PHILIPSBURG:--- On December 15th, 1954, Her Majesty Queen Juliana, through her signature, formally authorized the Charter of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In doing so, she and, through her actions, the Kingdom of the Netherlands as a whole formally ended the period of colonialism. The Charter, which established the Netherlands, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles as three autonomous countries within one Kingdom, was the product of long and sometimes contentious negotiations between the three partners but led in the end to a result that at the time was acceptable to everyone.
The Kingdom of 1954 is, of course, very different from the Kingdom of today: three generations have passed, the world is a very different place, and the Kingdom itself has changed dramatically. In 1975, Suriname gained full independence. In 1986, Aruba left the constellation of the Netherlands Antilles and became an autonomous country. Finally, in 2010, the Netherlands Antilles were dissolved entirely and Curaçao and Sint Maarten also became autonomous countries in their own right while Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba became public entities of the Netherlands.
For us here in Sint Maarten, the Charter has been a stable basis on which our political aspirations could be built. Today, Sint Maarten is one of the constituting partners in the Kingdom. This does not mean that our present status is perfect, far from it. It also does not mean that our present political status is fixed for all eternity. As the world changes and our own Sint Maarten changes, so our political destiny might lie beyond our present status. But today, we can enjoy the 70th birthday of the Kingdom Charter and congratulate ourselves and our Kingdom partners with the fact that we live in a free and democratic Sint Maarten within a free and democratic Kingdom. This is far from obvious in our present world, as we all know. That we can enjoy freedom and democracy is not in the least because of the Kingdom Charter as it was signed and enacted on that cold December day in The Hague in 1954. This is, when considering the overall picture, something to be grateful for.
I wish you a reflective 70th Kingdom Day!
THE GOVERNOR OF SINT MAARTEN
Ajamu G. Baly
