GREAT BAY- All eyes will be looking skywards this upcoming Sunday, because that is the day when the St Maarten Airport organizes the second annual Aerobatic show that will feature two professional pilots from the USA. One of the pilots, Melissa Pemberton, was first to arrive at the Princess Juliana International Airport yesterday aboard her sleek looking Edge 540 aircraft. It did not come as a surprise when performed an extremely low approach just a matter of a few feet above the heads of the hundreds of tourists that lined the road leading to Beacon Hill. Melissa’s air show routine…
Author: The Publisher
Read More
Crime knows no borders on St. Maarten and the criminals know that too. When the justice authorities talk about cross-border crime, they usually are not talking about criminals crossing the border of St. Maarten during their crime sprees and unlawful activities. Authorities are usually referring to international criminal activities by gangs and crime syndicates. However attractive that may be for police investigators to focus on, the issue of cross-border crime has a much more down to earth consequence for St. Maarten/St. Martin. The case of a missing person reported on the Dutch side resulted in the person’s dead body being…
Every now and then the issue of independence for St. Maarten pops up. The venue on a number of occasions has been the floor of the Parliament of St. Maarten. Members of Parliament such as Franklin Meyers once famously said that he would rather die a free man in an independent St. Maarten than on his knees under the rule of the Dutch colonial powers. Whenever the issue of adhering to rules and regulations enforced by the Dutch Kingdom government on the government of St. Maarten – the Integrity Chamber comes to mind – politicians are quick to say that…
St. Maarten’s Day is a day of mixed emotions for many people. I am also one of them. St. Maarten is an island with many people from all walks of life, countries and cultures. St. Maarten Day is the day when both sides of the island come together to celebrate the unity and oneness of its people, their collective history, their present harmony and their future struggle to maintain it. However, it is time and long overdue that St. Maarten/St. Martin also starts celebrating the diverse cultures and people on the island. So not only French and Dutch St. Maarteners,…
GREAT BAY – “This is not heading in the right direction,” Prime Minister William Marlin said yesterday afternoon when he explained the situation surrounding the border dispute with the French side in Oyster pond. “This morning I received a hard copy of a letter from Préfète Déléguée Anne Labies basically saying what she told me on the phone, namely that the French consider the northern part of Oyster Pond to be French and that the work at Captain Oliver’s was carried out illegally.” Oyster Pond border dispute escalates “What to do?” the prime minister continued. “If we remove the barricades…
What to do about the border dispute in Oyster Pond? That question is not just on the mind of Prime Minister William Marlin but also on that of many Members of Parliament. Nobody seems to know what to do, even though the conflict seems to have escalated after Préfète Déléguée Anne Labies declared in writing to Marlin that she considers the contested piece of water to be French. That won’t do, of course and the French ought to back off. The thing is, they don’t, knowing darn well that they are, for the time being wrong. The matter will have…
GREAT BAY – Formateur William Marlin met yesterday afternoon at 4 p.m. with Governor Drs. Eugène Holiday to discuss the state of affairs around the screening of candidate-ministers and the formation of the new government. In yesterday morning’s press briefing, Marlin said that the information for four candidates that had to come from the national security serviced VDSM was not complete yet; for four others, information coming from the prosecutor’s office was still pending, but the formateur said that he expected to receive these reports yesterday afternoon. The new government will be sworn in as soon as possible after all…
GREAT BAY – The suspects E.R.M (65), D.F. (54), L.M.A.R. (50) and R.L.R. (47) who were previously detained in connection with the Pompeii-investigation, have now been taken into custody. The Prosecutor requested the suspects to be remanded. Yesterday the Judge of Instruction ordered the suspects to be taken into the custody for eight more days. This means that according to the Judge of Instruction there are grave presumption against the suspects regarding human trafficking (exploitation of girls working at the brothels – “animeermeisjes”), illegal confinement (locking up the girls), illegal employment and human smuggling. These criminal facts were committed between…
It is tempting to think all kinds of things about the prolonged screening process of the candidate-ministers for the new government. Is this really about the hiccup in the government’s computer systems? Or is there something else going on. The truth is, we don’t know and for lack of information we will just have to sit back and wait until the proverbial white smoke is coming out of the chimney at the governor’s cabinet. The screening process is confidential for obvious reasons. There is still something called privacy and that has to be respected. Those who violate that principle lack…
There is a remarkable difference between the administration of justice on the Dutch side and that on the French side. Consider this: last Tuesday the crew of a catamaran carrying 52 refugees was intercepted by the French border police. Three days later, on Friday, the crew stood trial in Basse-Terre in Guadeloupe where they were sentenced and immediately sent to prison. One may well wonder about (or admire) the speed of the investigation and the way defense attorneys prepare such cases. Compared to the French system, the system on our side of the border moves at a snail’s pace. It…
