Things have not been going well between the Dutch government and its former colony Curaçao. The problems started when home affairs minister Piet Hein Donner who is also responsible for kingdom relations asked former GroenLinks leader Paul Rosenmöller and former ING board member Cees Maas to investigate allegations of corruption on the island.

In 2010 the Caribbean island, the largest of the Antilles island group, was given autonomous status within the Dutch kingdom but under certain circumstances the Dutch government can still intervene in island’s governmental affairs.
Corruption
The main protagonists of the very public row on the island are prime minister Gerrit Schotte and the director of the island’s central bank Emsley Tromp, who are accusing each other of corruption.
Rosenmöller and Maas interviewed around forty officials for their report which came out at the beginning of October. It found that there are serious doubts about the integrity of the prime minster and that ‘several of the ministers would not have been nominated to their posts had they been properly screened beforehand’.
The report recommended government intervention if Curaçao does not install an independent commission to investigate the integrity of the ministers. A delegation of six parliamentary party chairmen this week visited the island this week to drive home the message.
Secret deals
Prime minister Schotte has rejected the report as ‘gossip mongering’ but since then other facts have come to light, notably through a leaked secret service memo published by Amigoe, one of the island’s papers this week.
It revealed that Schotte had been having ‘several affairs’ and ‘secret deals with money lenders on the island and abroad who are said to have ties with alleged mafia member and casino boss Francesco Corello in the island of St Maarten.’
Minister Abdul Nasser El Hakim is heavily in debt with local banks, according to the memo, and is alleged to be an active member of the Lebanon based Amal movement which has close ties with Hezbollah, Amigoe writes.
The question is: should the Netherlands intervene if Curaçao persists in its refusal to tackle the integrity of its government?
White finger
The Volkskrant asked Sheldry Osepa the minister plenipotentiary of Curaçao who warned Dutch MPs to be reticent. ‘We have to avoid pointing the white finger’, she said. ‘The parliament has debated the report for sixteen hours and has decided to support the government. (..) The Netherlands should let Curaçao mind its own business. There are plenty of capable people here to govern this country’.
Professor of Caribbean history Gert Oostindie sees things differently. ‘The Netherlands is right to have asked for an investigation. It would have been better if the politicians of Curaçao had initiated it themselves at an earlier stage. I don’t hold an opinion on the integrity of the ministers; I have not done an investigations and haven’t seen any proof. But an investigation is necessary, if only to clear their names’.
The paper also comments that the government should act. The relationship with the island has always been one of blowing hot and blowing cold, it writes. ‘It is now time for a cold blast’, it concludes.
Independence
Elsevier columnist Paul Lieben would like to see total independence for Curaçao. But, he writes, ‘It is probably that total chaos will ensue. The economic position of the islands is not good and the will to cooperate is almost non existent. The United States does not like to see trouble in its backyard and wants the Netherlands to keep a hand in.
The French model would be one to emulate, he writes. ‘Their overseas territories are little pieces of France with the same legal, political and governmental structures. It might be more expensive but it would stop the rot that characterises the relationship between the Netherlands and the former Dutch Antilles’.