Jorien Wuite (; born 6 December 1964) is a

Sint Maarten Sint Maarten () is a Countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands located in the Caribbean region of North America. With a population of 58,477 as of June 2023 on an area of , it encompasses ...

-Dutch civil servant, diplomat, and politician. Born in

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

, she moved to Sint Maarten aged 32 to work in government. She rose to the position of Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports and served as Minister Plenipotentiary of Sint Maarten in the period 2018–19. She moved back to the European part of the Netherlands due to her election to the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

in 2021 as a member of the social liberal party

Democrats 66 Democrats 66 (; D66) is a social liberal and progressive political party in the Netherlands, which is positioned on the centre to centre-left of the political spectrum. It is a member of the Liberal International (LI) and the Alliance of Li ...

(D66).

Early life and education

Wuite was born in

and grew up in that area. Both her parents worked as educators, and her mother, Anna Merab Richardson, also a writer, is from

. She studied Public Health Management at

Erasmus University Rotterdam Erasmus University Rotterdam ( ; abbreviated as EUR) is a public research university located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The university is named after Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a 15th-century Christian humanist and theologian. Erasmus M ...

in the years 1984–89 and conducted her graduation research on Sint Maarten. Wuite later did a second

master's A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

in Public Management & Policy at the

Open University of the Netherlands The Open University of the Netherlands () is a Dutch institution for distance learning at university level. It is an independent government-funded university and uses a variety of methods, including written materials, the Internet, and occasi ...

(2008–12), and she studied international politics at

Clingendael Institute The Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael () or Clingendael Institute (''Instituut Clingendael'') is a Dutch think tank and academy on international relations. Based in Wassenaar on the municipal border with The Hague, the ...

in 2018.

Career

After completing her studies, Wuite worked for five years as a management consultant for the Gouda company KVA Groep, which mostly assists the public sector. She subsequently moved to Sint Maarten with her family in 1997 to serve as the director of Sector Health Care Affairs for the Sint Maarten government. She became director of the Sector Public Health, Social Development and Labor Affairs in 2008 and filled that position until she was appointed secretary-general of that ministry two years later. Wuite was the secretary-general of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports between 2014 and 2018. During that period, she became politically active and ran for the

Parliament of Sint Maarten The Parliament of Sint Maarten () is a unicameral legislature that consists of 15 members, each elected for a four-year term in a general election. The first parliament was installed on 10 October 2010, the date of the dissolution of the Netherl ...

in the 2016 general election as the third candidate of the Democratic Party (DP). She was not elected. When the interim first Marlin-Romeo cabinet was formed in early 2018, Wuite became the Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports on behalf of the

United Democrats The United Democrats (, ''Enomenoi Dimokrates'' (EDI)) is a liberal political party in Cyprus. The party was founded by former President of Cyprus George Vasiliou in 1993 as ''Kinima Eleftheron Dimokraton'' ("Movement of Free Democrats"). The ...

(UD). She was sworn in on 15 January and appeared again on the ballot in the February 2018 general election as the UD's twelfth candidate. The

second Marlin-Romeo cabinet The second Marlin-Romeo cabinet was the 8th cabinet of Sint Maarten. It was formed by a coalition of the political parties United Democrats (UD) and the St. Maarten Christian Party (SMCP). The cabinet succeeded the first Marlin-Romeo cabinet f ...

was installed on 25 June 2018 and included Wuite as Minister Plenipotentiary of Sint Maarten. In that position, she represented Sint Maarten's cabinet in the

Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of the Netherlands The Council of Ministers of the Kingdom ( or ''Rijksministerraad'') is the executive council of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which is a state consisting of four constituent countries: Aruba, Curaçao, the Netherlands, and Sint Maarten. Their ...

, which meets in The Hague. Because of that, she moved back to The Hague. She ran once again for member of Sint Maarten's parliament in the 2020 general election as the UD's third candidate, but did not receive a seat. She called the country's problems immense and particularly complex, and her campaign was described as "surprisingly substantive" for Sint Maarten standards by ''

de Volkskrant ''De Volkskrant'' (; ), stylized as de Volkskrant, is a Dutch daily morning newspaper. Founded in 1919, it has a nationwide circulation of about 250,000. Formerly a leading centre-left Catholic broadsheet, ''de Volkskrant'' today is a medium- ...

''. On 25 September 2019, parliament passed a

motion of no confidence A motion or vote of no confidence (or the inverse, a motion or vote of confidence) is a motion and corresponding vote thereon in a deliberative assembly (usually a legislative body) as to whether an officer (typically an executive) is deemed fi ...

against five cabinet ministers including Wuite. The motion's supporters were against the cabinet's decision to

dissolve parliament The dissolution of a legislative assembly (or parliament) is the simultaneous termination of service of all of its members, in anticipation that a successive legislative assembly will reconvene later with possibly different members. In a democrac ...

following the downfall of the

coalition government A coalition government, or coalition cabinet, is a government by political parties that enter into a power-sharing arrangement of the executive. Coalition governments usually occur when no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an ...

. Wuite's term ended on 19 November 2019, and she subsequently became a strategic advisor at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports concerned with reconstruction projects in the aftermath of

Hurricane Irma Hurricane Irma was an extremely powerful and devastating tropical cyclone that was the first Category 5 hurricane to strike the Leeward Islands on record, followed by Hurricane Maria, Maria two weeks later. At the time, it was considered ...

House of Representatives

She joined the Dutch political party D66 in early 2020 and decided to run for member of the

House of Representatives of the Netherlands The House of Representatives ( , literally "Second Chamber of the States General", or simply ) is the lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliament of the Netherlands, the States General of the Netherlands, States General, the other one ...

in the 2021 general election. Wuite said during the campaign that it was necessary to renew the relations between the constituent countries of the

Kingdom of the Netherlands The Kingdom of the Netherlands (, ;, , ), commonly known simply as the Netherlands, is a sovereign state consisting of a collection of constituent territories united under the monarch of the Netherlands, who functions as head of state. The re ...

. According to her, issues that need to be addressed are "imposed supervision, arguments over money, ..lack of comprehension, and unilateral handling by The Hague." Being D66's twentieth candidate, she was elected and received 15,898

preference votes Preferential voting or preference voting (PV) may refer to different election systems or groups of election systems: * Any electoral system that allows a voter to indicate multiple preferences where preferences marked are weighted or used as cont ...

. Wuite was sworn in on 31 March as the body's first member of Sint Maarten descent and was her party's spokesperson for kingdom relations, art, culture, and media. She is a member of the Interparliamentary Committee on the

Dutch Language Union The Dutch Language Union ( , NTU) is an international regulatory institution that governs issues regarding the Dutch language. It is best known for its spelling reforms which are promulgated by member states, grammar books, the Word list of th ...

, and she is on the Committees for Education, Culture and Science; for Foreign Affairs; for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation (chair); and for Kingdom Relations. When the collapse of the

fourth Rutte cabinet The fourth Rutte cabinet was the cabinet of the Netherlands from 10 January 2022 until 2 July 2024. The cabinet was a continuation of the third Rutte cabinet and was formed by the conservative liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy ( ...

triggered a snap election in November 2023, Wuite announced she would not run for re-election.

Other positions

Next to her career, Wuite served for about ten years (until 2016) on the board of the Caribbean chapter of the

Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds The Cultuurfonds was founded by Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands in London in 1940 during World War II in order to buy war material for the British and Dutch Governments. It continued after the war as Stichting Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds aiming ...

, a foundation providing funding for cultural activities. She was also an ambassador of the Dutch Black Achievement Month in 2019 and the foundation's chair in early 2021, and she has been working as a Caribbean scout for the

Dutch Research Council The Dutch Research Council (NWO, Dutch: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course o ...

since April 2020.

Personal life

Upon her election to the House of Representatives, Wuite moved to

Voorburg Voorburg () is a town and former municipality in the west part of the province of South Holland, Netherlands. Together with the town Leidschendam and the village Stompwijk, it merged into the municipality of Leidschendam-Voorburg in 2002. Sit ...

and she later relocated once more to

. She has two sons.

Electoral history

References

External links

Campaign website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wuite, Jorien 1964 births 21st-century Dutch women politicians Democrats 66 politicians Democratic Party Sint Maarten politicians Erasmus University Rotterdam alumni Politicians from The Hague Living people Ministers plenipotentiary (Sint Maarten) Open University (Netherlands) alumni Sint Maarten politicians Sint Maarten women in politics Dutch women diplomats 21st-century Dutch diplomats Diplomats from The Hague People from Voorburg Dutch MPs 2021–2023