THE HAGUE--The final Round Table Conference (RTC) next Thursday should be cancelled and replaced by an emergency conference about the "crisis in the Kingdom," said Member of the Dutch Second Chamber Ronald van Raak of the Socialist Party (SP) on Friday.

Van Raak will present this proposal during a Second Chamber debate next week Tuesday. Parliament will have a debate on that day in which it will have the final say on whether the amendment to the Charter necessary to realise new constitutional relations in the Kingdom will go into effect on October 10.

The Member of Parliament (MP) said he would ask the liberal democratic VVD party and Party for Freedom PVV to be consistent and stick to their decision in April this year when they voted against the Kingdom Law to amend the Charter. Together, SP, VVD, and PVV represent 70 of the 150 seats.

Van Raak is against country status for Curaçao and St. Maarten at this stage, because he doesn't consider the islands ready for more responsibility. The fact that a number of tasks will be placed under supervision by the Kingdom only enforces that belief.

Van Raak has two additional reasons this week to be against the new statuses: an article in The Daily Herald and one in Antilliaans Dagblad.

He referred to an article in Thursday's edition of The Daily Herald that announced the Executive Council's decision to amend the casino policy, paving the way for Caravanserai Beach Resort to obtain a casino licence. According to Van Raak, St. Maarten has "relaxed the rules for casinos to give befriended entrepreneurs a helping hand."

Antilliaans Dagblad reported that members of Curaçao's Island Council had tried for the third time to give themselves a super pension. "This is the result of ... corruption and self-enrichment. How will we stop this misconduct?"

Van Raak hoped these incidents would make the Christian Democratic Party CDA and Labour Party PvdA reconsider their position on the constitutional reform process. He didn't exclude that the two parties would also consider it irresponsible to continue the process.

On paper it would appear that Curaçao and St. Maarten will attain more autonomy, but in practice the influence of the Netherlands and the Kingdom will be greater than ever. This is the fault of the Charter, he added.

"Let's make the final RTC a starting conference in which we conclude that we can't work with this Charter and that we should first have a new Charter," said Van Raak.