Aruba Supports Separate Status For St Maarten
by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London
10 November 2004

Aruba will support St Maarten’s bid for country status on the condition that new relations do not have an adverse affect on Aruba's own position, according to Edwin Jacobs, leader of the MEP faction in Aruba’s Parliament.

“We will vote to change the Charter for St. Maarten as long as those changes are structural changes and not changing of the content,” Jacobs stated in a recent visit to St Maarten, which was reported on by the Daily Herald newspaper.

“We will not vote for Aruba to have less autonomy. We will vote for St. Maarten to have the same autonomy as we have. Not less than we and not at our account,” he added.

The islands of the Netherland Antilles are currently undergoing a constitutional shake-up, as the findings of a commission headed by former Antillean governor Edsel Jesurun, which were leaked to the media last month, recommended that the islands of Curacao and St Maarten should be made autonomous countries within the Dutch Kingdom, alongside Aruba.

Meanwhile, the report suggested that the remaining three islands in the Netherland Antilles - Saba, Bonaire and St. Eustatius - should be brought under the direct control of the Dutch government in The Hague.