Situation of shifting blame onto
each other is sad, says Duncan
PHILIPSBURG--The current situation with the constitutional change process is sad. Everybody is shifting the blame onto one another, Constitutional Affairs Minister Roland Duncan told The Daily Herald.
Not only St. Maarten, but several other factors have been contributing to the delay in the constitutional change process, he said.
The Minister advised parties to stop fighting among themselves. “Curaçao cannot expect St. Maarten to drop its position just for Curaçao to receive debt cancellation, but St. Maarten too has to wake up and smell the coffee. The island cannot continue with academic discussion on the instruction authority.”
The Minister believes St. Maarten has been overdoing its position. He called the discussion on the instruction authority a “nice academic discussion,” but whether this will be a verbal or a written authority is not such a big deal, especially considering what is at stake, Duncan said.
Regarding the topic of good corporate governance, Duncan said St. Maarten had to hurry up and put the necessary legislation in place, and show the Netherlands what it has done to regulate things.
However, he stressed that good corporate governance was stated nowhere in the November 2, 2006, final accord. “It was last year October that the Dutch Government came up with the rules,” he said.
He even called the Dutch politicians hypocrites for requiring the Antilles to adopt laws regulating good corporate governance, because the Netherlands doesn’t have regulations and laws governing good corporate governance. “What goes for the goose goes for the gander as well,” Duncan said.
However, he admitted that the records of both Curaçao and St. Maarten pertaining to good corporate governance had been very bad.
Duncan said he seriously doubted that the debt cancellation would start if and when the problems with St. Maarten had been solved. “If you ask me, I believe the Dutch have been stalling the process for spite. All that is stated in the final accord before the debt cancellation can start is more than the problems with St. Maarten at this moment.”
He said the Netherlands had been bullying the Netherlands Antilles in several areas, such as introducing an arrangement to send Antilleans back, and had not respected the islands’ right of self determination.
“The people of the two islands have voted for country status within the Dutch kingdom, but the Dutch Government has imposed a bunch of conditions it wants to work out in detail and consequently keeps moving the goalpost.”
He used as an example French St. Martin, which started with its process of constitutional change after the Netherlands Antilles and already has achieved its status change.
Duncan said there were still a lot of things the islands could start doing, such as entering into more active discussions with Aruba and starting to transfer powers from the Central Government to the Island Territories.
