THE HAGUE--St. Maarten Prime Minister William Marlin says meetings in The Hague this week were positive. He was able to bring across his Government’s views, such as its wish to realise electoral reform, to address ship-jumping and to enable St. Maarten students to vote in the St. Maarten elections. At the same time, he underscored that solutions must befit St. Maarten.
“One of the things I needed to impress on the Dutch Government was that while ship-jumping may occur throughout the Kingdom, it severely affects governing in a small, young country like St. Maarten. We have to find a solution. Otherwise, the problem will escalate,” he told The Daily Herald at the end of his visit to The Hague.
However, Marlin wants to find a solution that befits St. Maarten. “Too often the Dutch Government views the issues in the Kingdom from a Dutch perspective. The Hague says, ‘This is the way it’s done in the Netherlands, so that is how it should be done in the Kingdom.’ The Hague should judge St. Maarten by what is real for St. Maarten,” he said.
Council of State Vice-President Piet-Hein Donner was “very responsive” to the St. Maarten Government’s wish to realise electoral reform and address the ship-jumping. “He understands our situation and is willing to think along a St. Maarten solution,” Marlin said.
Besides Donner, Marlin also met with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk.
According to Marlin, Donner advised him to involve Judge Vermeulen of the St. Maarten Constitutional Court in the process of electoral reform and to have the Judge as an expert look at the documents and draft text to amend the St. Maarten Constitution. St. Maarten needs the support of the other partners in the Kingdom in this process.
The establishing of an Integrity Chamber for St. Maarten seemed to be of “first and foremost” importance for the Dutch Government, said Marlin. While he recognised the agreement that was made between the Netherlands and St. Maarten in May last year, Marlin maintained the earlier position of the National Alliance party that an Integrity Chamber was not a priority.
“We are not afraid to establish an Integrity Chamber, but we feel that it is simply not necessary. However, I will not make it a battleground,” he said. Marlin said that, like the St. Maarten Ombudsman, he had concerns that the investigations by the Integrity Chamber could lead to a criminalisation of the St. Maarten society due to the small scale of the island and the inter-relations that exist precisely because of that small scale.
The plans of the current Government to enable St. Maarten students in the Netherlands to vote in the St. Maarten elections were received positively in The Hague, said Marlin. He had asked the Dutch Government for support in accomplishing this because it has experience with electronic voting. “The response has been very positive,” he said.
People from the Netherlands living on the islands can vote in the Dutch elections, so why not have the same system in place for the St. Maarten students living in the Netherlands, Marlin said. He remarked that St. Maarten students are mostly eager to vote in the elections “back home.”
“We have been talking with the students about this for years and we want to make good on promises that were made,” he said. Ideally, the students would make use of electronic voting, but if that proves difficult, the Netherlands could help with installing ballot boxes in a few larger cities where many St. Maarten students live.
Another issue that came up in the meetings Marlin had in The Hague was the Kingdom Government’s September 8, 2015, financial instruction ordering Philipsburg to take a number of measures relating to the 2015 budget, including the presentation of a balanced budget and settling the arrears to Social and Health Insurance SZV and St. Maarten Pension Fund APS.
Marlin provided an update on the finances to the partners in The Hague. He assured them that the 2016 budget would be “lean, but mean” and that he was convinced that with Richard Gibson at the helm as Minister of Finance, St. Maarten’s finances were going in the right direction. Marlin said the “strict monitoring” of the finances was a priority to make sure there was no overspending.
Marlin answered the question as to whether his visit had helped to smooth the somewhat tense relations between Philipsburg and The Hague with a definite “no.”
“Minister Gibson during his first visit late November pulled the plug on the tension that existed. I can’t speak of any real tension. Of course there are agreements that the Dutch expect to be kept,” he said.
A returning issue in talks with the Netherlands, also under previous St. Maarten governments, is the healthy starting position that St. Maarten was supposed to have had when it attained Country status on October 10, 2010, but which in fact never happened.
The Dutch Government at that time paid off the debt of the Netherlands Antilles with the intention to create a healthy starting position for the new countries Curaçao and St. Maarten. In return, the new countries accepted financial supervision.
“We can’t divorce the financial situation of St. Maarten as a young country from the debt relief which St. Maarten never had, which was a package deal in combination with financial supervision. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if this situation will go away for a while,” said Marlin.
He said he had made it clear in The Hague that his Government was committed to put through the electoral reform for which support also will be sought from the other two countries in the Kingdom, Aruba and Curaçao.
“We are not trying to stay in office for three years. Elections will definitely take place on September 26. We are committed to bring about electoral reform, to get the finances under control, to move into the Government Administration Building and to improve health care. The governing programme will be ready soon. We are not making a fight with The Hague,” he said.
