Holiday, one of St. Maarten's prime advisors during the dismantling process and the negotiations to establish Country St. Maarten, was a guest speaker at the presentation of the book Shared Kingdom (Gedeeld Koninkrijk) by Gert Oostindie and Inge Klinkers at the Royal Theatre in The Hague on Thursday.
"Just as in any lawsuit, it was a word game. It seemed more a game of Scrabble than chess and dominoes. Parties had access to the same letters, but their input was different," said Holiday.
The Council of State assumed the role of judge in the lawsuit. In critical moments, when parties could not agree, the Council would give advice in an attempt to solve the matter at hand, said Holiday.
He was critical of the role the Dutch Second Chamber had played in the constitutional process by surpassing the Council of State, which he called the judge in the process.
"To our surprise, the Second Chamber acted as though was the Supreme Court," he said, referring to the unilateral changes the Dutch Parliament, as Parliament for the Kingdom, had made to a number of Kingdom consensus laws and its general harshly attitude during the process.
Holiday had the audience laughing with an anecdote about a St. Maarten mother who explained to her young son the meaning of "country day" on October 10: "St. Maarten became a country one year ago because the Netherlands Antilles died as a country on October 10, 2010 at the age of 55. The Netherlands Antilles had suffered from a bad heart its entire life and had trouble to evenly distribute the blood to its organs. She was buried with great honour by her surviving relatives on the same day."
He obviously was referring to Cura�ao's the neglect of the other islands.
Holiday pointed out that St. Maarten had played a key role in the constitutional process, but that its contribution was not always recognised. "St. Maarten's crucial role is too often overlooked, possibly through our own fault because we insufficiently document our history," he said.
Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Piet Hein Donner, who was still in function on Thursday, received the first copy of Shared Kingdom from the authors Oostindie and Klinkers.
The Dutch Ministry of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations BZK and its State Secretary at the time Ank Bijleveld-Schouten requested in 2009 that Oostindie and Klinkers research the dismantling process.
Klinkers said the focus of the book with the long title Shared Kingdom, the dismantling of the Netherlands Antilles and the renewal of trans-Atlantic relations (De ontmanteling van de Nederlandse Antillen en de vernieuwing van de trans-atlantische relaties) was on Dutch policy. But the researchers spoke to the key players in the Dutch Caribbean as well.
Oostindie gave a short overview of the dismantling process and the relations in the Kingdom. He said obstacles between the partners in the Kingdom always would remain "hard to banish," as that was "inherent" to the relations.
Minister Donner said the book was also "valuable" for current discussions between the Kingdom partners. "It is a very current topic and still very much in development." He called for cooperation among the partners and said the Kingdom had an "added value."
According to Donner, the book's title was on the mark. But he warned that if the Kingdom partners didn't commit to a continued investment in the relations, the title of the next book might very well be that of the old book and movie Gone with the Wind.
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