WILLEMSTAD – The contrast between the election manifesto of the Movementu Futuro Kòrsou (MFK) and the newly unveiled governing program of the Pisas III Cabinet is striking. What was once presented on the campaign trail as a call for bold reform, decisive leadership, and restored autonomy has now been reduced to a technocratic document filled with cautious language, vague timelines, and a clear dependency on institutional partners.
MFK’s election platform was rich with ambition. The party promised the people of Curaçao better healthcare, a lower cost of living, a transparent government, more civic empowerment, and above all, policies rooted in national pride and self-determination. The tone was defiant, the promises sweeping. Curaçao would reform itself and move forward independently.
But that confident tone evaporates upon opening the governing program. It is now filled with terms like “phased implementation,” “policy coordination,” and “institutional cooperation.” Direct language toward citizens has been replaced by references to the Financial Supervision Board (Cft), the Country Package, and other chain partners. The reforms remain in name, but the political momentum behind them appears lost. Where the manifesto spoke of social justice, the program now echoes bureaucratic restraint.
Nowhere is this shift more apparent than in the sections on autonomy and relations with the Netherlands. The campaign's repeated call for more self-rule has given way to a clear commitment to continuing the Country Package, complete with oversight and accountability to The Hague. The political message is clear: ideals for the campaign, pragmatism for governance.
This contrast is also evident in the areas of poverty reduction and healthcare. The pledge of empathetic, human-centered healthcare for all has now become a plan for hospital restructuring and the creation of a Health Authority. Access to care remains a stated goal, but with undefined conditions and no new budget allocations. The fight against poverty still features in the plan but is now just one among nine policy objectives, stripped of the moral urgency that once drove it.
Such a transformation is not uncommon in politics. However, for a party holding an absolute majority in Parliament, it carries more weight. There is no coalition partner to blame, no external checks. The shift from campaign fire to administrative caution is thus a deliberate choice—a response, perhaps, to the complex reality of 2025.
The people voted decisively for MFK. That vote wasn’t a blank check, but a mandate for leadership, one that demands vision and boldness. A certain level of compromise between campaign rhetoric and governance is understandable. Still, a critical question remains: Is this program what the people asked for—or simply what the system allows?
In the coming years, we will see whether this government uses its strong mandate to implement true reform—or whether its campaign ambition has been lost to the inertia of administration.
