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The Dutch government is not planning to make the Kingdom Charter part of the evaluation of the constitutional status of countries Curaçao and St. Maarten, and of the public entities Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba. This writes The Daily Herald. Dutch Minister of Safety and Justice Ivo Opstelten, also on behalf of his colleague of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk, informed the First and Second Chambers of the Dutch Parliament on Wednesday that involving the Charter in any of the three evaluations was not the case.
The First Chamber had asked Minister Plasterk earlier this year to look at the possibilities of involving the Charter in the process to formulate the setup and order of the constitutional evaluation, which takes place next year. Opstelten explained that three separate evaluations would be taking place as part of the general exercise to analyse the new constitutional relations that went into effect on October 10, 2010, when the Netherlands Antilles was dismantled as a country. It concerns an evaluation of the new constitutional structure of the Caribbean Netherlands islands Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba, an evaluation of the justice Kingdom laws and an evaluation of Kingdom Law on financial supervision. This latter evaluation still had to start. Committees have already been appointed to start the first two evaluations. “Involving the Charter in those evaluations is not the issue. Talks at the Kingdom Conference held earlier this year about possible bottlenecks of the Charter made clear that only the lacking of an annulment arrangement of the consensus Kingdom laws were [then – Ed.] a problem for Curaçao and St. Maarten,” stated Opstelten. The minister kept the door for discussions on the Charter slightly ajar. He stated that parties would have to decide whether there were consequences
for the Charter if the evaluations indeed showed that there were bottlenecks.
In his letter, Opstelten gave an explanation of the process of the evaluation of the justice Kingdom laws, which should be completed before October 10, 2015. The Evaluation Committee Judicial Kingdom Laws has been established, chaired by former President of the College of Attorneys General of the Netherlands Harm Brouwer and Managing Director at the Advisory Services of KPMG Dutch Caribbean and Suriname Raymond Begina of Curaçao.
The Committee will evaluate four Kingdom Laws: the Kingdom Law Joint Court of Justice, the Kingdom Law Public Prosecutor’s Offices of Curaçao, St. Maarten and of Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba, the Kingdom Law Police of Curaçao, St. Maarten and of Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba, and the Kingdom Law Council for the Maintenance of Law and Order (Raad voor Rechtshandhaving).
