THE HAGUE - The draft Kingdom law for the establishment of the Caribbean Body for Reform and Development (COHO) is now officially and legally off the table. The State Secretary for Kingdom Relations has withdrawn the controversial draft law today, as she informed the House of Representatives in a letter.
The COHO law has turned out to be an even greater failure than the dispute regulation and is just as illustrative of the relationship between the Netherlands and the Caribbean countries, which is marked by mutual distrust. The Hague wanted COHO, but the CAS countries did not. The CAS countries wanted a dispute regulation, but The Hague did not. Therefore, both draft laws, despite the considerable amount of time invested in them (including by civil servants), can be added to the museum of Kingdom failures.
Letter from Van Huffelen to the House of Representatives
On April 4th, the governments of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, and the Netherlands reached an agreement under Article 38, paragraph 1, of the Statute regarding cooperation within the Kingdom for the implementation of reforms in the public sector of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. This agreement was presented to your Chamber on April 4th.
This agreement establishes a legal basis for cooperation that began in 2020, the year the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. Initially, the legal framework for this cooperation was planned to be a consensus Kingdom law. The proposal for this, the Kingdom law for the Caribbean Body for Reform and Development, was submitted to the House of Representatives on February 9, 2022, and simultaneously sent to the Parliaments of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten.
However, as indicated by the reports submitted by the aforementioned parliaments, this proposal did not receive sufficient support. In order to address the objections raised by the parliaments, the governments have worked on an alternative approach to the aforementioned cooperation over the past year. The result is now ready. As authorized by the King, I hereby withdraw the legislative proposal. This means that I will not issue a memorandum in response to the reports of the standing committee for Kingdom Relations and the Parliaments of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten.