The initial announcement that the members of the new Council of Ministers would be sworn in tomorrow has proven to be too optimistic, as formateur Marlin is now expected to deliver his final report to the governor this upcoming Friday. It’s a delay of just a couple of days but it makes us wonder about the reason for it. Since it behooves the formateur not to speak with the media about possible problems in the formation we are left guessing – and our best guess is that there is somehow a problem with the screening of one of the candidate-ministers.…
Author: The Publisher
Dear editor, After our new parliamentarians are sworn in they will be faced at some point during their tenure with having to vote their conscience. A careful look at Sint Maarten’s State Regulation, commonly called the Constitution, reveals that there is no such article or phrase in our law that charges parliamentarians to vote their conscience. In the State Regulation of the former Netherlands Antilles however, voting one’s conscience was regulated in article 61 which read: “the members of Parliament will vote in good conscience, without interference by or consultation with those who elected them.” This article was taken from…
GREAT BAY – From October 23 to 25, the Hillside Christian School and the adjoining NIPA were the scene of an array of lectures and workshops on applying twenty-first century technology in education, constituting the second annual C-TEC conference. Driven by the motto “Connecting Caribbean Classrooms and Communities” the Foresee Foundation organized its second annual conference with an audience including each and every educator in Sint Maarten. At the closing of the conference on Tuesday afternoon, the total number of participants stood at 1,004 persons; over 400 of them attended the Monday program when the secondary school educators were invited,…
GREAT BAY – TelEm Group management and personnel were well represented in the audience and also on the panels of a major international tech conference that kicked off at the Sonesta Great Bay Beach Resort Casino & Spa, Monday. The event was organized by Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), the Latin America and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) and the Internet Society (ISOC) with the theme – St. Maarten on the Move. It also involved a week of events coordinated by the local Bureau of Telecommunications and Post (BTP) entitled: “Internet Week St. Maarten.” Monday’s opening session was quickly followed…
GREAT BAY- Of all the aircrafts touching down at the Prince Juliana International Airport, KLM Boeing 747-400, owned by the Royal Dutch Airlines has been the one attracting most of the attention on its arrival and mind boggling departure. However, today will mark its final flight of the 747 that came here three times a week to the friendly island of St Maarten on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. That aircraft will be replaced by an Airbus 330-200, which has the ability to accommodate 243 passengers. With the arrival of the Airbus 330-200 comes a new flight plan that will be…
GREAT BAY – Seven of the fourteen candidates on the list of the People’s Progressive Alliance (PPA) that took part in the September 26 elections have failed to submit a registration of their donations to the electoral council. Among them is party leader Gracita Arrindell. All candidates that were elected to parliament submitted an overview of their donations. The PPA-members who failed to register their donations are, apart from the party leader, Franchesca Arrindell, Cleopatra Dayday-Halley, Armando Gumbs, Bibiano Frensel Rimon, Patrick Williams and Johan Zwart. Jelen Coulanges, a candidate for Frans Richardson’s United St. Maarten party also failed to…
GREAT BAY – According to the Quarterly Bulletin of the Central Bank van Curaçao en Sint Maarten, the monetary union recorded an economic contraction in the second quarter of 2016 as real GDP dropped in both Curaçao and Sint Maarten. In Curaçao, real output dwindled by 0.2% in 2016’s second quarter, while the economy of Sint Maarten contracted by 0.3%. Meanwhile, inflation was negative at -0.2% in both countries because the drop in international oil prices weighed heavily on price pressures in the June quarter of 2016. Zika-fears and decline in cruise arrivals In Sint Maarten, the main causes for…
October 26 was the deadline for tendering bids to the public competition for the proposed development of the Marigot Bay. In the setting of the absolute need and urgency to create sustainable economic activity on the territory, Marigot Bay, for decades is considered by all to be a tremendous asset with the potential for real and strategic development as having the ability to be an engine of economic and social growth. It is clear therefore that in such a project, the essential objective if not the exclusive objective, ought to be to attract, cater and accommodate tourists and visitors with…
Finance Minister Gibson has said on numerous occasions that the economy is in trouble and now data from the Central Bank confirm this. St. Maarten’s economy has contracted in the second quarter and it stands to reason to expect more bad news when the data about the third quarter become available. Fewer cruise arrivals, fewer stay-over arrivals and fear for the Zika-virus are the three components the Central Bank mentions to explain the decline. And which actions did our minister of tourism and economic affairs take in the face of this downturn? That’s a good question and we don’t have…
THE HAGUE – The Netherlands has offered St. Maarten redemption on an existing loan, even though the country’s finances are not in order. St. Maarten would have gotten into more trouble if that had been blocked, Acting Minister Stef Blok (Kingdom Relations) said in the Second Chamber yesterday. He emphasized that it is about an existing loan, not a new one, Pieter Hofmann reports on Caribisch Netwerk. André Bosman (VVD) had asked questions after reports that a 26 million guilders loan of St. Maarten had been extended by the Netherlands, in spite of the fact that St. Maarten’s 2016 budget…
