Important mission

Prime Minister Marlin is on an important mission to the Netherlands with little hope of success. The Kingdom Council of Ministers is dominated by Dutch ministers and it is hardly likely that more than half of them will turn their backs on their own colleagues to do St. Maarten a favor.

Yet, this is a turning point in the endless quest for an Integrity Chamber or at least for a solution that guarantees a serious approach to integrity breaches.

The Dutch now want to table their own piece of legislation for the Integrity Chamber and St. Maarten is dead against it.

But being against without offering a tangible alternative is not a very strong position. Our PM has said that strengthening the General Audit Chamber would achieve the same results, but we have not seen any action to put that in place. That is what Minister Plasterk and his colleagues will tell St. Maarten: you’re not doing anything, you are stalling. And now we are going to grab the bull by the horns.

This will lead to an interesting situation, because Marlin has already announced that he will not cooperate with any instruction from The Hague.

That sounds brave, and it probably is, but how all this will work out in the real world remains to be seen.