Translated material
Independence with an old passport
New expanded autonomies have appeared on the world map
"We will have to build from scratch the basic institutions of parliamentary democracy, improve the justice system and improve financial management," Sarah Wescot-Williams and Eugene Holiday, respectively the prime minister and governor of the former Dutch autonomous region of Sint Maarten, said yesterday. A similar task faces the island of Curacao, which has also now received maximum powers in accordance with the declaration between the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles. It was signed in The Hague on September 10. The document granting the islands expanded autonomy came into force on October 10.The document determines that Curacao and Sint Martin will manage their own tax revenues, they will have their own common central bank and Supreme Court. But they will not be able to join the UN, since the Netherlands will continue to be in charge of their foreign policy and defense. Their residents will retain Dutch passports and their sovereign, Queen Beatrix. The population of Curaçao is 190 thousand people, and Sint Martin (located on the southern third of the island of Saint Martin, on whose northern part is the French overseas department of the same name) is 37 thousand. On the islands of Bonaire, Saba and Sint, which received the status of special municipalities of the Netherlands -Estatius is home to about 14 thousand people. They abandoned independence, albeit limited, in the referendums of 2000-2006.
All of these former colonies in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean have been moving towards expanded autonomy for a long time. The Netherlands Antilles (which included the island of Aruba) received the status of an “equal partner” within the Netherlands with its own parliament and cabinet of ministers in 1954. And in 1986, the island of Aruba set an example for Curacao and Sint Martin, becoming the first so-called independent state. He remained part of the kingdom, but at the same time introduced his own currency, pegged to the US dollar.
The official language of the former colonies remains Dutch, but the working languages are also English and Papiamento - a mixture of Spanish, Dutch, English and French. This is explained by the fact that the Lesser Antilles were discovered and named by the Spaniards in the 16th century, conquered by the Dutch in the 17th century, then they alternately passed to Spain, Great Britain and France, until in 1816 they became the possession of the crown of the Netherlands.