Doran: Soul Beach left for Curacao, questions over public funds remain

GREAT BAY--The recent confirmation that the Soul Beach Music Festival has officially relocated to Curaçao for its 2026 edition has sparked renewed calls for financial accountability from Member of Parliament (MP) Egbert Doran. While the festival’s departure follows a “homecoming” year in St. Maarten, the MP is raising concerns that the move leaves behind more questions than answers regarding the management of public funds.

MP Doran noted that while he welcomes new initiatives and believes in the potential of the “Orange Economy” to diversify the island’s tourism product, such events must be anchored in proper planning and fiscal transparency to be sustainable. He suggested that the current situation is a direct result of a lack of a clear roadmap.

“We are now in February 2026, yet the 2025 Budget Amendment, the document in which the expenditure for Soul Beach should have been reflected according to the government, has still not come to Parliament,” MP Doran stated. “We are essentially being asked to trust a financial process that remains invisible to the people’s representatives, while the event has already packed up and moved to a neighboring island.”

A primary point of contention for the MP is the status of the Social Economic Council (SER) report. While the report has been completed, the MP pointed out that the Minister has failed to present it to Parliament as promised.

“The Minister promised that a meeting on the SER report would take place as far back as November 2025,” Doran explained. “To date, that report has not been presented to Parliament by the Minister, and no meeting has been called. We are operating in a data vacuum where the only measure of success we have is a verbal assurance that the country ‘made millions.’”

Further adding to the frustration, MP Doran highlighted that when Members of Parliament requested an overview of all advice and documents pertaining to Soul Beach, they were denied access under the guise of “confidentiality.” He noted that this excuse is particularly troubling given that Parliament has a well established confidential route, often involving the Secretariat, through which MPs can legally and securely view sensitive documents to fulfill their oversight duties.

The MP argued that if the government’s over $700,000 investment was as successful as claimed, the data should be readily available for public scrutiny. Specifically, MP Doran is seeking a summarized analysis of:

• Visitor and Hospitality Metrics: A side by side comparison of airport passenger arrivals and hotel occupancy rates for May 2024 versus May 2025 to determine how much “new” traffic was actually generated.

• Fiscal Returns: A clear look at Turnover Tax (TOT) and other government revenues collected during the festival period in 2025 compared to the same period in 2024.

“These checks and balances are what give a true indication of success and can be used to make future events more successful,” the MP stated. “Without this data, we are just spending public funds on a feeling. The festival has moved on to Curaçao, but the responsibility for accountability remains here. We cannot continue to spend public funds on the promise of success without ever seeing the receipts. The people deserve to see the data that justifies the investment.”

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