ARUBA HAS NO CONTROL OVER CORRUPTION!

ARUBA – “Aruba is one of the last countries in the world that does not have compulsory education yet and no legislation on the control of corruption. Even a country like Nigeria has a code of conduct for the Parliament members and Tanzania has laws against corruption. The lack of these kinds of matters caused astonishment.”


Rudy Lampe (RED) returned from Tanzania with those shocking establishments. He attended a conference on corruption in Tanzania that was organized by the Organisación Mundial de Parlamentarios Contra la Corrupción (World Parliamentary Organization Against Corruption, Gopac). Parliamentarians from all around the world have exchanged information and debated on the best way to tackle corruption.


The Dutch Kingdom has signed a treaty with the United Nations on corruption, but it cannot be ratified as long as there is no necessary legislation in Aruba. It’s such a shame that the rulers are not more critical on the own way of handling and prevents regular entanglement of interest. Lampe said that the government leases space from a member of parliament of the opposition. “How can somebody criticize the actions of ministers, when his own wallet plays a part?”


Lampe, who had the fight against corruption as one of the spearheads of his election campaign, is of the opinion that Aruba has to start working seriously. He has lots of examples of ministers that after their period in office were much richer than they could have been with just their salaries. We need laws against corruption; laws against the financing of political parties and the protection of bell-ringers. The assets of ministers have to be registered.


In order to show how damaging corruption is, he named the example of Calmaquip that was charged with fraud and corruption. Calmaquip has supposedly jacked up the costs of gigantic projects. This same company had done the renovation of the airport, and the actual costs ended up being much higher than the estimated costs. Lampe says that this went probably hand in hand with bribes. (What about the example of Natalee Holloway?)