PHILIPSBURG--Finance and Personal Affairs Commissioner Xavier Blackman's planned trip to the Netherlands this week has been cancelled.

All of the commissioner's appointments, including meetings with students, have been put on hold.

The Government has released no official information about the postponed trip, but it is believed that the postponement became necessary because an Island Council meeting on the draft 2010 budget has been called for Thursday at 10:00am.

With the draft 2010 budget still pending debate in and approval by the Island Council three months into the year, and with the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT having announced that it will be informing the Kingdom Council of Ministers that the island territory has no approved budget, there had been some criticism of Blackman's planned trip at this time.

The opposition Democratic Party (DP) considers this move by CFT "a slap" in the face of the National Alliance (NA)/Heyliger Government and the people of St. Maarten.

This newspaper's correspondent in the Netherlands reported Monday that Blackman's recruitment and information sessions with (former) students that had been planned for this Wednesday and Thursday would not go through. St. Maarten Student Support Services S4 announced that the two sessions, one in Amsterdam and the other in The Hague, were being postponed until further notice.

The sessions were aimed at interesting students and former students in working for the St. Maarten Government, which needs to fill a number of vacancies in the process of becoming an autonomous country in the Dutch Kingdom.

According to S4, Blackman and the rest of his delegation could not travel to the Netherlands this week due to "unforeseen circumstances." S4 promised to keep the students informed of the sessions' new dates.