The silence from politicians in The Hague on the complete acquittal of former central bank president Emsley Tromp and his successful countersuit for damages says a lot about their inability to come to terms with some of their aggressive policies towards these islands. Tromp's case perfectly demonstrates what happens when words like integrity are weaponized. It is a textbook example of malicious prosecution and the overzealous use of state power for political rather than purely judicial purposes. They targeted him first and then searched for the crime with which to charge him. That's deeply troubling for a supposedly liberal democratic state such as the Dutch kingdom.
Nevertheless, despite his legal success, the damage is done once the dogs of war are let loose and blood demanded. It wasn't only the man's life and reputation which were recklessly harmed, but also the reputation of one of the country's important institutions, all without consequences for those who've done the harm.
Of course, there will be no formal apologies for the years of smears and outright lies. That's just how it goes. But we begin to see the pattern of how the machine works. First, there is an uproar by obsessed fanatics such as Bosman and Van Raak in the Dutch Second Chamber based on, they claim, damning information that the general public in these islands are neither aware of nor will ever see. Then they demand answers from their government in The Hague and, as if part of a pre-orchestrated dance, their government obliges and twists the arms of local authorities into cooperating. Off go the expensive dogs of investigative war and the islands brace themselves for the inevitable destruction of someone's life. All in the name of justice, apparently.
Equally telling is the silence from certain quarters of the local media and our usual chattering class. Not surprisingly, there was nothing in Dutch media at all about Tromp's acquittal, nor did they attempt any serious reflection on the matter. And some of our media here are not much more than barely disguised propaganda outlets pumping out a certain narrative, either to settle a score or rewrite history. They blur the lines between factual reporting and activist opinion-mongering so badly that it becomes hard for the general public to sort out the truth from old-fashioned smears.
The bottomless bags of money spent going after innocent men like Tromp merely to remove them from positions of influence could have been more productively used. And it wasn't the Dutch taxpayer who ended up footing the bill for this expensive farce either. No, conveniently the invoice for the wreckage was passed on to someone else. An already cash-strapped Curacao must now foot the bill for the dubious sacking and persecution of one of its own sons by foreign faces.
But men like Bosman and Van Raak, who mask their contempt for these islands as concern, pay no price for being wrong. They suffer no consequences for the destruction and harm they cause to innocent people in their self-righteous crusade. If the price for their fanatical purge includes the unnecessary trampling on some people's civil liberties and basic dignity, then it is time to reassess that price, because it is the people here who must bear the personal and material costs when it goes terribly wrong, not those in The Hague.
