WILLEMSTAD – After party leader Gerrit Schotte, the number two on the list of Movementu Futuro Kòrsou (MFK), Jacinta Constancia, has also announced that she is prepared to give up her seat in parliament for the duration of an investigation against her if this frees the way for the MFK being part of talks about the formation of the next government. Currently MAN, PAR, PNP and PS have signed letter declaring their preparedness to form the next government. these parties have 12 seats in the new 21-seat Curacao parliament. Schotte’s party narrowly lost the elections to MAN with 12,839 vs.…
Author: The Publisher
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BRIDGETOWN – Prime Minister William Marlin, accompanied by the Head of the Department of Foreign Relations Khalilah Peters and the Policy Advisor for Donor Coordination from the Department of Interior and Kingdom Relations Olivia Lake attended the two day High Level EU- Caribbean Sustainable Energy Conference on October 10 and 11 in Bridgetown Barbados. This conference was primarily focused on Caricom/Cariforum and EU relations however the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) as well as the French Overseas Regions (ORs) were invited to partake in this conference. The inclusion of all groupings in the region was to impress that energy supply…
GREAT BAY – The Rotary Club of St. Maarten hosts an evening of poker, Bingo and excitement next week Friday at the Hollywood Casino in Pelican Key. “For those that remember the event last year, it was a great time and a new and exciting way to help raise funds for projects supported by the Rotary Club of St. Maarten particularly in the areas of youth literacy, education, after school programs, and health/nourishment,” the club’s president Henna Budhrani says “Registration for the poker and Bingo tournament begins at 6.30 p.m., along with poker lessons, light snacks and cocktails. A $100…
Two cases stand out in today’s newspaper: the employee that got fired by a supermarket and a girl who got a beating from her stepfather. What do a 37-year-old supermarket worker and a 12-year old kid have in common? Well, for one, they are of course both of the female gender and two, they were both at the receiving end of some sort of violence. This may be a men’s world, as the song says, but sexual intimidation of employees and beating up a girl because she is sucking her teeth at the request to do the washing up are…
GREAT BAY – The investigation into vote buying before the 2014 elections by MP Silvio Matser and twenty others started when investigators got wind of something amiss in the so-called Maas-investigation into three bank robberies that took place in 2014. One of the suspects in at least one of these robberies was Widnor Francis B., who is now also a suspect in the vote buying case. The link between the bank robbery-investigation and the vote buying case came to light in court yesterday, when the attorney for Widnor B., Sharia Bommel, asked the court to provide her with all phone…
The 2014 vote buying case seems to saunter along but not to a speedy conclusion. Memories of the 2010 vote buying case come to mind. It ended with an acquittal for all defendants but not really, because the prosecution has appealed that verdict. The way this is going we will still be dealing with it when the calendar says 2020. The second vote-buying case is now adjourned until an unspecified date in the future – say, 2017. One may well wonder whether all this takes so long because defendants are playing games (as the court seems to suggest) or whether…
GREAT BAY, Sint Maarten (DCOMM) – The St. Maarten Fire Department on Thursday responded to two fires. At 9.38 AM the Fire Department received a call about a small fire which turned out to be Ambulance on fire in front of the St. Maarten Academy PSVE School in Ebenezer. The Fire Department arrived on the scene at 9.48 AM. The driving time to this location is approximately 8-12 minutes. Due to the materials and equipment present in the ambulance, the fire spread rapidly and created a lot of smoke. The presence of magnesium in the ambulance created a serious reaction…
GREAT BAY – “It is clear that attorney Merx and Mr. Matser do their best to avoid this case,” Judge Dirk Gruijters noted drily when MP Matser failed to show up for a pro forma hearing in the Court in First Instance yesterday. The case at hand is about accusations of vote buying during the 2014 elections. The no-show of Mater and Merx has a history. On September 21, when he was due to appear in court five days before the parliamentary elections, Matser was a no show as well. The prosecutor said at the time that, when a bailiff…
GREAT BAY – When his 12-year-old stepdaughter sucked her teeth on April 4 at the request to do the washing up, her 51-year-old stepfather Sylvio Martina lost it and he slapped the child in her face; shortly afterwards he hit her on her legs with a belt. That cost him 80 hours of community service, of which the court suspended 20 hours yesterday. “This time it is just community service, but you must understand that you absolutely cannot do this. Prison guard or not, next time I’ll send you to Pointe Blanche,” Judge Dirk Gruijters told the defendant. Martina will…
GREAT BAY –Supermarket Le Grand Marché has to keep paying an employee it fired on the spot on July 11 her salary until the labor relationship has legally ended. The employee, D.H., worked as a produce handler for the store since 2007 and told the court that she and other workers have had to endure sexual intimidation and harassment by a supervisor in this department for the past five years. On July 11, the 37-year-old employee attempted to help a colleague who had been bullied by the supervisor. The supervisor then turned on her, because she was not doing her…
