By Terrance Rey
Originally published in Dutch on DossierKoninkrijksrelaties.nl as “Jumbie in het Kadaster”
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There’s a jumbie haunting the Kadaster. Years ago, there was a story about a ghost in the courthouse. But that was a story that sprang from the mind of marketer and salesman extraordinaire Lenny Schultz who made fame in Sint Maarten at the time in timeshare sales and as a radio DJ with his good friend James Morris, known as Jimbo from Jimbo’s Restaurant.
Lenny also did sales and marketing for Zebrabot.com, the first search engine on Sint Maarten in the early 2000s. For one of their online marketing campaigns, Lenny wrote the story The Ghost in the Courthouse. It was a figment of the imagination of Lenny, who sadly left us in 2009 after an evening of enjoying delicious pizza and ice cream. His body gave up after a year-long battle with cancer. Anyway, The Ghost in the Courthouse was very popular in Zebrabot’s search results. Whether it was really haunted in the courthouse, I don’t know. Where it is haunted is the Parliament building next door. But that’s a story for another time.
On the other hand, the specter in the Kadaster is a story that has haunted it for a long time: old crumbling illegible, poorly preserved deeds that go back decades and that, if they went the way of Zebrabot, would mean the end of a national and cultural archive that serves as a wealth of historical information about Sint Maarten. In these archives there are interesting family stories that give a colorful picture of history from a different perspective than that of conventional historians and that will certainly contribute to the further formation of the Sint Maarten identity.
The Stichting Kadaster en Hypotheekwezen St. Maarten was founded in April 1999 after the implementation of the administrative tasks of the Cadastre and Public Registers (Kadaster en Openbare Registers) became independent in 1998. It was remarkable in itself that the government allowed such vital services to be managed exclusively by a private entity – at arm’s length, but nonetheless without the requirement that a concession fee, surplus or profits be paid to the government. Now the Ministry of Finance wants to avoid the debacle in Curaçao, where the government was left empty-handed when it tried to make a grab in the coffers of the Kadaster Office there through the court system and the use of bailiff. Now our MinFIN wants to solve this legal limitation by entering into a concession agreement with the Kadaster foundation whereby it is obliged to pay surplus amounts to the government. But a concession means that several parties must be given the opportunity to make an offer to perform these tasks. The government must choose the best offer. I’ll stop here because there are other snags to this issue.
In any case, I do not think that a private party can be charged with the responsibility for legal certainty for cadastral registration and property rights, including the various land rights, apartments, border (re)construction (surveying) and mortgage registrations. The Kadaster is of national importance and must therefore be well equipped to function. That means knowledge (qualified and well-trained personnel) and tools (hardware and software). The Kadaster is not only important for economic purposes, but also for cultural-historical purposes. Therefore, politicians should set aside their political ideologies — if they have any at all — and instead approach the Kadaster with respect to the broader national interest. The economic importance of the Kadaster is well known and needs to be further investigated. It is the cultural-historical importance that most people are not aware of. Due to ignorance and neglect, some registers were in such a deteriorated state that they became illegible. A trend must be set in motion to record family stories and take photos of family members with permission to keep the records for future generations. The idea behind this is that when people die they take a piece of history with them and when a deed is read out, names pop up, but there is no picture of those involved. By capturing and photographing, we preserve the history so that over time all kinds of researchers can use this data. At the time, this was started in the context of the ‘memory of the world‘ project. Assistance can even be requested from the Royal Archives in The Hague. It is essential to recognize the importance of the Kadaster archives for the cultural history of the island. It is the wish that the politicians recognize the importance of the history of Sint Maarten and realize that whoever is appointed to the Cadastre Board makes the preservation of that part of Sint Maarten’s history a focal point in addition to the regular tasks that the Kadaster has.
What this writer is concerned about is the fact of how people deal with ‘the memory’ of Sint Maarten. Internally, the organization is a total mess. And that needs to be improved. I understand from an insider that at the time he took office there were piles of unsigned deeds in the filing cabinets, some dating back decades. “It is totally incomprehensible to me that notaries have allowed it. This is a serious matter, because it is not conducive to legal certainty if owners do not have their Kadaster deed signed and this needs explanation for the general public,” he told me.
If a notary submits a deed to the Kadaster, it must meet certain requirements and if not, the deed cannot be processed. It then goes back to the notary for correction and then can be processed and recorded in the public registers of the Kadaster. This means that the right holder (rechthebbende), being a homeowner, apartment owner, leaseholder or whatever, only has proof that the right, the property, is established with a deed containing the stamps of the Kadaster stating the date of receipt containing, among other things, the timestamp, the start date with the volume and the number. This gives the right holder legal certainty (rechtszekerheid) and provides grounds for bringing claims against other parties. A deed without these specifications has no legal force (rechtskracht) because it only indicates the transfer (overdracht), but not the registration of the title, which gives legal certainty vis-à-vis against third parties (“derdenwerking“).
One notary in particular had the habit of sending in such deeds and expected that the Kadaster would accept his deeds because he was the notary and his deeds were always accepted. The malpractice of this notary, who had a rude manner of addressing the Kadaster, was the cause of a court case against a politician that resulted in a conviction. Had this notary acted in accordance with the law, he would not have submitted the deed in question and the transfer would not have received any publicity, with all the subsequent consequences thereof.
A lot of strange things happen within the Kadaster. There was also the case of a former lieutenant governor who appropriated a piece of government land by converting it from long lease land into private property. There are so many mishaps, stories and anecdotes to tell. You would indeed think that the Kadaster has a jumbie that haunts the office. The spirits of our ancestors are crying out for adjudication and the righting of so many wrongs and injustices perpetrated in the past. Why do you think there is so much disagreement within families about land on Sint Maarten?
Looking at the dyugu-dyugu that is going on at the Kadaster it seems like there is what they in Suriname call a hebi on this entity. A hebi is a spiritual burden on someone’s soul, the yèyè, hindering the well-functioning and progress in life and causing bad luck. Through cultural rituals the spirit can be cleansed, and life can take a turn for the better. But looking at the Kadaster where there have been issues over a prolonged period of time, it looks more like the office is dealing with something worse, what they call a kunu. That is a burden on the yèyè, that goes back generations and can affect whole families. In this case the ancestral spirits, the konfo, have to be asked for forgiveness for past wrongdoings and how the spirits would like any atonement to express repentance in order to bring back wellness, health and prosperity.
In the case of the Kadaster, measures must therefore be taken to get rid of this jumbie. The political leaders must put aside their differences and put the country above themselves, because the Kadaster is an inconspicuous cornerstone of the economy and it is important to have this entity operating without any problems or issues. That means they need to move away from the view that hiring local professionals takes precedence over others. Instead, they should start with appointing and hiring qualified and skilled people and start revitalizing the office from there. This requires commitment and dedication to the good cause, but it allows the politicians to show the community that they are serious about seeking a lasting solution to this problem. Until then, that jumbie is wandering around in the Kadaster and is causing all kinds of dyugu-dyugu.
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Originally published in Dutch on DossierKoninkrijksrelaties.nl as “Jumbie in het Kadaster”
The working title of the next Cusha Columns book is “The Interconnectedness of Things in Sint Maarten“.
