May 22 political consultation
listed to be held in Curaçao
PHILIPSBURG--The next political consultation on constitutional affairs is being planned to take place in Curaçao despite the original planning for the meeting to be held in St. Maarten.
After the last political consultation was held in Curaçao in February, it was announced that the next meeting would be in St. Maarten. However, Curaçao complained that, because it has a bigger delegation, the cost is higher for the island when meetings are held in St. Maarten.
Constitutional Affairs Minister Roland Duncan confirmed that preparations were taking place to hold the May 22 political consultation in Curaçao.
He said the Curaçao delegation had also complained about availability of hotel rooms in St. Maarten. This had to do with an earlier summit held in St. Maarten, which, according to the Minister, was organised during the tourist high season.
Another discussion surrounding the political consultations has been the question of what entity pays the cost of organising the summits. The original arrangement was that when a summit was held in the Netherlands Antilles the Central Government would pay, and when held in the Netherlands, the Dutch Government would pay.
However, because of the high cost of travelling to and staying in the Netherlands, the Antillean delegations decided it would be better not to have any of the meetings in the Netherlands anymore. All political consultations would be held in the Netherlands Antilles, as much as possible, and the cost of organising the meetings would be split between the Central Government and the Dutch Government.
However, it has been solely the Dutch Government that has paid all the cost until now. This led to the situation that the Dutch controlled the organisation of the political summits, which in turn led to some concerns, especially with the Central Government about not having a grip anymore on the way the political consultations are being organised and led.
Therefore, the Central Government will be seeking ways to start covering its part of the meetings. The May 22 political consultation will be an important one in the sense that decisions will be taken on how the constitutional change process will continue to be handled.
Important topics such as the target date for constitutional change and the Financial Supervisory Committee CFT will be discussed.
