By Hilbert Haar
Part 2 about the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Integrity Chamber on St. Maarten. In part 1 we reviewed the history leading up to the establishment of the Integrity Chamber on St. Maarten. Log in here on StMaartenNews.com to read the full review of part 2 or become a patreon on https://www.patreon.com/posts/30107355 and be the first to get updates on the next parts in the 3-parts series of this StMaartenNews.com publication about the Integrity Chamber.
PHILIPSBURG – On May 24, 2015, Justice Minister Dennis Richardson signed a protocol on behalf of Prime Minister Marcel Gumbs with Kingdom Relations Minister Ronald Plasterk and Safety and Justice Minister Ard van der Steur in The Hague. Part of the protocol: approving legislation for the establishment of the Integrity Chamber by the end of that same month, but no later than June 30 of that year (the protocol erroneously mentioned June 31 as the deadline).
A hotly contested part of this agreement: St. Maarten agreed that the Council of Ministers would not initiate any changes to the legislation after its enforcement without consultation with the Dutch government and handling of such changes in the Kingdom Council of Ministers. The protocol also stipulated that the Netherlands would appoint a quartermaster by July 1, 2015.
These deadlines came and went and nothing happened. Two years later, in April, Prime Minister William Marlin attended a meeting of the Kingdom Council of Ministers in The Hague. The Council issued an instruction to St. Maarten to finally establish the Integrity Chamber. At the time, Marlin’s idea was to integrate the Integrity Chamber into the General Audit Chamber.
The kingdom’s instruction did not come as a surprise. In January 2017, Marlin said during a Council of Ministers press briefing: “We think that an Integrity Chamber is not necessary. We do not need an Integrity Chamber with people appointed by the Netherlands policing every decision we make.”
Furthermore, Marlin said on that occasion: “We are capable and prepared to deal with integrity issues and we have the institutions for it, like the Prosecutor’s Office and the National Detectives Agency (the Landsrecherche). We don’t need to add more.”
Marlin failed to understand that both the Prosecutor’s Office and the National Detective Agency deal with criminal investigations, not with integrity-issues or administrative wrongdoings.
Parliament added some fuel to the fire with a motion on January 30, 2015 that stated that the 2015 protocol was no longer executable.
Despite the political rumblings, parliament nevertheless approved a first national ordinance Integrity Chamber on August 17, 2015.
That was not the end of the story because Ombudsman Dr. Nilda Arduin took the ordinance in September 2015 to the Constitutional Court for review. The disputed legislation contained amendments that had not gone through the obligatory review by the Council of Advice. The Ombudsman also expressed concerns about the protection of citizens’ privacy and about possible entanglement of administrative and criminal investigations.
After all, breaches of integrity often include criminal aspects – like fraud and embezzlement – and the Integrity Chamber legislation did not offer suspects the same protection as the Code of Criminal Procedures. The Constitutional Court struck down the ordinance on July 7, 2016, and the government had to go back to the drawing board.
It took Hurricane Irma, and a demand by the kingdom that St. Maarten put the Integrity Chamber legislation in place if it wanted to get financial aid for the island’s recovery to inspire the Parliament – under the guidance of interim Prime Minister Rafael Boasman – to approve an amended national ordinance on December 12, 2017. National Alliance MPs George Pantophlet and Ardwell Irion voted against, together with United St. Maarten party-leader Frans Richardson who spoke of “abuse of power by our partners within the Kingdom.”
The Integrity Chamber and the Prosecutor’s Office have to reach an agreement about cooperation and the exchange of information. Through its spokeswoman Hazel Durand, the prosecutor’s office informed us that so far “”The chief (prosecutor) has not had a formal meeting with the Integrity Chamber about the working relationship.”
So when everything is said and done, the Integrity Chamber remains for the time being a work in progress.
###
Related articles:
Why St. Maarten has an Integrity Chamber – Part 1
Slowly but surely the Integrity Chamber is taking shape – Part 3
