The writing is on the wall
By Hilbert Haar Let me make one thing clear before writing anything else. The real winners and losers will become apparent only after the January 9, 2020 elections. But I still think, quoting Greta Thunberg, that “change is coming whether you like it or not.” I already outlined the first indications of imminent change based on the strength of the More...
Playing dead
By Hilbert Haar The interim government led by Silveria Jacobs currently consists of five ministers – one from the United St. Maarten party (USp) and the rest are all with the National Alliance (NA). Until the More...
The blame game
By Hilbert Haar The parliament meeting about funding for the airport reconstruction was rather bewildering – at least, that was my experience. Finance Minister Perry Geerlings made clear that the bondholders More...
At a snail’s pace
By Hilbert Haar Without further ado, former Finance Minister Michael Ferrier has pointed to the procedures the World Bank uses for the distribution of recovery-dollars from the trust fund to explain why post Hurricane More...
The law on long lease
By Hilbert Haar The Christophe Emmanuel case begs a lot of questions. The first one is of course whether a crime was committed at all. From the currently available information it is hard to answer this question More...
Occam’s razor
By Hilbert Haar On August 29, 2017, I wrote an opinion about Parlatino for the Today newspaper that contains the following paragraphs. “The ties between the island – via the former Netherlands Antilles – and More...
Razor-thin motivation
By Hilbert Haar The motion of CDA parliamentarian Chris van Dam that calls for Dutch involvement in law enforcement on St. Maarten comes across as a fine example of Dutch meddling in our island’s affairs. That More...
Getting Mullet Bay out of its funk
By Hilbert Haar In different words, MP Wescot-Williams criticized the proposal to conduct a parliamentary inquiry into Mullet Bay the same way civil law attorney Wim van Sambeek did in an article stmaartennews.com More...
A giant blooper
By Hilbert Haar Did Governor Drs. Eugène Holiday overstep the mark on September 23 when he signed the national decree that invokes article 59? That question rumbles through the corridors of power in The Hague More...
Playing by the rules
By Hilbert Haar When will politicians learn that they have to play by the rules? Given the soap opera the interim elections have become that could take some time. A lot of time. I won’t go into the specifics More...
