Carnival is not quite over yet, but May is here and public focus no doubt will shift again to politics, in particular strained relations with the Netherlands. St. Maarten and Aruba are currently both in a battle with the Rutte cabinet regarding respectively an Integrity Chamber and involvement of the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT in the budgetary process.
Meanwhile, efforts are being made to come with some kind of conflict resolution arrangement within the kingdom to avoid these types of lengthy standoffs. The PAIS party in Curaçao is now proposing a Joint Court of Dispute (see related article).
However, indications were that the joint delegation of the First and Second Chambers of the Dutch Parliament preferred not to discuss this matter during the upcoming Inter-Parliamentary Kingdom Consultation IPKO in The Hague at the end of the month, but rather to postpone it to the next such gathering early 2016. The main consideration was the suspected impact of the Kingdom Conference between the four governments tentatively scheduled in Curaçao for June 16, while the Council of State's advice on using the Governor's Regulation to issue instructions for the individual countries probably won't be completed either on time.
The issue was to be discussed further internally in the Netherlands and then with the three other delegation leaders in a video conference on April 28, but there has been no further word on whether that session indeed took place and, if so, the result. However, it was reported just a week before that St. Maarten's Inter-Parliamentary Affairs and Kingdom Relations Committee still missed significant information to prepare properly for the IPKO and the tripartite meeting with Curaçao and Aruba that is to precede it.
While the reasons for a postponement given by Dutch parliamentarians make sense, the Caribbean kingdom partners need to be wary of possible delay tactics while the Kingdom Council of Ministers continues to impose its will due to the lack of such a dispute arrangement. In that regard the recent request for St. Maarten to hold off on passing its own Integrity Chamber Ordinance comes to mind.
