A phone call from Koenders

Since a team of 25 gendarmes came down on Captain Oliver’s in Oyster Pond in October of last year nothing much seems to have been done to find a solution for the border dispute.

Yesterday, almost three months after the incident, PM Marlin received a phone call from Foreign Affairs Minister Bert Koenders.

Is that progress? At least there is contact, but recent history shows that Dutch politicians have a knack to say something and then turn around to something completely different – or nothing at all.

Point in case is Koenders’ predecessor Frans Timmermans who was in St. Maarten two-and-a-half years ago – in June 2013. He promised to deal with the border dispute. Instead he became a European commissioner with the portfolio of – get this – Better Regulation, Inter-Institutional Relations, Rule of Law and Charter of Fundamental Rights and forgot all about the troubles in St. Maarten.

So a phone call from Koenders is a sign of life, but not more than that.