WILLEMSTAD – It appears to be difficult for intended coalition partners MFK and PNP to find candidates for ministerial posts who pass the statutory integrity screening. This prescribes, among other things, that anyone who has a conviction in his or her name cannot become a minister.
Yet MFK and PNP have each nominated a candidate with a criminal record. Eduard Braam – candidate for the MFK for the post of Justice – withdrew last week after it became clear that a conviction in 2000 for sexual case with a minor would stand in the way of an appointment. At the end of last week, formateur Chester Peterson wrote to PNP chairman Ramon Chong, the intended minister of economic development, that he did not pass the screening because he was convicted in 2003 for corruption while he was a commissioner in the island government.
There are also doubts about other candidate ministers. For example, Charles Cooper, nominated by the MFK as a minister, was already designated as non-ministerial in 2010, after an investigation by the Curaçao Security Service. His name also appears in the criminal file against former Prime Minister Gerrit Schotte, who was convicted of corruption.
MFK and PNP find the current screening law too strict. This came after ministers were sworn in in 2010 with questionable integrity records. A few weeks ago, the outgoing government of PAR and MAN adopted a draft National Ordinance on safeguarding the integrity of ministers, which was supplemented with guidelines from an earlier advice from Transparency International and the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). The proposal is currently before the Advisory Council.