Committee buckles down to the parking of not-carried over tasks

January 15, 2009 5:53 AM

A small committee with members from the Netherlands and the Land Netherlands Antilles must come at the end of this month with a proposal on where to park the tasks that are not yet carried over to the new entities at the time of the official commencement of the new political status and the dismantling of the Land Netherlands Antilles.

At the end of August last year, the State Council (RvS) wrote a report on possibilities to accelerate the transition process to the new political relations between the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles, Curacao, and St. Maarten, with January 1, 2010 as target date. This was done, because holding new Parliament elections for the Land Netherlands Antilles is considered unrealistic if the Land is already dismantled.

The Netherlands Antilles agrees for the most part with this advice, but does not agree with the solution brought along for matters that are not yet carried over at the commencement of the new statuses. The RvS says that the remaining authorities of the Land Netherlands Antilles that are not yet carried over to both countries, ‘can be temporarily carried over to the Governor as body of the Kingdom, or to another qualified Kingdom body’. “Not following such approach, can lead to Curacao and St. Maarten getting their statuses of Land much later, with all the consequences for the entire transition process”, stated the report.

The Netherlands Antilles formulated a counter advice that is until now not yet discussed with the Netherlands, says Prime Minister Emily de Jongh-Elhage (PAR) on being asked. That must be done before the steering committee of next month.

Premier De Jongh-Elhage mentioned during the press conference of the Council of Ministers that everything must be ready on March 26. The Parliament elections for the Netherlands Antilles are still held in the beginning of January, but the installation date is on March 26. With these argumentations, a recent planning of the ministry of BZK for the legislation products of the BES, will also be within the attainable. According to this planning, the last link in the parliamentary trajectory regarding the most important legislation, is no later than February 15, 2010; the moment when according to the schedule, the Upper House must have given her final approval for the WolBES laws, the financial relations BES, Electoral Law, and IBES.

(Source: National newspaper Amigoe)

11 January, 2009