Ys said his nomination for CBCS came from St. Maarten

WILLEMSTAD-GREAT BAY--Former Prime Minister Etienne Ys on Friday clarified that his nomination for the chairmanship of the Central Bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten (CBCS) in 2017 came from St. Maarten, a point that has now become central to the reported impasse between Minister of Finance Marinka Gumbs and Curaçao’s Minister of Finance Charles Cooper over which country should now put forward the next chair.

Ys told 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦’𝘴 𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘯𝘦: “Based on a gentleman’s agreement, I was proposed by St. Maarten.” He added that, to his knowledge, no official documents were signed and no decrees were passed to formalize that understanding. Ys’ statement lends support to the established but informal, rotation-based arrangements that have in fact shaped past decisions, even where the legal record may not explicitly spell out which side initiated a nomination.

His clarification is significant because the current dispute reportedly turns in part on which country last held the chairmanship under a mutually accepted arrangement, and whether that history supports St. Maarten’s present claim to the post.

However, Minister Gumbs has maintained that St. Maarten should have the opportunity to claim the chairmanship, reportedly based on an earlier verbal understanding between herself and former Minister of Finance Javier Sylvania. Minister Cooper has reportedly maintained that it is Curacao's turn to appoint a chairperson since the last officially mutually agreed upon Chair was Ys and he was nominated by St. Maarten, which Ys has now confirmed.

Publicly available records show that in July 2017, Curaçao Finance Minister Kenneth Gijsbertha announced that Ys had been nominated for the presidency of the CBCS Supervisory Board, while also stating that he and then St. Maarten Finance Minister Richard Gibson still had to agree on the joint appointment. That contemporaneous reporting indicates that, at minimum, the nomination was being processed through a joint mechanism, even if the political understanding behind the proposal may have been informal.

What is clearly documented is that by August 24, 2017, CBCS formally announced that Ys had assumed office as chair of the Supervisory Board after the commissioners accepted their appointments by national decree. The central bank’s own release confirms that the board then consisted of Etienne Ys as chairman, along with Jeanette Hagen, Ajamu Baly, Dennis Richardson and Rignaal “Jean” Francisca as members, with Ahmed Bell also appointed. However, that official CBCS announcement does not specify which country originally designated Ys for the chairmanship.

The history after Ys’ tenure also adds important context. In August 2021, when the terms of most supervisory board members expired, President of the Joint Court of Justice Eunice Saleh declined to reappoint Ys as chair. At the same time, she temporarily appointed five board members so the CBCS could continue functioning while screening and formal appointments remained pending. In that ruling, the court underscored that the chairperson must be nominated jointly by the finance ministers of Curaçao and St. Maarten, based on the required recommendation process within the board.

In other words, the judicial intervention did not produce a new substantive chairperson to replace Ys. Instead, the court moved to keep the institution operational while the two countries failed to complete the appointment process in the normal way. CBCS later confirmed that Julian Lopez-Ramirez was temporarily reappointed by the President of the Joint Court of Justice effective November 30, 2021, as a temporary supervisory board member until a successor was provided by national decree.

CBCS’ 2023 annual report shows the long shadow of that unresolved process. The bank stated that the supervisory board members serving at that stage had been temporarily appointed by the President of the Court of Justice until final appointments were made by national decree. The same report said the position of chairperson was vacant and was being acted by Julian Lopez Ramirez, confirming that the post had still not been fully regularized through the normal joint appointment route.

That history aligns with statements made more recently by Minister Gumbs, who told Parliament in September 2025 that the CBCS had been without a formally appointed chair for about four years. She said two recommendations were submitted in 2021, but no appointment followed, and added that past government failures forced the President of the Joint Court of Justice to temporarily appoint board members that same year.

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