What shape at the hoist contains the coat of arms on Sint Maarten's flag?

What shape at the hoist contains the coat of arms on Sint Maarten's flag? A white triangle. It occupies the hoist, or flagpole side, and contains Sint Maarten's coat of arms.

The rest of the flag consists of two horizontal bands: cherry red above and navy blue below. The flag was adopted on 13 June 1985, after Sint Maarten received its own coat of arms and held a design contest. Roselle Richardson designed the winning flag.

The white triangle is more than a geometric detail: it gives the arms a clear field against the red and blue bands. The coat of arms includes symbols such as the yellow sage, Sint Maarten's official flower, the courthouse in Philipsburg, and the monument marking the Dutch-French boundary on the island.

Sint Maarten became a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands on 10 October 2010, when the Netherlands Antilles dissolved. Since then, this has been the sole official flag used in Sint Maarten. Its white triangle can also cause a mix-up with the Philippine flag, which has a similar hoist triangle but a different historical and national context.