Integrity Chamber back on the agenda GREAT BAY – Integrity remains high on the government’s list of priorities, Prime Minister William Marlin said yesterday afternoon during a central committee meeting about the looming instruction from the kingdom to establish an Integrity Chamber, but not everybody in Parliament was convinced. “Sometimes you really get what you asked for,” MP Claret Connor observed after noting that the government had not followed up on the motion of January 30 to present a plan of approach for tackling integrity issues. “We have nobody to blame but ourselves,” MP Perry Geerlings noted. The ruling of…
Author: The Publisher
PM Marlin at info session for top civil servants: “We want discussion, not instruction” GREAT BAY (DCOMM) – The Council of Ministers hosted an information session last Friday for the secretaries general of the seven ministries and their management team, cabinet staff and the staff of the secretariat of the Council of Ministers. The main agenda points of the session were the governing program; integrity and the plans of the Dutch government towards establishing an Integrity Chamber on St. Maarten and their recent appointment of a Dutch integrity quartermaster and an update on the budget 2017. The Council found it…
The Council of Ministers has launched a rather unique initiative with a large-scale information session for top civil servants about its governing program, the Integrity Chamber and the budget. What we learned from the report about last Friday’s meeting is that the ministries still have a lot of work to do. First and foremost is the prioritizing of capital investment projects for a combined 30 million guilders. The second message the civil servants got was that, whatever they do, they have to keep a keen eye on the budget. In other words – no frivolous spending. What remains is the…
THE HAGUE – The Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament on Wednesday asked for an update on the incarceration and pending extradition of St. Maarten-Italian casino owner Francesco Corallo to Italy. Socialist Party MP Ronald van Raak (see photo) made a request during a procedural meeting of the Permanent Committee for Kingdom Relations to seek clarity from the Dutch Government on Corallo’s status of detention and extradition. Van Raak asked for a letter from Dutch Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk. The Committee approved his request and sent a letter to the Minister the same day in…
The legal procedures against those involved in a by now more than 6-year old vote buying scandal have been dragging on for too long and public interest in the case has dropped to an all-time low. That is a pity because especially these types of cases are designed to prevent others from doing the same thing; hence the demand for suspended prison sentences and community service. But even the threat of these punishments – that quite some people consider way too lenient – has not worked over the past couple of years. There is a vote buying investigation into the…
GREAT BAY – With the appeal hearing against the last two defendants the 2010 vote buying case is nearing its conclusion, but election fraud remains alive and kicking in St. Maarten. while the legal battle of the defendants in the 2010-case is not over yet, the prosecutor’s office has two other cases on its plate: the accusations against United St. Maarten party MP Silvio Matser for vote buying in the 2014 elections and an investigation into similar practices during the elections in September of last year, whereby USp-MP Chanel Brownbill has been heard as a witness. Central question: agreement or…
THE HAGUE – Prime Minister William Marlin has hit a nerve with his remark that the Netherlands should “send in the troops’ to enforce the instruction for the establishment of an Integrity Chamber. VVD-MP André Bosman demanded yesterday in the Dutch Parliament talks on ministerial level about proper etiquette in the Kingdom. Bosman also finds that Minister Plasterk (Kingdom Relations) has to sound the alarm in cases of such ballyhoo. The statements of PM Marlin are the reason for Bosman’s remarks. Marlin said after the Kingdom Council of Ministers issued an instruction to St. Maarten last Friday that the Netherlands…
GREAT BAY – A mother who has struggled for years with her autistic son, is calling on government to acknowledge that there is a problem with autism on the island and to develop a policy to assist parents dealing with this issue. Today published Ingrid Nadal-Rombley’s story last Friday about her struggles of dealing with her autistic son, how she lost her job when she took leave of absence to help deal with her son’s condition in Holland and the apathy by St. Maarten and education authorities towards her. “Government has to acknowledge that this is a problem, that it…
How tinted should a car window be? (2) ~ About the Law ~ By Cor Merx, attorney at law I got many reactions and comments on my previous article from last week. I heard that Facebook and Instagram were very active in that way. Well it seems that these articles (with the intention to explain the law to the public) are working. In the meantime I got some documents from “official” sites and I started to peruse them. Let’s go from here. There is a document from 2001 (AB nr. 4) from the first of February. It was decided by…
Dutch politicians have a selective memory when it comes to their dealings with the kingdom’s Caribbean countries. The uproar about Prime Minister Marlin’s send-in-the-troops remark is another example. Who does not remember Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s infamous give-me-a-call statement in case St. Maarten wanted its independence? MP André Bosman now claims that this is not the way we deal with each other. We say: that is exactly the way we deal with each other. The thing is: one should not take these statements literally but in the spirit they were said. Just ask the Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem what…
