GREAT BAY – Vromi-Minister Christophe Emmanuel has ordered Bobby’s Marina to break down all structures it has built without a building permit at its facilities in Great Bay. The deadline for the order is next week Friday, April 21, but so far there are no signs that the company will abide by the instruction. The minister’s instruction is a decision pursuant to various requests from Bobby Marina’s neighbor and competitor in the marine industry Dock Maarten, represented by attorney Roeland Zwanikken, to maintain the law and to undertake legal action against the illegal building activities at Bobby’s Marina. Since January…
Author: The Publisher
Dear Editor, The more we learn about the Timeshare Authority proposal from the Dutch Side government, the more we think it’s imperative for timeshare owners to speak up in opposition to it. We understand the motivation behind creating the Authority, which is a sister proposal to the timeshare consumer protection ordinance which is also nearing final passage. Although the timeshare ordinance itself isn’t as strong as we’d like it to be, it nonetheless is a very decent start and can be improved over time. But the Timeshare Authority is a bad idea on the face of it that should never…
Where does St. Maarten stand with its intention to appeal the kingdom instruction about the Integrity Chamber? Not even on shaky grounds, because as things stand today, St. Maarten – and Aruba and Curacao as well for that matter – do not stand a chance in any dispute with the kingdom. Ruben Severina, a Curacaolenean who lives in Zoetermeer, once described that situation in a letter to the editor in the Antilliaans Dagblad. It was the time when Aruba’s Prime Minister Mike Eman went on hunger strike to protest to Dutch intervention in his country’s budget process. It is worrisome…
The silent march in Curacao against senseless violence fits St. Maarten like a glove. Like on our sister island, we too experience too much senseless violence – and not only by armed bandits. Apart from the outright criminal gun violence there is also an unhealthy dose of domestic violence taking place behind closed doors. The marchers in Curacao demand that their government take action. What that action should be remains unclear and for good reason because nobody has a solution. That may sound cynical – and it probably is – but it is a reality nonetheless. We would begin by…
The Pineapple Pete 2017 Open Singles Tennis Tournament being held at the tennis courts of the Raoul Illidge Sports Complex is in full swing and is heating up this week. The first week is out of the way and the tournament tennis jitters and rust should be gone by now. The local and international tennis players have shown their stuff as there were some very entertaining and close matches held already in the Men’s 40 +, the Men’s Open and the Women’s Open and there is much more to come. This week all players that performed well will advance into…
GREAT BAY – “I don’t remember a time that the relationship between the kingdom and the government of St. Maarten has not been strained,” President of Parliament Sarah Wescot-Williams said in a press statement this weekend. “Yes, we have had lulls, but the underlying currents have always been present. I remember the early years following the constitutional referendum of 2000, when the position of the Kingdom government was “no separate (read: country) status” for any entity in the Kingdom. You were either in or out.” Ten years after our referendum, parties had managed to get out of that quandary to…
THE HAGUE – The Netherlands is going to force St. Maarten to establish an Integrity Chamber within the next couple of months, John Samson reports on Caribisch Netwerk. This independent institute has to tackle corruption on the island. The Kingdom Council of Minister issued a General Measure of Kingdom Administration last Friday. Minister Plasterk motivated the decision by stating that several integrity reports show that there is still a situation of “administrative corruption, bribery and nepotism” on the island. That puts good governance in St. Maarten at risk, the minister said. The government of St. Maarten agreed in 2015 to…
Did we have it coming? The decision by the Kingdom Council of Ministers to force the Integrity Chamber upon St. Maarten cannot come as a surprise to anybody. Let’s not talk about fair, because that is a kids’ argument. Let’s talk about how we got there and what we could have done to prevent this shoddy mess. In September 2013, the kingdom government gave an instruction to Governor Holiday to investigate the proper and honest functioning of the public administration in St. Maarten. We won’t go into the uproar that followed, but stick to the results. The governor commissioned PriceWaterhouseCoopers…
Douwe Jan Elzinga, professor constitutional law at the National University Groningen examined the value of the reinforced crown appeal (versterkt kroonberoep) in the following article in Binnenlands Bestuur last year. This is his opinion. “In 2010 the Netherlands Antilles were dismantled and the kingdom had four countries: The Netherlands, Aruba, Curacao and St. Maarten. Because the number of countries increased, the obligation to arrive at a dispute regulation was added to the Kingdom Charter. So far, this has not become a reality. The most important cause of this is the difference in insight between the Netherlands on one side and…
Dear Editor, The Prime Minister of Country St. Maarten left the shores for a diplomatic encounter with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and the Minister of Kingdom affairs. This is obviously how the editorial might read in the future but as fate has it today it simply factual to say an island territory considered an upstart for trying to determine its own future met with the colonial master to plead for some kind of consideration for their position. While much was expected by some I cautioned that nothing will be achieved for it is ludicrous to expect a colonial…
