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…
Author: The Publisher
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…
Collective Preventive Services donated earplugs to the St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation last week. It’s well-intended, no doubt about it, but it is also the world upside down. We all know that Carnival celebrations come with deafening noise levels and we also know that those noise levels are damaging to people’s hearing. So from a public health perspective it makes a lot of sense to limit those sound levels. Protecting people’s health is after all a task given to the government in article 21 of the constitution: “The government takes measures to promote public health.” But the government does not…
Dear Editor, PM Marlin travelled to Holland Tuesday for meetings with Minister Plasterk and others seeking an acceptable resolution to the Integrity Chamber debacle. In a truly sovereign state this would have been a bilateral meeting where both parties would try to meet each other halfway and ultimately produce a joint result to an old unnecessary and bad law. But as has been clear forever even before 10-10-10 the Dutchman is hell bent on having everything his way or else there are and never were negotiations because it always ended up you do as we want or an instruction or…
The story of Ingrid Nadal-Rombley about her autistic son should get the full attention of the government, where Ministers Emil Lee (Public Health) and Silveria Jacobs (Education) are the first in line to take steps to improve the situation. The schools are not equipped for dealing with autism and neither is the health care system; that much is clear from the story. In an ideal world, doctors always come up with the correct diagnosis and education systems have the appropriate facilities for children with special needs. In St. Maarten we only have this in name. The real world story of…
A mother cries out “We need help with autism” GREAT BAY – The heart of a mother who has struggled for years with her son who was diagnosed with autism continues to cry out. Ingrid Nadal-Rombley (see photo) laments the fact that St. Maarten does not have a policy or support groups to assist parents with autistic children. She says that she had little to no support from the state when she first discovered her son had autism. The ordeal cost her, her government job, her stability and peace of mind. It also eventually impacted her family, which consisted of…
How tinted should a car window be? ~ About the Law ~ By Cor Merx, attorney at law I received many requests to write something about a “hot” issue: Tinted Vehicle Window Glasses. I will first give my opinion about tinted windows. My car came with tints straight from the factory. I do not know if it gives 70% of the light that should come in. I remember in 2001 when I came to Sint Maarten I saw a lot of tinted (or dark) vehicle windows. I had never seen that in my life before and innocent as I was…
