The new government of Curaçao has accepted Dutch supervision of economic reforms it is expected to carry out as part of a COVID-19 rescue plan.
Parties led by Gilmar Pisas won the election in March on a promise to oppose supervision.
The now-prime minister defended his about-face by arguing Curaçao’s back was “against the wall.”
Which was the same argument his predecessor, Eugene Rhuggenaath, made in the election campaign, when Pisas rejected it. (more…)
Two days after parliamentary elections in the European Netherlands, voters on Curaçao, one of the three autonomous Dutch islands in the Caribbean, went to the polls on Friday.
The result was a resounding victory for the populist Movement for the Future of Curaçao (MFK), led by Gilmar Pisas, which won nine out of 21 seats in the island Estates. (more…)
The Dutch government has intervened on Curaçao to break what it described as an “antidemocratic” impasse on the island.
The government of what is nominally an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands had requested the intervention to reconstitute the island legislature. “At the moment,” Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath said earlier this week, “democracy isn’t functioning on Curaçao as it should be.”
All ten opposition lawmakers refused to attend virtual meetings of the Estates, denying the ruling parties, who also have ten seats, a quorum to swear in a tie-breaking deputy: Emmilou Capriles, who succeeds Jeser El Ayoubi.
The Dutch government has now appointed Capriles by decree.
The same opposition lawmakers tried to use the death of a ruling party lawmaker to bring down the government last summer. They failed, but not before encouraging riots. (more…)
Aruba and Curaçao have agreed to liberalize their economies in order to qualify for continued financial support from the European Netherlands, without which the islands would almost certainly go bankrupt.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought tourism, on which the islands depend, close to a standstill.
Sint Maarten, the third autonomous Dutch island in the Caribbean, has yet to meet the terms of Dutch aid, which include cutting public-sector salaries by 12.5 to 25 percent. (more…)
Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are closing in on a deal with the European Netherlands for hundreds of millions of euros in support to cope with the impact of COVID-19.
The sticking point in negotiations has been the Netherlands’ insistence that Dutch officials would carry out and monitor economic reforms on which the bailout is conditioned; a demand Caribbean leaders argue is incompatible with their autonomy.
Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath of Curaçao, the largest of the three self-governing islands, told lawmakers this week that a compromise is at hand.
The Dutch supervisors would remain, but any decisions they take that affect spending and taxes would need to be ratified by the island legislatures.
The government of Curaçao would also be consulted on the appointment of one of the three supervisors.
Antilliaans Dagblad reports that a majority of lawmakers on Curaçao could agree to those terms.
But Raymond Knops, the Dutch state secretary for the interior, sounded less optimistic on Tuesday, when he told parliamentarians in The Hague that the three islands are currently unable to “bear” their autonomy. (more…)
Time is running out for the autonomous Dutch islands in the Caribbean to do a deal with their former colonizer.
Coronavirus has brought tourism, the mainstay of the island economies, close to a standstill. Tax revenue has dried up while unemployment has soared. Without support from the European Netherlands, the governments of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten will run out of money in weeks.
The Dutch are willing to help, but only if the islands accept temporary Dutch administrators to manage reforms. For most of the Caribbean politicians, this goes too far. (more…)
Weeks of political deadlock on Curaçao have been broken with the swearing-in of Shaheen Elhage as lawmaker. He succeeds William Millerson, who died in June.
Millerson’s death had reduced the government to ten out of 21 seats in the island’s legislature. Opposition parties refused to attend Elhage’s inauguration, denying the ruling parties a quorum. They are unhappy with cuts and reforms the government is enacting to qualify for financial support from the Netherlands.
One opposition lawmaker, Marilyn Moses, did attend parliament on Monday.
The other nine, seven of whom want independence from the Netherlands, still didn’t show. (more…)
The government of the Aruba, a Dutch island in the Caribbean, has presented a five-point plan to restructure its tourism-dependent economy, which has been decimated by COVID-19.
Meanwhile on neighboring Curaçao, pro-independence parties are boycotting the inauguration of a pro-government lawmaker, bringing politics on the island to a standstill.
The two islands, and Sint Maarten, are autonomous countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and have yet to approve Dutch terms for financial support to cope with the effects of coronavirus. (more…)
The prime ministers of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten have turned down conditions to qualify for as much as €1 billion in coronavirus aid from the European Netherlands. A cabinet meeting in The Hague on Friday, which the leaders of the three islands attended, failed to produce a compromise.
The Dutch have proposed appointing a three-person panel to oversee reforms to which the aid is tied. The Caribbean islands consider this an infringement of their autonomy.
Eugene Rhuggenaath, the prime minister of Curaçao, went so far as to accuse The Hague of having “an agenda for the takeover and control” of the islands, echoing the rhetoric of pro-independence parties that supported violent protests against spending cuts two weeks ago, which prompted the Dutch to deploy troops to support the local police. (more…)
The Netherlands is deploying troops to Curaçao, one of the kingdom’s islands in the Caribbean, following several days of rioting and unrest.
The decision was taken with local police, who announced that, as a result of the deployment, a two-day curfew could be lifted on Friday. (more…)
Politicians in the Dutch Caribbean have reluctantly agreed to spending reductions and reforms to qualify for €370 million in financial support from the European Netherlands:
With their tourism-dependent economies in free fall due to the outbreak of coronavirus disease, the leaders of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten felt they had no choice but to agree to what Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath of Curaçao called “unrealistic demands” and John Leerdam, a former Labor Party politician, who was born on Curaçao, called a “diktat” from The Hague.
But the terms (which do not apply to emergency food and health-care aid) still fall short of the more thorough and long-term reforms Dutch governments, of the left and right, have advised for years, in some cases decades:
The Dutch Caribbean have been caught up in a legal dispute between the American oil company ConocoPhillips and the government of Venezuela.
A judge has allowed Conoco to seize Venezuelan-owned and -operated refineries on the islands in order to collect $2 billion in compensation awarded by the International Chamber of Commerce for the 2007 nationalization of Conoco assets in the socialist-run country.
The seizure poses a “potential crisis” to the economy of Curaçao, Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath has told Reuters. The Isla refinery, which processes 335,000 barrels of oil per day, accounts for a tenth of the island’s economy. (more…)
Former Curaçaoan prime minister Gerrit Schotte has lost the election on the island, avoiding a standoff with the European Netherlands, which is loath to work with the corrupt politician.
Schotte’s populist Movement for the Future of Curaçao (MFK) gained one seat in the island’s legislature on Friday, winning five seats altogether, but mainstream parties did better.
The liberal Party for the Restructured Antilles (PAR) and the social democratic Partido MAN won a majority between them. They can now govern alone, although they may add one or two small parties to round out a coalition. (more…)
The Dutch government has given extraordinary powers to the governor of Curaçao to allow elections to go forward on the island despite opposition from its ruling parties.
Lucille George-Wout, who nominally represents the Dutch king, has been given authority over public services to make sure the elections can proceed.
It is the first time the Netherlands has intervened so overtly in the politics of the Caribbean island since it became self-governing in 1954.
Dutch interior minister Ronald Plasterk justified the move, saying election workers had been threatened with dismissal for organizing the vote.
“It is of the utmost importance that the people of Curaçao can have free and fair elections about the future of the island,” he said. (more…)
