The Romeo-Marlin Cabinet has called a press conference for Monday to discuss the consequences of not passing the 2019 budget. Parliament adopted a proposal of order by the National Alliance (NA)/United St. Maarten Party (US Party) opposition to hold off on handling the obviously already quite overdue draft budget in a plenary session to get more time to study last-minute adjustments based on advice of the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT.
Coalition member Luc Mercelina of United Democrats supported the move, despite his faction colleague and Parliament President Sarah Wescot-Williams having earlier denied such a written request by Rolando Brison (US Party) and Jurendy Doran (NA), saying the legislative process could not be delayed any longer.
She argued that the elected representatives had had enough opportunity to go over the document, while changes to meet CFT’s requirements are clearly marked. Pushing forward the meeting until after the upcoming Inter-Parliamentary Kingdom Consultation IPKO in the Netherlands to early July would place it in the annual summer recess as well.
The majority nevertheless decided to do so, even though approval is highly necessary to get much needed continued liquidity support from the Netherlands to cover this year’s envisioned deficit of some NAf. 70 million. That the Dutch government also demanded that parliamentarians in Philipsburg take a 10 per cent pay cut as the ministers did before might have something to do with it.
Curaçao is expecting a budgetary instruction from the Kingdom Council of Ministers on Friday (see related story) and St. Maarten may not be far behind. That would mean direct intervention by The Hague including cost-cutting and/or income-raising steps.
Other less-than-positive scenarios could be a stop to the liquidity support or even the Dutch-sponsored Recovery Trust Fund managed by the World Bank. One could say a few weeks more already six months into the year is not going to make that big of a difference, but the whole idea was for the added measures to have an impact on at least the entire third and fourth quarters.
The question is whether this postponement will prove to be a service or disservice to the country.
