The Bloem Blunder Untangling the CBCS Board Nomination Imbroglio

The nomination of lawyer Jairo Bloem to chair the Supervisory Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten has caused a maelstrom of controversy which has propelled the nominee to weigh in on the fracas in order to give his own side of the story and apparently clear his name.

The various actors in this imbroglio have not made the rather complex and long-standing issues more digestible for the public to understand. The Minister of Finance took the initial initiative to rectify a situation she rightfully considered untenable. The Council of Ministers went along with her to “approve” her nominee conditionally. That is when all hell broke loose.

Several members of parliament, including some from the minister’s own party and coalition partners, jumped in the fray. She was summoned to a Question Hour in Parliament which seemed to leave more questions unanswered, according to several MPs who then embarked on a media campaign to get the Minister to retract her nomination.

Following the Question Hour in Parliament, Opposition members quickly requested a public meeting in which they were apparently going to move to, at least, censure the Minister.

Meanwhile, the Minister, under siege, issued a press release to clarify matters. The MPs were not satisfied. They had smelled blood and would not relent in their now obvious mission to strike a forceful political blow against the Minister and consequently the governing coalition.

In all of this, the current CBCS Board of Supervisory Directors also waded publicly into the controversy with a statement that failed to clear up the air. The general public is not much better off today in terms of understanding what happened than it was before the controversy erupted. I will therefore attempt to unravel the story in the hope that I can contribute to a better understanding of what is at stake here.

The real bone of contention for those challenging the Minister’s action is Article 25, especially sub 3 of the CBCS Charter. One does not need to be a legal luminary to understand the provisions of this article that establishes the procedure for the appointment of the Chairperson of the CBCS Supervisory Board of Directors. This is what it states in its English version, taken from the CBCS website:

“The chairman of the Board of Supervisory Directors shall be appointed and removed JOINTLY by the Countries (i.e Curaçao and St. Maarten) by national decree. The appointment of the chairman shall be effected upon the JOINT nomination by the Ministers (of Finance), which nomination shall be based on a recommendation by a 5/6 majority of the Board of Supervisory Directors.” The emphasis and parentheses are all mine.

The key word in this section of the Charter is “joint.” This simply means that the Ministers of Finance of both St. Maarten and Curacao must agree on the candidate(s) each one of them nominates. In this case, Minister Marinka Gumbs has not even had the opportunity to seek the consensus of her counterpart in Willemstad before she faced the headwinds of opposition challenge. Can all the uproar created then be seen as premature? In my book, that is called jumping the gun.

Also, a careful reading of the same article reveals an implied hierarchy in the process. It starts first with the appointment and removal by national decree, thereafter the nomination by the respective ministers of finance and finally the recommendation by the sitting members of the board which must have a 5/6 majority.

Appointment or removal by national decree which must be done jointly simply means the Governors of both St. Maarten and Curacao must sign the relevant national decrees (landsbesluit) that must also be countersigned by the respective finance ministers. In the case of some of the current members of the board, this has not happened in four years! Doesn’t this call into question the legitimacy of the board itself? Nobody has focused on this point yet as far as I know.

Then there is the issue of the 5/6 majority required for the board to recommend someone for the position of chairperson. Given the current composition of the board which consists of only 5 out of a possible total of 7 members, it cannot mathematically meet the 5/6 majority needed because 5/6 of 7 is 6! The board does not have six members right now!

Of course, to further complicate matters, some current members have exceeded the maximum two terms (8 years) they can serve, according to the same Charter. Can these members also vote to recommend a candidate for the chairmanship of the board?

In addition, what powers do “temporary” members have? The Charter does not speak to that specifically. However, we must ask, in what language or dictionary does “temporary” mean “four years or more”? How can a member be “temporary” for their full term of office?

This has been almost the norm in our political culture for decades. The Turn Over Tax was sold to us in its inception as a “temporary” measure and here we are today about two decades later and it is not only still in force but it has actually been increased.

Similarly, how many civil servants are not condemned to “acting” positions for years when the whole idea of acting is universally viewed as a temporary measure? In short, for us “temporary” seems to mean “permanent” and I believe that is the point Bloem was trying to make when he said in his now viral interview on PJD-2 radio’s the Breakfast Lounge with Lady Grace on September 29, 2025 that if the situation was left to linger on, the current board members would be there indefinitely. That is clearly not the intent nor the spirit of the Charter.

Concerning the main accusation that Minister Marinka Gumbs overstepped her authority by nominating Mr. Bloem without the necessary recommendation from the board, this is an issue I believe that has been legally settled by the decision of the President of the Joint Court of Appeals of August 23, 2021 by virtue of which all members of the current board are sitting today. That decision also implied that the recommendation of the board is not binding because in that same ruling, the President of the Joint Court of Appeal “urged” the two finance ministers to proceed with the nomination and appointment of the board members expeditiously. Well, we are four years down the road and nothing has happened.

This begs the question: are those opposing the initiative taken by Minister Gumbs in favor of maintaining the status quo at the CBCS? Are they aware that the present board cannot have a 5/6 majority needed to recommend someone to be subsequently nominated by the ministers of finance to chair the board?

Are they saying that the current Minister of Finance erred in law when there is written evidence that her predecessor, who is leading the charge against her now did the same thing in 2021? And if the amendment to the relevant law in St. Maarten only took place in February, 2024 to allow candidates to be properly screened, how were the current members of the board from St. Maarten screened, if they were at all?

Bloem mentioned in his interview that there are 34 legislative pieces pending to be passed by the Parliament of St. Maarten. Was he indirectly telling the MPs that they should focus their attention in that direction?

There is little doubt that the initial uproar caused by his appointment was because Bloem is from Curaçao. However, the MPs changed course apparently because that was not a winning strategy. They realized, as the good politicians they are, that it could potentially alienate the Curaçao voters in the next election. That was their first blunder: their inconsistent and mixed messaging.

The second blunder, in my view, was when all three opposition factions issued a public statement calling for the Minister of Finance to “apologize” to Bloem and his family for nominating him. Bloem’s interview not only made the call sound totally off the mark, but also turned the tables on them by accusing them of engaging in a political ploy. The call for an apology therefore back fired. In fact, Bloem stated that if the Minister maintained his nomination he was willing to serve as he had done previously on the same board from 2011 to 2014.

The third blunder, and perhaps the most serious one, was what seems to be a faulty reading of the provisions of the Charter while at the same time ignoring the precedent set in 2021 when the Board, invoking Article 25.9 of the Charter, asked the President of the Joint Court of Appeal to intervene to resolve a similar situation. This blunder, I believe, was caused by a concerted political targeting of the Minister of Finance.

Granted, it is not the role of the Opposition to make life easy for government. Granted also that it is part of political brinkmanship to exploit cracks in the opposing camp. However, when this becomes apparently the standard modus operandi, it becomes ineffective as a political tactic. I refer to how busy the rumor mill has been on the island for months, with the Ministers of VROMI, Justice, VSA and now Finance alleged to be facing possible ouster from their positions via a vote of non- confidence in Parliament or, at least, a vote of disapproval.

For me, the Bloem blunder should be seen as a cautionary tale. There is a time for politics and even poli-tricks and there is a time for serious business, which calls for sober reflection and decisive action to further the interest of St. Maarten.

I strongly believe that those who opposed the Bloem nomination for whatever reason did so thinking that they were acting in the best interest of the island. It is actually healthy for the polity to have competing ideas and reasonable debate. The public meeting of Parliament requested by opposition MPs will offer another opportunity for such debate to take place. The honorable MPs may wish to consider two points that stand out to me in my layman’s reading of the CBCS Charter.

The first is that while the Charter requires a 5/6 majority (i.e. 6) of the members to recommend a candidate to chair the board, it only requires 5 members to do the same for the position of President (and Executive Directors) of the CBCS. What was on the minds of those who drafted the Charter then? Were they suggesting that the Chair of the Supervisory Board is more important than the President and Executive Directors of the bank?

The second is that the Charter does not prescribe any overt role for the Councils of Ministers; on the other hand, it actually spells out the responsibilities of the Finance Ministers. When it speaks of national decrees to formalize the appointment of Board members, it is in the context of the document being jointly signed by the two Governors and countersigned by the respective Finance Ministers.

Therefore, the fact that Minister Gumbs took her nomination to her colleagues in the COM must be viewed as the politically correct and constitutionally mandated thing to do, not really for COM to vote on it, just to bring the other ministers up to speed regarding the initiative she was taking.

In fact, the question could be asked, do all the nominations for top positions, including board membership at the various government-owned companies and agencies go through the same process? Are they all required to be “approved” by COM? Maybe we could have that debate.

Finally, the other elephant in the room is the Ennia saga and the attendant Mullet Bay issue. These, in particular, affect St. Maarten in a very special way. Don’t we deserve a properly constituted, well- functioning Supervisory Board of Directors to exercise better oversight of the Management Board on which St. Maarten has no representation?

Just think that the Central Bank, as an “emergency” measure, took over the running of Ennia for six years and yet we still ended up in this mess! Could that be attributed to lack of proper oversight? That should be food for thought for all of us.

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