Duncan concerned, negotiations
not going well for St. Maarten
WILLEMSTAD--Constitutional Affairs Minister Roland Duncan is concerned about the information he has been receiving from the Netherlands regarding the negotiations on the constitutional change process.
Especially concerning St. Maarten, he said, the information received was not good. “I understand that while Curaçao and the smaller islands are reaching agreements with the Dutch, St. Maarten is not,” the Minister told The Daily Herald in an invited comment on Thursday.
Members of the Project Group for Finance, the Project Group for Maintenance of Law, Law Enforcement and Constitutional Affairs PRRC and the Constitutional Affairs Directing Group have been in the Netherlands to discuss various aspects of the constitutional change process.
The Financial Supervisory Committee, the Government Credit Bank, corporate governance, the Consensus Kingdom Law on the Attorney General’s Office and Police Organisation, and the December 15 date have been some of the topics of discussion.
While the discussions have been at a technical level between civil servants and advisors, Constitutional Affairs Commissioner of St. Maarten Sarah Wescot-Williams also was in the Netherlands on a lobbying mission (see related story).
According to Duncan, Wescot-Williams managed to speak to Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende on Wednesday. However, Duncan had no information on how that meeting had gone.
Information this newspaper received from sources in The Hague indicated that Balkenende’s position had not changed much compared to his visit to St. Maarten on February 12. The Dutch Prime Minister stated then that the island could not attain country status until significant progress in law enforcement, the administration of justice and good governance had been made.
Concerning the negotiations within the Project Group for Finance, Duncan said he understood that a deadlock had occurred between St. Maarten and the Netherlands on principles of corporate governance, which will be one of the tasks of the Financial Supervisory Committee.
Although he had no details, the Minister said he could imagine that the deadlock had to do with St. Maarten’s position on the topic.
In earlier discussions on corporate governance during the political summit held in St. Maarten on January 22, the Executive Council clearly expressed its view that when appointing candidates to the board of directors of a government-owned company, the Executive Council only voted on the position and not on the candidate.
Duncan said that if St. Maarten maintained this position he could imagine that the Netherlands would not have accepted it. “It’s not transparent. There is little scrutiny of the people who will be holding these positions. The public has a right to know who manages its funds,” he said.
He publicly questioned the Island Government’s competence to govern and even negotiate a new status for the island.
“It’s obvious they can’t do it themselves, but they have to accept help. What is St. Maarten doing about corruption? Nothing. The fact that the Netherlands is corrupt does not take away that St. Maarten should address its problems with corruption.
“If they don’t want to use Duncan’s help, God bless them, but who suffers? We need to agree with the Dutch to get our desired status and there is no way under the sun that St. Maarten can beat the Dutch either legally or politically,” he said.
Another example Duncan used to query St. Maarten’s way of handling matters was the Social Economic Initiative (SEI). “There we see individual Commissioners want to use the SEI to score politically. It’s old-time politics and that’s why the Netherlands is coming down on us,” Duncan said.
