That the Kingdom Relations Committee of the Second Chamber of Parliament in The Netherlands asked about assistance to the Dutch Caribbean due to the COVID-19 crisis is most welcome. The Kingdom Council of Ministers meets in The Hague today, Friday, and some decision on support for the vulnerable islands with limited resources facing huge socioeconomic consequences is anxiously awaited.
Because the reality is that while people and businesses in the Netherlands including Bonaire, St, Eustatius and Saba (the BES islands) have known for more than a week what to expect from government and already started registering to benefit from it, that is by no means yet the case for their co-citizens of Aruba, Curaçao and St. Maarten.
Locally, Finance Minister Ardwell Irion has presented some basic points of his stimulus plan, while the employers’ organisations and largest private sector labour union submitted a proposal of their own. The continuation of a Central Committee of Parliament meeting on the matter had been scheduled in Philipsburg on Monday; however, behind closed doors.
A plenary session with the same topic was to follow on Wednesday, but did not take place. Instead, the faction leaders agreed to submit questions in writing, to which the answers will be shared with the public.
Little is also known about the amount requested from the Netherlands that will obviously to a large extent determine what can be done. Minister of Kingdom Relations Raymond Knops had said this would be based on an analysis by the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Whether that process has been completed is not clear either.
As stated earlier, the most effective negotiating strategy might have been for the three autonomous countries within the kingdom to jointly present a similar package to that of the Dutch government and ask for the means to implement such. It would be hard not to allow their Dutch nationals the same kind of help those in Europe and the overseas public entities are getting.
After all, that is what true solidarity looks like.
