DP candidate Perry Geerlings says: “St. Maarten is run like a grocery store.” Photo Today / Hilbert Haar GREAT BAY – A man who speaks his mind and, he says, is considered a traitor because of it by some, is Democratic Party candidate number 4 Perry Geerlings, currently the director of the Cabinet of the Minister Plenipotentiary in The Hague. He knows the corridors of political power in the Netherlands but he is equally well-informed about what is happening in St. Maarten. Most logical question: why would someone with a comfortable and steady job in The Hague want to get…
Author: The Publisher
The old and the new government administration building captured in one shot. In the foreground is the old building at Clem Labega Square with the post office to the left. In the heart of the picture is the new building that will welcome its first tenants today, with the TelEm building to the left. Photo Today / Milton Pieters
With just one more weekend to ponder which candidate to vote for when the polling stations open on Monday morning at 8 a.m., tensions are rising. This is apparent from the senseless attack on a gathering of the Christina Party in Belvedere on Wednesday evening. There is no doubt that the country stands on the brink of significant changes. More parties than ever are contesting the elections, there are more candidates than ever to choose from. The question is: what do they really offer? What is different this time around? We have noticed that parties are not that caustic in…
The SMCU delivered a resolution to the prime minister dated August 24, 2016 requesting the reopening of the application for the CEO position of Telem. We also requested for him to appoint the required new members on the board of directors. The reason that there is a need for the new board members is because the articles of incorporation indicate that the board must consist of a maximum seven or a minimum five members, whereas currently there are three members on the board. The prime minister publicized on September 22, 2016 that three new board member would be added to…
Everyone is free to have an opinion about prostitution, but the way the bureaucracy is stifling the private businesses in this sector is simply unacceptable. It feels a bit like struggling through the stifling bureaucracy in Greece, where there is hardly a civil servant sitting behind a desk who really know what he is doing. Here, we see that the club owners are thwarted every step of the way with new requirements, until they see no other way than writing desperate letters to the government and the Ombudsman and – as a measure of last resort, to take the government…
GREAT BAY – Port St. Maarten Management and Supervisory Board representatives were informed about new trends in the cruise industry at Seatrade Cruise Med on Wednesday in Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. Carnival Cruise Corporation will be adding four XL LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) powered cruise ships to its fleet. In the meantime, Carnival will add 10 new ships to its fleet by 2018, and an additional nine new ships will be added to its fleet between 2019 up to 2022. Port St. Maarten is represented at the conference by CEO Mark Mingo, Supervisory Board Member Jason Rogers, General…
GREAT BAY – The White and Yellow Cross Care Foundation broke ground on Thursday September 22 to start the much anticipated construction of its new Elderly Care Homes. Plans for expansion started already in 2014, when a growing waiting list showed the urge for more capacity. Currently 21 seniors reside in the Sint Martin’s Home, which they share with 44 Nursing Home Clients. They will move to the new homes in late 2017. These homes will consist of 3 buildings, with 10 fully equipped studio’s each, catering to at least 30 clients. Each studio has a living room, bedroom and…
GREAT BAY – Telecom providers TelEm and UTS Eastern Caribbean are in talks that should lead to a merger whereby TelEm will hold 60 and UTS 40 percent of the shares, Prime Minister William Marlin said during yesterday’s Council of Ministers press briefing. With his announcement, Marlin addressed concerns expressed by the St. Maarten Communication Union SMCU about the pending sale of TelEm. “I stopped the process of the sale, I pulled up the handbrakes on that one,” Marlin said. “The decision to look for a strategic partner was taken years ago and government needed to revisit that decision.” With…
Austrian company files injunction against outcome bidding process GREAT BAY – When Minister Emil Lee (Public Health) met with the board of social and health insurance agency SZV in December of last year to discuss the hospital project he found that the chairman of the board, Dr. Michel Petit, “was very much protecting the non-bid offer from Vamed.” “He said we should bring in a couple of consultants to verify the price,” Lee said yesterday at the Council of Ministers press briefing. “I was adamant that the right way to go was with an open and transparent bidding process.” Nevertheless,…
That is the suggestion of the prosecution in the summons GREAT BAY – Prison Director Edward Rohan gave MP Silvio Matser in August 2014, when he was a candidate for the United People’s party, a list of eligible voters in the Pointe Blanche prison, it appeared during a pro forma hearing in the Court in First Instance yesterday. Of the 68 eligible voters, 48 voted for the UP in 2014; the other votes went to the National Alliance (12), the US party and the DP (3 each) and one to Jacinto Mocks’ Social Reform Party. The prosecution accuses Matser, who…
