The Implosion of the Netherlands Antilles

• Author: Lammert de Jong
• Pages: 24-44

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- GOVERNANCE IN THE NON-INDEPENDENT CARIBBEAN -

The Implosion of the

Netherlands Antilles

LAMMERT DE JONG

INTRODUCTION

How to understand the disintegration of the Dutch Caribbean? What

is it about? The extended statehood of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

comprising three countries – the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles,

and Aruba – will be reordered. If all goes as agreed, the Netherlands

Antilles will cease to exist as a separate country from 2010. Curaçao and

St Maarten will acquire country status within the Kingdom of the

Netherlands, just as Aruba did in 1986, though theirs will be of a different

status and with less autonomy. The islands Bonaire, St Eustatius and

Saba, the so called BES islands will be integrated into the Netherlands

as public authorities (openbare lichamen); as such the BES islands will be

administered by the Netherlands while retaining local government

functions (just as municipalities in the Netherlands). These reforms are

laid out in a range of formal agreements between the Netherlands Antilles,

the various island governments, and the Netherlands.1

The outlines of the reforms are:

• The Netherlands Antilles will come to an end; as a country

comprising five islands it will be discontinued.

• The public debt of the Netherlands Antilles and of the island

governments (Euro 2.3 billion, which amounts to Euro 13,000

per capita) will be forgiven in large measure to facilitate good

governance in the new statehood order.

• A College of Financial Supervision will be set up for the new

countries Curaçao and St Maarten as well as for the BES islands.

The Kingdom will appoint its members. Public borrowing will

be limited.

2.

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- THE IMPLOSION OF THE NETHERLANDS ANTILLES -

• The Netherlands Minister of Justice will have the authority to

set out policy as well as specific directions with regard to

upholding the rule of law in the countries of Curaçao and St

Maarten.

How to understand these changes? Why create a country status for

Curaçao, especially in view of its social and educational problems, high

levels of crime and trade of drugs, and an insurmountable public debt?

Equally, St Maarten’s upgrade to country status coincides with an

alarming report on money laundering, the drug trade, and casino bosses

running the island’s economy and trying to corrupt local government

(WODC, 2007). Moreover, integration – rather than disintegration –

seems to be the message for small states, independent or not, in order to

survive in an ever more competitive global world. However, the question

can also be turned around. What has allowed the configuration of the

Netherlands Antilles to last more than 50 years, with the incidental

exception of Aruba’s status aparte (separate status) in 1986?2 After all,

this configuration was a colonial legacy. Colonial rule came to an end

with the Charter of 1954, which enacted a constitutional partnership.

The charter bestowed country status on a collection of islands; some

close together, some over 900 km apart – an artificial gathering, not a

nation which was rooted in local aspirations. More than a trace of truth

is contained in an Antillean maxim that the Netherlands Antilles only exists

in the Netherlands. Was this configuration ever really viable? In retrospect,

the concept of an Antillean nation-state, stringing six islands together,

offered the Netherlands an easy way out of its post-colonial plight in the

Dutch Caribbean. This configuration provided the offices of the Kingdom

in far away Europe with a Caribbean intermediary, the Netherlands

Antilles, to administer six islands that were very different in size, character

and outlook. More than 50 years after its creation as an autonomous

nation-state within the realm of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the

demise of the Netherlands Antilles now seems to be the critical component

to validate the essential safeguards which the Kingdom had promised all

along to the Dutch Caribbean.