10-10-10: What’s the Scorecard 16 years After?

The island’s Philosopher of Humor, Fernando Clark, likes to challenge his audience sometimes with this riddle: “Who rules an empire?” The crowd would respond”, “An emperor, of course.”

“Who rules a Kingdom?” Again the crowd would reply, “A king, for sure.”  

“Then, who rules a country?”

A moment of silence. Many would begin to crack their brains. A president? A governor? A prime minister? The pattern established by the riddle leads to a different, unexpected and hilarious answer. When the audience eventually gets it, the hall would erupt into a prolonged fit of laughter.

Agreed, some politicians would probably not find the joke funny at all. No problem. But the poignant point of the riddle has been made: the idea of a “country within a country” is ridiculous to the point of insanity. That is my interpretation of the joke.

The Illusion of Autonomy

On October 10, 2010 ("10/10/10"), St.  Martin (South) became a so-called “autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.” Since then the territory has been called “Country Sint Maarten” (as if there’s a “country Aruba,” “country Curacao” or even “country Netherlands”!) A more recent description that is making the rounds refers to the territory as “a constituent country within the Kingdom.” All of this just goes to show that naming in St. Martin has always been and continues to be problematic.

But no matter how we choose to call the territory, the fact remains that “10-10-10”  is the date the  Netherlands Antilles was formally dissolved, putting an end to a political constellation that many across the Caribbean islands had long considered dysfunctional. This new constitutional status, which followed a failed attempt at “restructuring the Netherlands Antilles of 5,” was not a top-down administrative initiative, but the direct result of a series of non-binding referenda held at the beginning of the new millennium across the five island territories (Sint Maarten, Curaçao, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba).

In St. Martin (South) the referendum was held in June 2000 in which a sizeable majority voted to abandon the Netherlands Antilles and achieve a direct relationship with the Kingdom. However, the ballot options available to voters were constrained by the political parameters set by The Hague.

While some St. Martin politicians and advocates of Option B (becoming an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands) tried to sell this as status aparte à la Aruba, The Hague made it abundantly clear that status aparte was tailor-made for Aruba and was therefore out of the question. The Dutch position was not discriminatory against St. Martin. Aruba, under Betico Croes, had voted massively for independence in its own referendum held in 1977. “Status aparte” was meant to be a transitional, half-way house on the way to full independence which was scheduled for 1996. It was therefore never conceived as a permanent constitutional status.

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Sixteen years after 10-10-10, a rigorous examination of the island’s legal and political reality reveals a stark contradiction between official rhetoric and structural facts. Far from achieving meaningful self-determination, St.  Martin remains in a colonial relationship with the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The "guarantee functions" (waarborgfunctie), financial oversight body (Cft), and judicial links, all of which are frequently praised in traditional political literature, do not serve as neutral safety nets; rather, they operate as sophisticated instruments designed to maintain the metropole’s colonial grip over the territory.

The Manufactured Constitutional Choice

To understand the nature of St. Martin’s current status, one must re-examine the  process that led to 10-10-10. The referenda held across the islands at the turn of the century reflected widespread popular dissatisfaction with the centralized government in Willemstad, Curaçao. On St. Martin, the population voted decisively to leave the Antillean constellation in order to gain direct control over local affairs.

However, the political horizon was tightly curated by the Dutch state. The four choices presented to the islands’ electorate were essentially:

1. To maintain the status quo,

2. accept direct integration into the Netherlands (as Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius were eventually forced to do in the form of "special municipalities,” or “Public Entities" even though they did not vote for this),

3. accept an "autonomy" bound by Dutch oversight laws, or

4. attain full independence.

Since dissatisfaction with the status quo was what precipitated the referenda in the first place, it did not make sense to even have it as an option. However, St. Eustatius was the only island territory that voted for it.

With regards to the so-called “autonomy,” the Dutch government ensured that St. Martin’s exit from the Antillean constellation would be leveraged to impose stricter centralized controls from The Hague, much more than had ever existed under the 1954 Kingdom Charter (Statuut).

Size does not matter: St. Martin vs. St. Kitts and Nevis

In standard orthodox narratives surrounding Caribbean governance, the small population of St. Martin (approximately 40,000 residents) is frequently invoked as a handicap — an inherent limitation that supposedly renders the island incapable of managing full sovereignty, maintaining a judicial system, or staffing a complete state apparatus.

This myth does not hold water when examined alongside the political reality of the broader Caribbean region. Nearby St. Kitts and Nevis, a fully independent sovereign nation since September 19, 1983, functions with a roughly comparable population (around 47,000). As a sovereign state, St. Kitts and Nevis:

• Holds full voting membership in the United Nations, CARICOM, and the Organization of American States (OAS).

• Drafts and enforces its own laws without foreign veto power.

• Manages its own financial and fiscal policies through the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB).

• Maintains international diplomacy and enters into bilateral treaties on its own terms.

The comparison demonstrates that "administrative capacity" is not a function of demographic size, but of political structure. In other words, size does not matter. St. Kitts and Nevis exercises full sovereign authority on a small demographic base because it possesses the constitutional right to do so.

Conversely, St. Martin’s administrative constraints stem not from its population size, but from the artificial requirement to run a top heavy, dual-layered governance apparatus designed to satisfy both local democratic demands and intrusive colonial compliance standards imposed by The Hague.

The Instruments of Colonial Control

What official Kingdom documents label as "support mechanisms" or "guarantee functions" operate in practice as the legal and administrative infrastructure of colonial oversight.

1. Financial Supervision (Cft) as Economic Colonialism

As a prerequisite for the dismantling of the Netherlands Antilles in 2010, the Dutch government made debt relief conditional on St. Martin’s acceptance of the Kingdom Act on Financial Supervision (Rijkswet financieel toezicht, Rft). This law created the Board of financial supervision (College financieel toezicht, Cft)— a body whose leadership is dominated by Dutch appointees.

Reports indicate that the promised debt relief did not materialize allegedly because the Dutch said St. Martin did not meet the deadline to submit documents substantiating its debts. This despite the fact that as an island territory within the Netherlands Antilles, St. Martin could not legally contract debts.

Through the Cft, The Hague retains an effective veto over St. Martin’s national budget. The local Parliament, elected by the people of St. Martin, cannot pass fiscal measures, allocate social spending, or take on capital development loans without the explicit approval of an un-elected external board. If St. Martin attempts to deviate from Cft directives, the Kingdom Council of Ministers in The Hague can issue a binding Instruction (Aanwijzing), legally forcing the local government to alter its domestic spending.

This mechanism strips the island’s elected legislature of the primary power of any autonomous parliament: the power of the purse. In fact, the process of approving the national budget includes compulsory vetting by the Cft.

It is instructive to recall that the very first budget of St. Martin post-10-10-10 had to be approved twice by Parliament because the first one did not obtain the green light from the Cft.

2. The Guarantee Function (Waarborgfunctie) as Colonial Intervention

Article 43 of the Kingdom Charter outlines the so-called Guarantee Function, asserting that the Kingdom government has a duty to guarantee "human rights, legal certainty, and good governance" in the constituent territories.

While framed as a humanitarian safeguard, the guarantee function actually acts as a unilateral intervention clause. Because "good governance" is defined exclusively by the Dutch, The Kingdom government uses this article to justify intervention in St. Martin’s internal administrative, judicial, and law enforcement affairs whenever local policy conflicts with Dutch interests. The threat of applying Article 43 serves as a constant political sword of Damocles hanging over Great Bay.

3. The Kingdom Council of Ministers

The claim that the Kingdom of the Netherlands consists of "four equal partners" is a political farce contradicted by the voting structure of its highest executive body. The Kingdom Council of Ministers consists of:

• The full Dutch Cabinet (representing approximately 18 million European citizens).

• One Minister Plenipotentiary each for St. Martin, Curaçao, and Aruba. These representatives have a voice in the Kingdom Council of Ministers but NOT a vote.

In any dispute between St. Martin and the Netherlands, the Dutch cabinet calls the shots. The island can be routinely dictated to on matters directly affecting it. This structural inequality ensures that "Kingdom policy" is, for all intents and purposes, Dutch domestic policy enforced across its territories in the Caribbean.

4. Coercive Aid and Conditional Reform

The colonial nature of the relationship was highlighted during the crises following Hurricane Irma (2017) and the COVID-19 pandemic.

When St. Martin faced severe economic distress, the Dutch government made critical liquidity loans and reconstruction aid conditional on St. Martin surrendering further domestic authority. This was famously referred to by then Prime Minister William Marlin as an “indecent proposal”. He did not survive the political storm that ensued.

In exchange for relief funds, St. Martin was forced to accept enhanced Dutch border controls, direct Dutch management of reconstruction funds via the World Bank Trust Fund, and proposed bodies such as the Caribbean Reform and Development Body (COHO). This pattern of leveraging acute natural and economic disasters to extract structural political concessions, mirrors classical colonial extraction techniques, using financial leverage to roll back local political autonomy.

Reconceptualizing the Legacy of “Autonomy”

The official classification of St.  Martín as an "autonomous country" functions primarily as a legal shield for the Netherlands in international forums. By maintaining the fiction that St.  Martín is an "equal partner" in a voluntary federation, the Netherlands seeks to fulfill its obligations under United Nations Resolution 1514 (XV) regarding decolonization, while retaining structural economic, legal, and geopolitical control over the territory.

In practice, St.  Martín’s constitutional status is akin to that of a modern colony:

1.“Democratic Deficit”: The ultimate decision-makers over the island’s fiscal limits and constitutional boundary reside in The Hague. The system has been designed in such a way that there is a Kingdom Council of Ministers but no Kingdom Parliament. The obvious question therefore becomes, who does the Kingdom Council of Ministers answer to? Certainly not to anybody on the islands.

2. Economic Dependency by Design: Rather than developing local economic self-reliance or regional Caribbean integration, the Kingdom framework locks St.  Martín into structural reliance on Dutch liquidity loans and metropole-controlled aid.

3. Institutional Subordination: Local state institutions (the Governor, the Cft, the Joint Court of Justice) serve a dual purpose, acting as conduits through which the metropole monitors and restricts local political development while ostensibly “serving the people” of the islands.

How the country running?

Given all of this, and after 16 years of so-called “autonomy”,  what is the scorecard for St. Martin? Are we better off today than we were on 9-10-10? Or to put it in good old St. Martin parlance: “how the country running?” Some would answer: “nobody knows.” And there are others who would ask rhetorically: “running, you say?” Only to add cynically that before you can run, you have to walk, and before you can walk, you have to crawl. St. Martin is not even at the crawling stage yet, they would argue.

They would be right. I would even go further and say that St. Martin ain’t even born yet because, as is universally accepted, “independence is the birth of a nation.” So, if we were to grade the performance of St. Martin in the last 16 years of “autonomy”, how would we score it from 0 to 10? I should make clear here that the scorecard is not for any particular government nor elected or appointed officials.

In my humble opinion, the successive governments have failed woefully to deliver on some of the basic objectives of becoming an “autonomous country” within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This is because it has consistently and conveniently ignored the fact that the new status is colonialism 2.0. That is why referring to the current status as “post-colonial” is a fallacy. Post-colonial implies that we are independent (and even then, I’d rather speak of “post-independence” but that’s a different discussion.)

Whatever metric we use to determine the performance of the island since 10-10-10, the result will always come down to “Insufficient.” That, in my book, is a maximum of 4 out of 10, even though some individual ministries and ministers as well as some individual members of parliament may score higher. I want to stress again that the report card is about the collective not individual performance.

This does not mean that there haven’t been some successes that we should be proud of. But blaming lack of “capacity” for the lack of execution of projects and policies is actually stating that St. Martin was not prepared for this new status and should, therefore, not have embarked on the journey at all. Perhaps that is why some people wrongfully assume that independence would be a crazy adventure that will lead St. Martin over the precipice. However , there is not one example anywhere in the world that supports such assumption.

Space will not allow me to go into further details, but suffice it to say that anyone with their ears to the ground would hear the incessant grumbling of the people. There is a pervasive feeling of frustration in the air. Promises have been made with very few being kept.

The capacity excuse cannot continue to be used because we have all witnessed the size of government balloon exponentially since 10-10-10. With reportedly over 2,000 civil servants employed, it seems the more government grows, the less it accomplishes. If we do the math, 2,000 civil servants for a population of 40,000 works out at one civil servant per 20 people (including infants!). That is more than the ratio of teachers to students and of doctors per inhabitant on the island.

Conclusion

The constitutional changes of October 10, 2010 failed to achieve true decolonization for St.  Martin. The island's ongoing governance challenges do not stem from a lack of capacity, but from a constitutional structure that denies it full sovereignty.

The "guarantee functions," financial supervision laws, and Kingdom executive bodies are not benevolent instruments of assistance; they are mechanisms designed to preserve and even tighten Dutch colonial grip over the island while outsourcing the day-to-day burdens of local administration to elected island officials.

As long as the metropole retains unilateral veto power over St. Martin’s fiscal and structural affairs, the constitutional status achieved on 10-10-10 remains not a realized model of autonomy, but a modernized, legalistic framework for colonial governance.

This does not bode well for the future of St. Martin.

The signs are all around us. The handwriting has been on the wall for decades yet we refuse to read it accurately or read it at all. Developments on the northern half of the island and on St. Eustatius do not augur well for our tourism based economy. Neither does the fact that we have lost our once cherished hub function in the subregion.

There is not much good news around these days. Yet not all is doom and gloom if we would pull up our socks, man up, and decide to join the commity of nations as a sovereign country. After all, if St. Kitts and Nevis have been able to do it for almost 45 years, what is our excuse?

Since 10-10-10 was achieved as a result of a referendum, it is high time we go back to the people and ask them a simple question: Independence, Yes or No? Until we do that, all we would be doing is playing “dolly-house politics,” as my good friend Jose Lake Jr. brilliantly calls it.

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