VBC: Ministers should resign

October 06, 2011 9:10 AM

The Business Association Curaçao (VBC) calls for the self-cleaning capacity and thinks the government ‘should first of all take the honorable way out and step down or at least immediately dismiss those members of government who are incapable of being a minister’.

“Honorable and competent’ ad interim ministers are to replace them.

“The proposal to set things right in restoring the confidence and encourage the integrity of own people, is preferred above an alternative where the Kingdom intervenes. This would be a humiliating and shameful spectacle.”

Simultaneously, as per the advice from the Committee Inquiry Curaçao, one should install a Committee of Learned Persons, who is to examine the integrity of the government and the ministers and to complete the inquiry into the integrity of the president of the CBCS, according to the association.

The VBC believes the report ‘Do it Yourself’ from the Committee Inquiry Curaçao speaks volumes. The association emphasizes ‘that the Minister-President of Curaçao gave his permission to install this Committee.’

“The start of the new country Curaçao on 10-10-’10 appeared to be a false one,” says the VBC. “The great enthusiasm, the confidence, the pride and the hope, which the society demonstrated, respectively fostered with the existence of the new country Curaçao are seriously injured and taxed by the government MFK/PS/MAN. On 10-10-’10, the Minister-President made a gross error or committed a serious blunder by appointing members of the government who should not have been appointed at all because they did not comply with the integrity requirements and therefore incapable of being a minister. Nevertheless, as the majority of the States agreed with this, they have neglected to perform their controlling function correctly (functioning as ‘rubber stamp’ instead of applying thorough principles of ‘checks and balances’).”

VBC mentions several low points:

“Open and public confrontation between the Minister-President and the president of the CBCS and denying the latter access to the Council of Ministers;

Replacing the necessary ‘checks and balances’ by a culture of anxiety, whereby verbal violence and getting personal predominate;

Increasing subjective influence of the political government on important functions of the country amongst others the government apparatus (political appointments), the energy sector, the harbor, the telecommunication, the intelligence service, the education, etc.;

The government of Curaçao not cooperating with the work of COC and even issuing the public sector a prohibition to cooperate with COC activities, while the Minister-President himself approved the installation of this Committee; and

Probable connection between financial sponsoring of a political party in exchange for political power.”

“In short, actions that indicate a pattern of deliberate setting up and implementing a system of systematic unsound governance,” the association concludes. “The warning words recently expressed by the Attorney General and the president of the Bar Association regarding the increasing verbal violence of politicians and States members in particular, whether or not under the guise of freedom of speech, are entirely just and certainly in keeping with what the COC demonstrated. Now that the facts on the ruling administrative integrity crisis are revealed, it is important to tackle this crisis as soon as possible in order to restore the seriously injured image of the democratic constitutional state and of the social and investment climate of Curaçao.”

4 October 2011