Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
Parliament's Permanent Committee for Inter-Parliamentary Affairs and Kingdom Relations hastily approved three questions for the Council of State about the Kingdom Government giving instructions to Governors in the Dutch Caribbean (see related article). The deadline for such was actually Monday, after it already had been extended at the request of Aruba and St. Maarten.
As there was much objection to recent instructions on both these islands, one might have expected a bit more urgency from their respective legislatures in dealing with this matter. Independent (former US Party) parliamentarian and coalition member Leona Marlin-Romeo was therefore right on the mark with her call to act more swiftly on pressing issues in the future.
The enquiries to be added to those of the Second Chamber in The Hague and Aruba themselves make sense and require no further debate. Whether the answers will make any difference in the end remains to be seen, also because the Council's advice is not binding.
The only thing perhaps missing is what would happen if governors were to ignore such an order or certain aspects because – as formal heads of the local government – they consider it not to be in the "national" interest of the country or unlawful. After all, that's reportedly exactly what occurred regarding the involvement of officials from the Netherlands with the screening of proposed minsters in St. Maarten.
Not that it probably made a big difference, because the process was still so stringent that several well-respected candidates failed to qualify. However, some suggest that experience is behind the current "my way or no way" stance taken by the Rutte cabinet on the Integrity Chamber.
Ultimately it is always better to reach agreement on working together rather than imposing things, for obvious reasons. The Advisory Council and any future dispute resolution body really should be a last resort, if kingdom partners could just learn to get along.
