This article was printed as on opinion blog here:
https://dossierkoninkrijksrelaties.nl/2024/05/18/column-waardevol/, it’s supposed to be prickly, and I found it of great interest since the Netherlands has been struggling to form a government for the past months, in view of the country’s shift to the right! It also illustrates how dysfunctional politics are everywhere. And sheds light on Dutch attitudes towards the islands, who are generally ungrateful for Dutch generosity and protection.
How often must Wilders — Geert Wilders is a Dutch ring-wing politician who has led the Party for Freedom (PVV) since he founded it in 2006 — have cursed the person who, more than four centuries ago, made the costly mistake of assuming that those islands in the Caribbean Sea were valuable and decided to establish the Dutch West India Company?
Just a few years ago, the PVV leader valued them at 1 euro. And now, to become the boss of The Hague, he has signed an ‘outline agreement’ which includes the sentence that “The Netherlands considers the Caribbean part of the Kingdom valuable.”
That must have been hard to swallow, thanks to the WIC, the motherland is saddled with a money-consuming headache dossier that – as a deserved punishment, that’s true – it will never get rid of.
The qualification ‘valuable’ – hidden in 25 pages full of unsavory symbolic politics and financially or legally unfeasible promises – is at best a lie to prevent those in the West from feeling preemptively slighted by the bizarre cabinet-in-the-making of PVV, BBB, VVD, and NSC. Because what could you – from a Dutch merchant perspective – find valuable about the former colonies?
That the kingdom relations are not a source of unmitigated joy becomes clear when you look at this week’s harvest. State Secretary Van Huffelen sent the results of a thorough evaluation of the cooperation to the House of Representatives. And what – surprise surprise – turns out? There are serious doubts about the efficiency of the hundreds of millions that the Netherlands pumps annually into the autonomous countries of Curaçao, Aruba, and Sint Maarten. Despite a Kingdom Act, ceremonially signed protocols, and other solemn promises, financial management by the countries has not improved.
The Financial Supervision Board…
The Financial Supervision Board could fill a large warehouse with ignored advice. On Aruba, the ruling party MEP does not shy away from sidelining the principles of parliamentary democracy to prevent a majority in the parliament from saying yes to opening civil marriage to same-sex couples.
A disastrous victory, because in a few weeks, the Supreme Court will order the governments of Aruba (and Curaçao) to allow same-sex marriage. Which does not guarantee the observance of other basic human rights, but that’s beside the point.
In Curaçao, Finance Minister Javier Silvania launched an attack on the General Audit Chamber. It had dared to make a critical note in the 2022 Annual Report about an irregularity of more than half a billion: over 300 million was spent more and 200 million received less than budgeted. In his usual manner – via Facebook – the minister ordered the supposedly independent Audit Chamber to retract the criticism. Not that institutions are infallible: this week, the former president of the Central Bank of the Netherlands Antilles stood trial on suspicion of embezzlement. In Sint Maarten, the loss of the elections for the ‘eternal’ ruling parties National Alliance and United People’s Party is so bitter that they are sabotaging the installation of two Members of Parliament who are supposed to fill the seats of their party members who moved to the cabinet.
Three times the new opposition has thrown sand in the parliamentary engine, so now we are waiting for an order from the governor or else a court case. Perhaps the overseas politicians should consult rule of law expert Pieter Omtzigt. This certainly applies to the members of the Island Council of Bonaire.
They flouted their own rules by appointing a clerk and an interim acting clerk with one stroke of the hammer and extending the appointment of the current interim clerk. At the same time, the Island Council received a scolding from Van Huffelen that the previously established budget amendment is not legally valid due to procedural errors.
Perhaps the recently awakened Inspection & Enforcement Service should focus its arrows on local politics instead of pestering entrepreneurs. Bonaire has more to answer for: there, Geert Wilders ran into Ronald Plasterk during his vacation last year, possibly in a Speedo-clad body.
In the presence of their wives, an animated dinner followed, which led to Plasterk’s promotion to informant. And now he is Wilders’ favorite for the premiership. (Not anymore.)
Apparently, their past gross insults to each other have been forgiven and forgotten. Plasterk once tweeted that VVD and CDA should be ashamed to have Wilders as a supporter. And Wilders called Plasterk, among other things, an ‘amateur’.
Plasterk earned that last title with two unimpressive ministerships, which earned him the titles ‘minister of parties and parties’ and ‘minister of empty boxes’. D66 leader Pechtold called him the minister against Kingdom Relations because he constantly quarreled with the islands. More officials can be blamed for that, but the fact is that show-off Plasterk has completely failed in the area of kingdom relations.
Symbolic of this is the photo of his escape via the back door of the Administrative Office in Bonaire because he was scared by a handful of noisy but peaceful demonstrators. Whether the Netherlands will actually get a coward (and also an unrivaled vain) as prime minister is still uncertain. Plasterk is under investigation for allegedly enriching himself by cashing in on a patent that does not belong to him and thus pocketing 32 million. And if the Plasterk Cabinet does soon stand on the steps of the palace, the opposition can always hire the Statian politician Clyde van Putten to make life difficult for the new prime minister
The last paragraph, while entertaining, is redundant now Plaskerk has “retracted” his availability for prime minister but it shows that we are in trouble from both ends of the ocean.
