops wicked and worthless division is best identified and summarized as: The FORTUNATE FAVOURITE FEW owns practically everything and while predominantly the slave descendants actually fuel the booming, blooming and bustling economy…
By Hilbert Haar If I understand the letter from Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte correctly she prefers to have discussions with her “colleague” Rutte or with the Minister of Home Affairs, Kajsa Ollongren. This, after a meeting with the State Secretary for Kingdom Relations, Drs. Raymond Knops, did not go according to Jacobs’ wishes. Jacobs did not mention the term respect in her letter to Rutte but it was bubbling under the surface due to the use of expressions like an “unpleasant tone that we do not appreciate.” Apparently Knops was rather blunt and Jacobs…
By Hilbert Haar There is something to be said in favor of the approach the labor unions have chosen to put up a fight against the inevitable cuts in labor conditions the kingdom demands in exchange for continued liquidity support. Rather than setting Philipsburg on fire or looting stores as is happening in Curacao, the Windward Islands Chamber of Labor Unions has opted to address its concerns with the office of the Attorney General. Whether such a complaint stands any chance of success is another matter. Personally, I don’t see how the Prosecutor’s Office can make a case against what…
PHILIPSBURG – The Windward Islands Chamber of Labor Unions (WICLU) has filed a complaint with the Attorney General about what it labels as “punishable acts of racial discrimination, embezzlement and theft.” The complaint targets financial supervisor Cft chairman Prof. dr. Raymond Gradus, State Secretary Drs. Raymond Knops, the Kingdom Council of Ministers and St. Maarten’s Council of Ministers. The WICLU addressed its complaint erroneously to Attorney General Guus Schram who returned to the Netherlands in September 2017 and was succeeded by Roger Bos. The letter was delivered via email to the Prosecutor’s Office in St. Maarten where Chief Prosecutor Mirjam…
~ Knops gets it right for once, says MP Heyliger-Marten ~ PHILIPSBURG — Faction Leader for the United People’s UP Party in Parliament on St. Maarten Grisha Heyliger-Marten says Dutch MP Chris van Dam’s motion to intervene and run the St. Maarten prison at the island’s expense is precisely the type of unlawful interference with budgetary processes by the Committee for Financial Supervision (Cft), that has prevented the local Government from structurally addressing urgent local matters. On June 22, Van Dam submitted a motion to the Dutch Second Chamber requesting that the Dutch Government, at the expense of the Government…
PHILIPSBURG – Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs complaints about the (alleged) behavior of State Secretary Drs. Raymond Knops in a video conference on June 16 have fallen on deaf ears with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. He made clear that the matter falls under Knops’ responsibility. “That has not changed because of your letter and I have forwarded it to him for further handling.” Jacobs’ complaints are about a video conference she held together with Minister of Finance Ardwell Irion with Knops on June 16. The topic of the meeting was the conditions for liquidity support. According to Jacobs, Knops treated…
PHILIPSBURG – Local political commentator Edwin James is on a roll, firing off one piece of his mind after the other into the social media landscape on St. Maarten. His latest target: the Wathey family. James describes economic activities on the island as “a family business oriented development and expansion” that is “more greed than growth.” Though some of the numbers he presents are debatable, James attaches one central question to them: where does all that money go?
UD Board: “In order to appease the part of the St. Maarten governing coalition that wants to say “thanks, but no thanks” to the Netherlands, the government finds itself between a rock and a hard place.” When Prime Minister Jacobs took over from PM Leona Marlin, she knowingly accepted and continued with the State Secretary as her counterpart. Everything that the Leona Marlin cabinet was criticized so heavily for, was still accepted by the current government without as much as a whimper, to mention a few: hospital, airport, pension law, liquidity assistance, border control, etc. AND the negotiations with State…
