Costo total de construcción del dispositivo

The first research question that we will answer is: To what extent have the mandatory dualistic measures of the WolBES been implemented on the Caribbean public entities?

As we have seen, the WolBES is similar to the Local Government Act of 2002 in the Netherlands. As happened in the Netherlands, the implementation of the WolBES meant several institutional changes. After the elections on the BES special public entities on March 2011, the positional measures, such as Island commissioners no longer being seated on the Island council after instalment, were immediately put in effect.

With regards to the more facilitating measures that are intended to improve the position of the Island council, the WolBES dictated that certain measures, such as appointments, and ordinances had to be taken and/or implemented within a set period of time. These measures and deadlines were included within the WolBES.

These appointments and measures to be implemented were:

 The council Clerk

 The shared court of audit

 Civil servant assistance

 A code of conduct

 A participation ordinance

According to a report by the Kingdom representative in 2014 most of these measures were in effect (Rijksvertegenwoordiger Caribisch Nederland, 2014). We will go over each measure if they were implemented, at what time they were implemented and if applicable to what extent they have been implemented. We will look into the appointment of the Council Clerk in 7.1, review the status of the Shared court of audit in 7.2. Finally we look into the implementation of: civil servant assistance in 7.3; the code of conduct in 7.4 and the participation ordinance in 7.5.

7.1.

Council Clerk

To support the Island council in their controlling and framework setting tasks, the WolBES stipulated that the special public entities should appoint an Island council Clerk (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties, 2009) According to the WolBES, every public entity is obliged to appoint an Island council clerk introduced within a year of the enactment of the WolBES (articles 124 & 237 WolBES).

At the moment of this writing there was an appointed Island council clerk on all three Caribbean public entities. On Saba the Council Clerk was appointed on 1-10-2011, on Bonaire the Island council Clerk was appointed on 12-1-2012, and by February 2012 the appointment of an Island council Clerk on Sint Eustatius. The Kingdom representative noted that problems with the appointment of an Island council Clerk on Bonaire indicated that a clear procedure is something that needed more attention at the time (Rijksvertegenwoordiger voor de openbare lichamen Bonaire, 2012) (Rijksdienst Caribisch Nederland, 2014).

We will look more into attitudes regarding the Island council clerk when we look into the second research question.

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7.2.

Shared court of audit

Like the Island council Clerk, the implementation of a shared court of audit is meant to improve the controlling- and framework setting role of the Island council. This measure was to be implemented differently than in the Netherlands. While municipalities in the Netherlands had a choice between establishing a court of audit or an audit function for their own municipality, the Caribbean public entities were given no choice but to establish a shared court of audit. This was done for several reasons: It was meant to improve the sharing of knowledge between the Caribbean public entities; to not stress the civil servant capacity on a singular Caribbean public entity and to better guarantee the independency of the court of audit (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties, 2009). To that end the WolBES article 95 stipulated that 1 court of audit was to be jointly established by all three Caribbean public entities within two years after the implementation of the WolBES. All three public entities would have to appoint a member to the shared court for it to function.

There currently is an ordinance shared court of audit Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba and the three Caribbean public entities have taken steps to institutionally establish a shared court of audit and have taken necessary steps for its foundation (Rijksvertegenwoordiger Caribisch Nederland, 2014).

However the shared court of audit was not yet active as of 2016, it was repeatedly reported that the public entity of Saba had not appointed a member to the shared court of audit leaving it in institutional limbo (Griffie Eilandsraad Bonaire, 2015) (Griffie Eilandsraad Bonaire, 2017) (Algemene Rekenkamer, 2017).

7.3.

Assistance

The third mandatory implementation is that the Island council is obliged to establish an ordinance about the assistance of civil servants for Island council factions. This ordinance is to be adopted within one year after the enactment of the WolBES (articles 35 & 238 WolBES).

Bonaire implemented this on 16-10-2012, Saba implemented this on 22-08-2013 (Openbaar lichaam Saba, 2015) (Eilandsraad van het openbaar lichaam Bonaire, 2016) At the time of this writing there seemed no ordinance ready on Sint Eustatius, within the instruction for the Island council Clerk 2016 but there is a reference towards such an ordinance needing to be developed (ST. Eustatius Caribisch Nederland, 2016)

7.4.

Code of conduct

To further improve the practice of good governance and public perception on the Caribbean public entities, and provide a tool for the Island council to control the Executive Council, the Caribbean public entities were obliged to introduce a code of conduct for Island councilmembers, Island commissioners and Lt. Governor (Articles 16 sub 3, 53 sub 2 and 82 sub 2) within a year of the enactment of the WolBES (article 238). Such a code of conduct is not enforceable by law, but can be used as guideline on which public servants can be held politically accountable. As such, the public entities are free to determine the specific contents of such a code of conduct for themselves (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties, 2009).

All the Caribbean entities were reported to have a code of conduct that was implemented by December 2014 (Rijksvertegenwoordiger Caribisch Nederland, 2015) Bonaire its code of conduct publicized on its webpage (Openbaar Lichaam Bonaire, 2015) Sint Eustatius implemented the code of conduct in 2012 (Rijksvertegenwoordiger voor de openbare lichamen Bonaire, Sint Eustatius en Saba, 2015). The code of conduct on Saba reportedly exists, but was not findable in the publication channels.

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7.5.

Participation

As one of the ways to improve local democracy by involving the electorate, increasing citizen participation were recommended by the state commission. Measures to increase this were part of the local government act and were also stipulated in the WolBES. To that end the Island council was obligated to establish an ordinance stipulating how residents and stakeholders will be involved in the development- and execution of policy on the public entities. This ordinance was to be adopted within one year after the enactment of the WolBES (article 154 & Article 238 WolBES). Bonaire adopted this ordinance at 28-02-2012, Sint Eustatius at 16-08-2012 and Saba on 14-08-2013.

7.6.

Concluding

Regarding the question to what extent the measures of the WolBES had been implemented we can answer that formally al measures were implemented in the sense that institutionally all necessary work was done. While measures were often delayed, the representative of the Kingdom at the time assessed that perhaps the timeframe to implement the WolBES had been too ambitious (Rijksvertegenwoordiger voor de openbare lichamen Bonaire, 2012). Most measures were eventually implemented fully or to some extent. The Island council clerks were appointed by 2012 and all the mandatory measures were put into formal ordinances by all the Caribbean public entities by 2014. The shared court of audit was, at the time of this research, in practice not yet active. While formal arrangements were made, the Caribbean public entity of Saba had not yet appointed a member to the court of audit, which needed appointments from all three Caribbean public entities to become operational. This put the shared court of audit in institutional limbo.

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