Beef up RST, says Remkes

March 08, 2010 6:28 AM

THE HAGUE--The Kingdom Detective Team RST on Antillean islands should be boosted and legally secured, said Member of Dutch Parliament (MP) Johan Remkes of the liberal democratic VVD party on Thursday.

An enhanced RST is necessary to truly give content to the joint police facility (gemeenschappelijke politievoorziening) which he said was an "elevated hiring and employment agency."

Remkes called the director of the joint police facility a "general without an army." He made his remarks during the handling of the first batch of laws for the BES islands of Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba in the Second Chamber on Thursday.

RST "new style" should be legally secured, said Remkes. "I am not saying that this solves all problems that I have with this issue, but it would give an important contribution," he said. He pointed out, as he has done on several occasions that he is not happy with a separate police force for the BES islands; one corps for three islands with 900 km of sea between and for some 20,000 inhabitants.

Remkes' VVD party is objecting to the way this aspect of the police organisations and the justice chain is being executed in the process to attain new constitutional statuses for the islands of the Netherlands Antilles. Realising the joint police facility to assist the local police forces with certain tasks is part of the Final Accord that VVD Minister Atzo Nicolaï signed with the Netherlands Antilles and its island territories late 2006.

Remkes again mentioned the police force and justice system in St. Maarten during Thursday's debate. "Things are not in order and things will not be in order either on 10-10-10," he said.

He said there was an agreement on this in the Final Accord. "I can understand that pragmatism sometimes emerges, but I don't want to run the risk that, years from now, the US will hold us accountable for massive human and drug smuggling or other forms of international organised crime. I don't want to be told later on that based on shaky legislation and an adapted process I am held politically co-responsible," he said.

Remkes had announced on an earlier occasion that for VVD party the Kingdom Consensus laws to set up the police organisations for Curaçao, St. Maarten as well as the joint police facility and the Kingdom Consensus law to amend the Kingdom Charter are "controversial" issues. This means that the party doesn't want these law proposals handled under a caretaker cabinet.

VVD agreed to handle the Kingdom Consensus laws to establish the Joint Court of Justice, the Public Prosecutor's Offices and financial supervision.

(Source: St. Maarten Newspaper The Daily Herald)

5 March 2010