PORT ST. MAARTEN, Monday, September 30, 2019 – Port St. Maarten is expected to see a shift in the cruise market by receiving overall 10.6 per cent less cruise calls for the period November 1, 2019 to April 30, 2020 when compared with figures for the same period in 2018-2019. For the same period, Port St. Maarten anticipates 416 cruise calls (November 1, 2019 to April 30, 2020) with approximately 1,049,419 cruise passengers compared to 466 cruise calls (November 1, 2018 to April 30, 2019) and 1,239,707 cruise passengers. Port St. Maarten will be embarking on new investment plans within the…
Author: The Publisher
PHILIPSBURG — During last Thursday’s public meeting of Parliament, the Chair of Parliament, William Marlin, requested Deputy Prime Minister, Wycliffe Smith, to leave and get the written answers to the questions posed by Members of Parliament concerning the state of affairs at the Princess Julian International Airport and to return to Parliament with them in an hour’s time. Smith was also asked to return with advisors Claret Conner and Abel Knottnerus from the National Recovery Program Bureau (NRPB). Chairman William Marlin then adjourned the public meeting at 3:00 pm and promised to reconvene the meeting in an hour’s time, upon…
~ Says previous coalition put country at risk ~ PHILIPSBURG — Vice President of Parliament and USP Faction Leader MP Rolando Brison on Sunday said amendments to the FATF laws which have been prepared for months will be presented soon and that the previous UD/SMCP coalition completely dropped the ball on the issue. Brison said the former Chairlady of Parliament recently confirmed what his faction has said all along: “Rather than work in the best interest of the country and allow these laws to be handled, she danced around it and didn’t convene a meeting to debate the issue to…
~ Happy to be moving on with life ~ PHILIPBURG — Former Managing Director of the St. Maarten Housing Development Foundation (SMHDF) Henry Lynch on September 27, 2019, was finally able to close a challenging chapter in his life when the SMHDF failed in its appeal regarding his dismissal as Director of the foundation. Officially dismissed from the SMHDF on February 4, 2015, Lynch, represented by attorney Cindy Marica, eventually won damages against the SMHDF when the Court of First Instance on June 1, 2016, declared his dismissal unlawful and ordered SMHDF to pay damages to Lynch. This verdict was…
PHILIPSBURG — “Crunch time for the Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism legislation,” writes Member of Parliament Sarah Wescot-Williams in a press release. “St. Maarten can not afford financial ‘blacklisting’.” It should be emphasized that St. Maarten has already complied with most of the AML/CTF recommendations, writes Wescot-Williams. She continues: The last few recommendations to be implemented on St. Maarten have however generated the most contention. Understandably so, because these recommendations have been inserted into our Civil, respectively Criminal Codes. In brief, the matter of shares in bearer’s name will no longer be possible. (Civil Code). The offenses of money laundering and…
Dear Editor, The last few years have seen on Sint Maarten the rise of substantial anti “Dutch” rhetoric and many will be asking why this has arisen so suddenly and strongly . The “Dutch” that are targeted are typically not individual Dutch metropolitan people nor specific Dutch institutions as much as the Kingdom and Netherlands government as a whole. It would appear to me that the sentiment is particularly strong in the political class and particularly amongst the younger and politically aspirant groups . It would appear that conditions placed on aid and support are what angers this group the…
Part 2 in a multi-part series about US Pre-Clearance for St. Maarten and the SXM Airport. Read what exactly is pre-clearance and what it involves in this second installment. A review.
PHILIPSBURG — “World Bank/EIB financing for the reconstruction of the Princess Juliana International Airport can not be revoked – despite attempts to thwart the process and put our livelihood at risk.” says MP Sarah Wescot-Williams in a statement issued on Saturday. The present majority coalition in parliament does not want to hear anything regarding the Princess Juliana International Airport. That is the contention of MP Wescot-Williams. “How else can they explain the embarrassment created in Thursday’s parliament meeting about the very airport?” Wescot-Williams asked. According to Wescot-Williams, the Deputy Prime Minister, who is totally unfamiliar with the topic, went out…
GREAT BAY – The Minister Plenipotentiary of Sint Maarten in The Hague, Jorien Wuite, together with the support of her Cabinet, have over the past couple of months explored various avenues to contribute to building sustainable capacity on Sint Maarten, for instance, in the field of legislative writing, a field in which there is an immense scarcity on the labor market. Under the coordination of the Cabinet of the Minister Plenipotentiary and in collaboration with the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Affairs, cooperation was sought with the Academy of Legislation in The Hague Netherlands. The law academy was established in…
PHILIPSBURG – The Cupecoy shadow government raises its ugly head in the national decree that invokes article 59 to dissolve parliament and in the address State Secretary Raymond Knops would have delivered to the central committee if parliamentarians had taken the trouble to show up and allow this meeting to continue. Prime Minister Leona Romeo-Marlin also referred to outside influences. The speech Knops did not get to deliver contains the following line. “The fact that the reconstruction has taken so long to finally start is for one simple reason: it has been the counteracting and undermining of certain influential powers…
