SXMElections.com

THE HAGUE/PHILIPSBURG--St. Maarten's caretaker Prime Minister Sarah Wescot-Williams confirmed in a letter to the Dutch Government on Monday that St. Maarten will not cooperate to execute the instruction given to Governor Eugene Holiday to hold off on the ratification of the appointment of the next Council of Ministers until after a profound screening of the candidate ministers.

In her letter, addressed to President of the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament Anouchka van Miltenburg and sent also to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk, Wescot-Williams outlined the reasons the St. Maarten Council of Ministers considers the instruction null and void.

According to the Council of Ministers, the instruction of October 17, 2014, secured in a Royal Decree, was in violation of the law, including the Kingdom Charter. Moreover, the handling of the Kingdom Council of Ministers was deemed to be in violation of the principles of good governance.

"The instruction lacks a decent factual substantiation and shows arbitrariness," stated Wescot-Williams, pointing out that the Netherlands had used its predominance in the Kingdom Council of Ministers to have the instruction approved. As such the instruction is the "reaction of the will of the Netherlands," she stated.

The Kingdom Government infringed on St. Maarten's autonomous position in the Kingdom. Wescot-Williams said the instruction showed that the autonomy of the countries and the right to self-determination secured in the Charter was "unmasked" to be a "farce." She reminded the Dutch Government that in the Kingdom St. Maarten was supposed to be a country equal to the Netherlands.

St. Maarten has its own screening regulations, which she said were at least equal to or even more stringent than those in other countries. This makes the justification to give an instruction – that in the opinion of The Hague the screening process was too modest – unjust, stated Wescot-Williams.

The decision-taking process in the Kingdom Council of Ministers was unjust for two reasons: St. Maarten was unable to prepare duly for the October 17 meeting due to the time difference of six hours, and the agreement to seek the advice of the Council of State of the Kingdom was "circumvented" by issuing the instruction as a Royal Decree instead of a General Measure of the Kingdom Government.

Wescot-Williams was critical of Minister Plasterk's role in the process. She said this minister had not kept his earlier promise that no measures would be taken if the St. Maarten Government responded adequately to the recommendations of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) integrity report. She said Parliamentary elections had been held in August this year and that integrity was high on the agenda of the next government.

According to Wescot-Williams, the Netherlands put the Governor of St. Maarten in an "untenable position" by forcing him, as representative of the Kingdom, to take action in conflict with the Governor's authority as representative of the Country St. Maarten. This leads to political and state-of-law tensions the Netherlands should have prevented, she said.

The Royal Decree instructing the Governor to impose a profound screening before the appointment of the candidate ministers exceeds the Governor's authorities. A Royal Decree may never be in conflict with the Kingdom Charter, which is a higher law, Wescot-Williams said.

The instruction also was premature, because the law already provides for a decision of the Governor to refuse the ratification of the appointment of candidate ministers when there are objections based on their qualifications that have come up in the regular screening process.

Wescot-Williams further pointed out that the instruction did not define the additional concrete measures the Kingdom Government wanted the Governor to execute. "It is even unclear as to whether objective dependable sources will be used, which in fact makes the instruction unlimited," she stated.

The Royal Decree furthermore was in violation of the European Human Rights Treaty, the Charter of the United Nations and the international treaty that regulates civil and political rights, because it aimed at intervening without legal basis in the personal privacy of the candidate ministers. It also excluded those candidate ministers who did not want to cooperate with the extended screening from being appointed to a public position.

The October 17 instruction and its execution will be discussed in a debate of the Second Chamber on November 12, two days before the Kingdom Council of Ministers convenes again in The Hague on November 14 to talk about integrity and the Justice System in St. Maarten.