By Harriot Voncken PHILIPSBURG — Citizens who believe a notary has not complied with the rules and therefore wish to submit a complaint cannot turn to the Chamber of Notaries. This professional body in charge of supervising notaries is not active; this is because since 2010, the Chamber has not had a notary member. Someone who is disadvantaged by this is Demitrus Marlin. He already filed a complaint in 2015 against a notary but that was not dealt with at the time. He also sent a letter to the Governor of St. Maarten that year about the absence of the…
Author: The Publisher
~ Makhicia Brooks to become Managing Director ~ PHILIPSBURG — St. Maarten’s first and only social development NGO funding agency, the St. Maarten Development Fund (SMDF), bids farewell to the Fund’s first Managing Director Keith Franca after his seven-year tenure as Director. In his first months as Managing Director, Franca prioritized SMDF’s proper structuring, sought to ensure that SMDF had the information, resources and infrastructure necessary to efficiently and effectively serve St. Maarten’s NGO community. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with SMDF’s NGO financing predecessor the Antilliaanse Medefinancieringsorganisatie (AMFO). A Fund Management Agreement (FMA) was executed with the…
PHILIPSBURG — The Police Patrol and Fire department was alerted to a serious traffic accident that took place on L.B. Scott Road December 30th 2019 around 11:30pm. According to the information gathered, both the Mitsubishi Lancer and the Hyundai I-10 were traveling in the same direction, on L.B Scott Road heading in the direction of the Emilio Wilson Park, when the driver of the Lancer made a left turn to go onto the Flamboyant Road. The driver of the Hyundai I-10 was overtaking at the same time, and collided with the back part of the Lancer who was making the…
Cay Hill – St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) has officially handed over the grounds where the construction will take place to INSO, the general contractor for the construction of the new St. Maarten General Hospital (SMGH). “This marks the official start of the construction as INSO has met all of its obligations set forth in the addendum to the original construction contract which has been approved by the consortium of lenders”, Kees Klarenbeek, Chairman of SMMC’s Board of Directors enthusiastically stated. “It is about a year ago that we had our groundbreaking ceremony and a lot of work has been…
PHILIPSBURG — A female cruise tourist drowned in Great Bay on Monday, December 30, 2019. The elderly woman came to St. Maarten aboard the Queen Mary II, a transatlantic ocean liner that sailed from Southampton, England. Around one o’clock in the afternoon one of two elderly women who had gone into the water together became unwell. Her friend and travel companion was not able to get her out of the water, she struggled to get to the beach herself. Beach activity vendors went into the sea to help her and get the other woman, who was floating on her back,…
By Hilbert Haar “We have remained for 300 years under the laws and control of the Netherlands despite our efforts to have autonomy.” Please note that I did not write this sentence. It stems from a statement by United People’s party number 4 candidate, Grisha Heyliger. It was published on the web site of 721news under the same headline I am using for this column. In that piece, Heyliger criticizes the role of the governor (“a colonial figure”), she bemoans the fact that St. Maarten does not have its own attorney-general and she labels the screening process for candidate ministers…
Dear Editor, I have always argued that a sound education policy should be based on “a triad of effective teachers, involved parents, and committed students working from a curriculum explicitly designed to mold the whole child (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and culturally). The enterprise of nation-building in St. Martin cannot be carried out by ignoring the St. Martin national identity, which must be grounded in the St. Martin history and culture. ”[i] Listening to the recent discussions (even the campaign rhetoric) about education and language of instruction, I sense that there is consensus that education is the key to not…
PHILIPSBURG — During the Ad Hoc Committee meeting on Electoral Reform on November 7, 2019, the former SMCP Faction Leader, MP Claude ‘Chacho’ Peterson first proposed that “No coalition should be formed with ship jumpers”. During his speech former MP Peterson advocated as a short term solution to ship jumping that all parties should sign a covenant stating that they would not form any government with ship jumpers. Former MP Peterson stated that this would take away the incentive for ship jumpers to go independent and form their own one-man faction, to enjoy the benefits achieved by and afforded to…
By Hilbert Haar The amendments to election-related ordinances proposed by Sint Maarten Christian Party leader Wycliffe Smith seamlessly solve the existing conflicts between these ordinances and the constitution. Article 59 of the constitution remains nevertheless a political hot potato. This article authorizes the Council of Ministers to dissolve the parliament. In recent years this has happened twice after a government received a vote of no confidence from the parliament. If the parliament hits, the government is entitled to strike back. This is how constitutional expert Prof. Arjen van Rijn once characterized this situation. Parliamentarians on the wrong end of the…
PHILIPSBURG – Rather than come up with a comprehensive package for electoral reform, MP Wycliffe Smith, in his role as caretaker prime minister, already suggested amendments to the Election Ordinance and the National Ordinance Registration and Financing Political Parties in November. The objective: To bring those ordinances in line with the Constitution. The proposed amendments are rather simple. Smith, leader of the St. Maarten Christian Party, suggests adding a sub 2 to article 21 of the Election Ordinance (Smith accidentally referred to it as article 19 during a Council of Minister press briefing in November when he was still in…
