Action comes in response to the suspension of elected dependency governance and the imposition of direct rule from the Netherlands.
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On February 7, 2018, King Willem Alexander of the Netherlands signed a law passed by parliament by which the Executive Council and Island Council of Public Entity St. Eustatius were dissolved and replaced by a Government Commissioner accountable only to the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.
As part of this law, the elections for the Island Council slated for March 2019 were postponed until a moment beyond that date deemed appropriate by the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.
Even though the law as a whole is of a highly questionable legal nature as it relates to the international treaties to which the Kingdom is a signatory, the postponement of the elections is in direct contravention of the people's rights to freedom of opinion expressed under article 19 and the people's right to political participation under article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
With the indefinite postponement of elections, the democratic order is all but erased and the citizens of St. Eustatius have been stripped of their democratic rights of participation and representation.
It is for those reasons that, through this petition, the undersigned protest and condemn the postponement of the elections for the Island Council of St. Eustatius and urgently demand that these elections are organized for March 2019 as scheduled to give the citizens of St. Eustatius the opportunity to directly elect their representatives.
