THE HAGUE - The Parliaments of Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten will have an extra week to submit their questions and comments on the draft Consensus Kingdom Act for the establishment of the Caribbean Body for Reform and Development (COHO).
During the Interparliamentary Kingdom Consultation, the members of the Dutch delegation promised their Caribbean fellow parliamentarians in the corridors to make every effort to move the deadline from 13 to 20 May. The Parliaments parties have urged a postponement: they want to include in their response what was discussed about COHO during the interparliamentary consultations (IpKo). This also applies to the Dutch factions of VVD, D66, CDA, ChristenUnie and Fractie Den Haan present in Philipsburg, Sint Maarten.
The postponement will almost certainly lead to months of delay. It seems impossible that the four governments will agree on the answers to the undoubtedly many questions, especially from the Caribbean side, before the Kingdom Council of Ministers on 25 May. The question is whether these can be answered to the satisfaction of the Parliaments at all. After the technical briefing on Wednesday by Dutch officials, they started to think anything but more positively about COHO.
The consensus envisaged by The Hague seems further away than ever. At the same time, there is reportedly also increasing doubt on the Dutch side whether the construction (devised under former Secretary of State Knops) is the right way to make Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten "more resilient" against future crises.