Dutch Parliament supports
motion to warn St. Maarten
THE HAGUE--The Second Chamber on Tuesday passed a motion reinforcing earlier warnings that St. Maarten can only become a country within the Dutch Kingdom if it complies with all conditions in the area of justice.
All ten factions, with the exception of the Party for Freedom PVV, voted in favour of the motion which was presented last Thursday in Parliament. In that motion, the Dutch Government is ordered not to agree to an autonomous status for St. Maarten until it has complied with the conditions of adequate maintenance of law and order and administration of justice. These conditions were set in the November 2006 Final Accord.
The motion was the initiative of Christian Democratic Party CDA Member of Parliament (MP) Bas Jan van Bochove and was co-signed by John Leerdam of the labour party PvdA and Cynthia Ortega-Martijn of the Christian Union CU. The motion was presented during the budget debate on the chapter Kingdom Relations last Thursday night.
Parties that voted in favour of the motion on Tuesday afternoon were CDA, PvdA, CU, the Socialist Party SP, the liberal democratic party VVD, the reformed party SGP, the left wing green party GroenLinks, Party for the Animals PvdD, Democrats D66 and the one-person faction Verdonk.
The Second Chamber rejected the motion presented by Johan Remkes (VVD) and Ronald van Raak (SP) which called on government to timely inform the partners in the Kingdom that chances were slim St. Maarten would become a country in the Kingdom. Several opposition parties voted in favour of this motion during Tuesday’s meeting. Parties that voted for the motion were VVD, SP, GroenLinks, SGP, PVV and Verdonk.
The third motion concerning St. Maarten, presented by the PVV, didn’t get the support of fellow parties in Parliament. PVV MP Hero Brinkman requested the Dutch Government to put St. Maarten’s government on non-active and to replace the local Executive Council by “capable” Dutch politicians and to arrange new elections whereby persons of irreproachable conduct could participate.
The Second Chamber passed three other motions on Tuesday that had to do with the Netherlands Antilles. Two of those motions were presented by Leerdam of PvdA. The first Leerdam motion called on the Dutch Government to initiate a communication plan with all partners in the Kingdom to better inform the people of the pending constitutional changes.
The second Leerdam motion requested The Hague to make sure that the regional service centres on the BES islands, Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba would also have facilities to provide information to the public. The fourth motion concerning the Netherlands Antilles that received broad support from Parliament came from Ineke van Gent of GroenLinks. She requested the Dutch Government to create a sports fund enabling young people to participate and excel in sports. Other motions on, among other things, the Isla refinery, the Kingdom Charter and the Kingdom Relations budget were rejected.
