As the minister responsible for the Country Package, she should have known better.
It is truly the case that we have a minister who speaks hastily without verifying what she says. During the public meeting on the HOFA Kingdom Act, Minister Gerlien waved around the Audit Chamber’s report “At a Distance, Yet Close” from June 2024, which concerns the financial situation of Aruba’s state-owned enterprises. The minister claimed that no minister from the Wever-Croes Cabinet paid attention to the report and that only her colleague Geoffrey Wever had made any comment on it.
Attention has been given to this since 2022
What Mrs. Gerlien apparently does not know is that, already in 2022 under the Country Package framework, the then-Minister of Finance Mrs. Maduro commissioned PwC to prepare a report on the financial situation of six state-owned companies. She also tasked CARTAC, the IMF’s technical partner in the Caribbean, with investigating the risks that these companies may pose to the national budget. This report was presented at the end of 2023. When the Audit Chamber published its report in 2024, former Minister Maduro informed them that she shared their concerns and that attention had been directed to this matter since 2022.
This is the very work her own colleague is now benefiting from
It is this same work that led to the current policy on participations and dividends—policy that Minister Gerlien herself agreed to just days ago in the Council of Ministers, and which Minister Geoffrey is now boasting about in the press.
Choosing to attack others without seeking accurate information
Information about the work done by the Wever-Croes Cabinet on this topic was already reported in Aruban media. Yet Gerlien chose to burden a political opponent without verifying correct information. And to top it off, she herself is the minister responsible for the Country Package. What a sad display.
Press release: MEP