Lack of legislative capacity of St. Maarten, Curaçao and Aruba (see Thursday newspaper) continues to be an issue. All three relatively young autonomous countries in the Dutch Kingdom need not only the usual updating of laws but wide-ranging legal reforms across all sectors, including those in the so-called “country package” agreed on with the Netherlands as condition for COVID-19 crisis liquidity loans.
Its implementation is being guided by the Temporary Work Organisation (TWO), which recognised the problem and had an assessment of legislative functions in the three Caribbean countries done.
Based on the result and in consultation with their respective Legal Departments, Project Leader for Legislative Strengthening Carolien de Vreeze was hired at TWO. After a related conference, recommendations were made and processes to improve matters are underway.
As she stated, however, this problem won’t go away overnight. What’s more, there is apparently a shortage of these experts in the European part to the kingdom too.
Perhaps ensuring better bills come from both Government and Parliament would help. Especially the latter have at times been criticised for submitting inferior law proposals, most recently by Curaçao’s Council of Advice.
One idea might be to require that at least one member of each minister’s hand-picked cabinet and of every parliamentary faction has a law degree. The minimum number of faction assistants could then be two, even for those consisting of just one person.
This way, elected representatives as well as the public administrators they appoint can be part of the solution.
