THE HAGUE - Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten do not have to count on new liquidity support from the Netherlands as long as they continue to refuse to give their blessing to the amended consensus kingdom law for the establishment of the Caribbean Body for Reform and Development (COHO).
The governments of the three countries have put their heels in the sand after an official agreement was reached in December. “We have made agreements and they must be fulfilled,” said Undersecretary Raymond Knops after the Kingdom Council of Ministers today, which lasted much longer than usual, but did not bring the parties closer together.
Ministers Plenipotentiary have been given the message to their governments that there is no renegotiation. “We are not going back in time. We've been talking about it for a year and a half. I want to speed things up,” said Knops. The stalemate means that the bill still cannot be presented to parliaments for consideration.
Without a COHO law, the three countries await tough negotiations about the extension of the (interest-free) corona loan (so far more than 2 billion guilders). They expire on April 1. January 21 is the next Kingdom Council of Ministers. Until that date, the money tap in The Hague will remain closed.