THE HAGUE — Kroniek van een Gebroken Belofte (Chronicle of a Broken Promise) is a collection of observations about the situation on the BES-islands (Bonaire, Statia and Saba) since they became a Dutch public entity on October 10, 2010. While there has been progress in the fields of, for instance, education and healthcare, the level of public services on the islands is still far behind the level citizens in European Netherlands enjoy. Poverty remains a major headache and the cost of living, the lack of affordable housing, the lack of a proper system of public transport and skyrocketing prices for basic needs are only a few of the challenges the islanders have to deal with on a daily basis.
Chronicle of a Broken Promise was put together by René Zwart and Nina den Heyer. Zwart is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Antilliaans Dagblad and the creator of Dossierkoninkrijksrelaties.nl. Den Heyer is a former member of the Executive Council in Bonaire. They presented the first printed copy of their work to the interim Director-General Kingdom Relations Gea van Craaikamp during an event organized by Rabin Baldewsingh, the national coördinator against discrimination and racism.
Members of the First and Second Chamber were among the 80 people present at the presentation. Afterwards, a panel under the leadership of moderator Marlon Titre talked about what went well and what did not go so well during the coöperation between Dutch ministries and the three islands. The members of the panel were Maya Soumah (Senior project leader Caribbean Netherlands at the College for Human Rights), Glenn Thodé (chairman of the committee Social Minimum CNL as well as a member of the Board financial supervision BES), Raoul White (parliamentarian for GroenLinks-PvdA) en Wietze Koopman (co-founder of the Bonairian consumer association Unkobon.
The title Chronicle of a Broken Promise refers to promises Dutch politicians made during the negotiation about the status-change for the islands. Only Statia voted to remain within the (now former) Netherlands Antilles but because Bonaire and Saba voted differently (they wanted to become a Dutch public entity) the Netherlands Antilles ceased to exist and Statia had no other choice than becoming a Dutch public entity as well. The promise was that life for citizens would improve, but that never happened, at least not to the level the islanders expected. On the contrary, poverty has increased and the level of public services stays far behind that in European Netherlands.
Chronicle of a Broken Promise is 80 pages long; it contains observations from more than twenty ordinary citizens and of twenty professionals who were involved in the process. Some of those observations are remarkable, mainly because most islanders remain optimistic about their future.
Nina den Heyer, who contributed to the collection, wrote: “Of course things have improved since 2010, and that is what most people notice, especially because before things were much worse.”
Most islanders agree that things have improved in the field of education, healthcare and social services. But poverty remains. Says car mechanic Garry Brown: ‘For a hundred dollars you hardly have anything in your shopping cart.”
Language remains another problem: the islanders insufficiently master the Dutch language and that puts students who want to further their studies in the Netherlands at a serious disadvantage. The observations made by ordinary citizens also makes clear that they feel like they are being treated like second-rate Dutch citizens.
Lastly, and this is what hurts the most, is what someone described as “the absurd high cost of living.” It is near impossible to make ends met at the end of a month, and affordable housing is practically non-existent.
In spite of all this, the islanders remain optimistic about their future, a view National Ombudsman Reinier van Zutphen, who has been active in different roles on the islands since 1998, does not share: ”What still has not changed is bitter poverty.”
The Ombudsman did not stop there, reminding readers that the citizens of Bonaire, Statia and Saba are Dutch citizens since 2010. This means that the Dutch constitution applies on the islands: in equal circumstances, citizens are (supposed to be) treated equally.
“For 32,000 Dutch citizens we have created a discriminating system of laws, rules and policy,” Van Zutphen wrote. “We impose European standards to Caribbean public entities and defend that with a call on diversity and separate legal orders. As far as I am concerned that is making a prohibited distinction. Why?”
René Zwart says in a press release that leaving responsible politicians out of the publication was a conscious choice.
“From that side we have heard too many words and seen too little action. They would do well to learn something from the stories in this collection.”
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Download a copy of “Kroniek van een Gebroken Belofte” here>>>
Broken promises
By Hilbert Haar
René Zwart, the founder and former editor-in-chief of Antilliaans Dagblad and Nina den Heyer, a former member of the Executive Council of Bonaire, published a collection of essays under the title Kroniek van een Gebroken Belofte (Chronicle of a Broken Promise). The title alone triggered almost immediately an interesting question: who broke which promises?
If we narrow that question down to what happened in Sint Maarten (because the publication focuses on the BES-islands), ever since the island territory became an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands on October 10, 2010, the answer to that question is rather obvious.
I remember how a government delegation returned in September 2010 from the Netherlands with a triumphant message: there was an agreement with the Dutch government about the day our island would become autonomous. “Finally free,” said former Finance Minister Richard Gibson Sr. on that day at the airport. But free from what and from whom?
The celebration focused on the undisputed fact that autonomy would free St. Maarten from control by the largest player in the now former Netherlands Antilles – Curaçao. That said autonomy came at a price was something no politician wanted to hear. Nobody wanted to be a party pooper.
Let us not forget that the politicians at the time negotiated with the Dutch about the island’s autonomous status. The result of that negotiation was, among many other things, that St. Maarten agreed to be placed under financial supervision. Without this mechanism in place, there would be no autonomy either.
One could argue, of course, that the Dutch government put St. Maarten with its back against the wall but that argument does not hold water. At least, not in my opinion, because our politicians could simply have said: no thanks, under those conditions, autonomy is not worth it. But they did not say that. They agreed.
The kingdom law financial supervision contains a truckload of rules. I don’t want to go too much into details, but just mention two of the most important ones. The law contains a deadline for submitting our country’s annual budget to the Cft and the budget had to be balanced.
If you look at the history of our national budget a few things become painfully clear. During the past fifteen years the finance ministry made the Cft-deadline only once. During the remaining fourteen years it was always way too late.
Balancing the budget on paper is something our government mostly managed to do. But when reality came knocking on their door, those budgets showed in hindsight always a deficit. I once posed the question how fair it is to demand that St. Maarten’s budget be balanced while the budget of the Netherlands routinely shows a deficit. The answer to that question is simple. Budget deficits don’t go away; they become part of the next budget. If that budget also shows a deficit to begin with, you are on a downhill rollercoaster.
And look where we are now. In 2024, the Netherlands had a budget deficit of 0.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The national debt of the Netherlands in 2025 was around $509 billion, or 43.7 percent of its GDP. St. Maarten’s budget deficit in 2024 was just 0.2 percent of GDP. Halfway through 2025, St. Maarten was indebted to the Netherlands for around $1.3 billion; that is four times the government’s annual expenditures.
One may well wonder about the situation St. Maarten would have found itself in without financial supervision. And remember: our politicians agreed to financial supervision, but even the Cft is apparently unable to stop overspending (or, looking at it from a different point of view: of making sure that our country collects the proper amount of taxes).
Anyway, it is clear to me that St. Maarten has broken a few crucial promises it made back in the day. I do not argue that the Netherlands is blameless. It could have put a stop to the spendthrift that has brought St. Maarten close to the financial abyss, but the truth is that it did nothing at all.
Broken promises? That happens all the time. It is called politics and, most unfortunately, when the negative effects of those broken promises surface, there is usually nobody around anymore to take the blame.
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