Unfortunately, this time IPKO did not provide the opportunity to debate or deepen the issues

The IPKO meetings began in the Netherlands and the opening took place in Nieuwspoort. There, the leaders of the delegations of the Caribbean countries and the leader of the Dutch delegation gave presentations on the latest developments in the four countries. Parliament Speaker Edgar Vrolijk spoke at the first start of the IPKO meetings in the Netherlands.

The speaker of the parliament expressed hope for good relations and constructive meetings in the coming days during the meetings in the Netherlands. In this way the strongest ties between the islands and the Netherlands were created. However, this time the IPKO meetings do not give them the possibility to debate or give more depth to conversations on other topics and parliament president Edgar vrolijk personally believes that this is a missed opportunity.

In 2020 Aruba suffered from a global pandemic and requested assistance under article 66 of the statute. Aruba received this aid in the form of a loan, in the form of COHO and RAFT. The COHO was later transformed into an onderlingeregeling system. Aruba has to deal with the RAFT, a rikswet consensus that the Netherlands put forward that Aruba should repay the money it received during the pandemic. We need to be clear that Aruba did not receive the 916 million as a gift but as a pandemic loan that the Netherlands will benefit from paying.

When we go back to Article 66 of the statute, I ask myself if we give the spirit of the law or the rules. A consensus rijkswet proposed to keep the interest rate low on the pandemic loan while we work for more than 5 years via national decree based on a protocol that I consider humiliating, according to Aruba’s parliament speaker Edgar Vrolijk.

I wanted to mention two aspects, the legal basis for RAFT and a beautiful speech by Prime Minister Mark Rutte on the past of slavery. The statute provides for two types of state law, compulsory state law and consensus state law. The binding law of the Kingdom regulates one or more of the Kingdom’s affairs, a consensual law of the Kingdom regulating a matter that does not belong to the Kingdom’s affairs, but to each country’s own autonomous affairs.

This starting point is that it should be a universally binding regulation that is valid in more than one country. Because these rules, which are valid only in one country, would have to be established on the basis of their own constitutional rules, as in the Netherlands by law and Aruba, St. Maarten and Curacao by country regulation.