THE HAGUE--The Kingdom Council of Ministers met on Friday, but it didn't take new measures against St. Maarten as was anticipated.

 

"We reviewed the integrity action plan for St. Maarten, which we are currently giving content to," said Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk afterwards. Representatives of his ministry BZK will be visiting St. Maarten next week to work out the details of this plan that serves to strengthen and increase the grip of The Hague on the justice sector.

 

Asked by the media whether this meant that there would be no new instruction, Plasterk repeated his words of earlier this week in a meeting with the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament: his strong preference was to execute the action plan to improve integrity "in cooperation and consensus" with St. Maarten.

 

But St. Maarten is not entirely off the hook, because the Kingdom Council of Ministers did set a time frame in which measures have to be taken to improve integrity and to implement the recommendations of the two recent integrity reports.

 

Plasterk didn't want to give details on the time frame, but he did say that "There should be no misconception that something had to happen soon," in any case before the end of this year when visible steps must have been taken.

 

The minister said the fact that St. Maarten currently has a government with a caretaker status did make it harder to get things done. Nevertheless, it is important to "take the bull by the horns," he said. "There is no doubt about that."

 

The Netherlands will be sending people to strengthen the island's judicial system, among others the Prosecutor's Office and the Kingdom Detective Team RST, and to establish a white collar crime unit with Dutch personnel.

Plasterk didn't want to say anything about the process to extensively screen the candidate prime minister and the ministers in St. Maarten. He said this process, which is taking place on the order of the Kingdom Government through an instruction issued on October 17 this year, was in the hands of St. Maarten Governor Eugene Holiday. "That is up to the Governor. He is responsible for the formation process," he said.

 

Aruba's Government finances were also discussed in Friday's Kingdom Council of Ministers meeting. Aruba earlier this month sent an adapted 2014 budget to the local Parliament and the Governor. Aruba will have complied with the July 14 instruction of the Kingdom Government when the Governor decides that he can sign off on a solid, realistic budget.

 

Plasterk said he was "hopeful" about the measures being taken in Aruba to reduce the government expenditures and to decrease the budget deficit, which amounted to more than 9 per cent this year. He hoped that a new instruction could be averted. But, he added, "The clock is ticking because this is the 2014 budget we are talking about."

 

As for St. Maarten's 2015 budget, of which the draft didn't receive the green light of the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT, and which has to be approved by December 15, Plasterk said he would leave this matter to the St. Maarten Government and CFT.

 

The minister will be visiting Bonaire and Curaçao from Monday November 17 to Wednesday November 19. The working visit focuses on children's rights and the (economic) cooperation within the Kingdom. Plasterk will have meetings with the local government representatives. In Curaçao, he will discuss cooperation in the area of maintenance of law and order, and safety.

 

The Daily Herald