Pettifoggery
By Hilbert Haar If I understand the letter from Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte correctly she prefers to have discussions with her “colleague” Rutte or with the Minister of Home Affairs, Kajsa Ollongren. This, after a meeting with the State Secretary for Kingdom Relations, Drs. Raymond Knops, did not go according More...
Racial discrimination
By Hilbert Haar There is something to be said in favor of the approach the labor unions have chosen to put up a fight against the inevitable cuts in labor conditions the kingdom demands in exchange for continued More...
Same dog …
By Hilbert Haar Same dog and not even a different hat; that is the best description I can come up with for the so-called research of UP faction leader Grisha Heyliger-Marten into the matter of decolonization. Heyliger-Marten More...
Follow the money
By Hilbert Haar If I assume that the finance ministry is putting together the country’s budgets to the best of its abilities the conclusion must be that there is definitely something wrong. Maybe not with those More...
A shopaholic
By Hilbert Haar MP Grisha Heyliger-Marten is on the decolonization warpath. She has called Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs to parliament asking whether she is prepared “for the process of finalizing decolonization More...
The bottom line
By Hilbert Haar It cannot surprise anyone that the government’s cost-cutting measures in exchange for receiving liquidity support from the Netherlands have become the center of an epic controversy, especially More...
What is reasonable?
By Hilbert Haar Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs has appealed to labor unions to be more reasonable in their approach to the government since it has become clear that said unions are squarely opposed to the looming More...
Under duress
By Hilbert Haar Motions are the political banana peel of the political arena. In St. Maarten they seldom result in the desired action expressed in a motion and only in extreme cases (like with a motion of no confidence) More...
Collective lowering of salaries is not that simple
By Hilbert Haar PHILIPSBURG – The kingdom’s demand that the government lowers the salaries of civil servants by 12.5 percent (as a condition for providing liquidity support) promises to result in a heated debate. More...
Cost-cutting counter-proposal unions vague
~ Unions need to present a more detailed explanation to substantiate their 100-million guilders cost savings claim ~ By Hilbert Haar How realistic are the cost-cutting proposals the unions submitted to the government? More...
