Guest Editorial: What Is It about Our Uniqueness? The following question was asked by one of my correspondents. I thought it was worth a post.
I’ve heard it said many times that we are a unique people (and to some extent we are, but then so is everyone else) and at a recent meeting of the members of the House of Representatives at the Road Primary School a certain “eloquent’ young man kept using the expression when addressing the issue of the Ombudsman. He thought that even though it might be working elsewhere, he kept reminding you and others, we should remember we are a unique people. What exactly did he mean and exactly what do we mean when we use that expression? Where has that got us and where is it likely to get us in the future? I am curious to learn what people mean when they refer to us as “unique”.
It certainly cannot mean that we are not subject to the usual conditions of the human race! This includes a susceptibility to temptation. Greed, lust, envy, pride, covetousness, glutony, and sloth beset us on all sides. We lack the protective institutions that larger societies have. We are a small and fragile society, given our tiny size. We can learn from the usual precautions that other societies have found useful to take to protect themselves. Perhaps we should be researching them and implementing them, if we want to remain unique in a pleasant sense.
We believe ourselves to be a morally superior "Christian nation." Because we believe God has a special love for Anguilla, we can have economic development without greed, crime and corruption, and prayer will protect us from evil. We thus arrogantly believe that we are the same virtuous people we were 50 years ago, and the rules and lessons of other islands don't apply here.
ReplyDeleteEntranced by platitudes, we trust our leaders to take us forward, our police to protect us and Social Security to support us to the grave. The empty chair of our morally superior Social Services Minister stares at us in our morally superior House of Assembly like a joke gone bad.
No one is laughing.
We talk about everything, so what about Exploitation? Its right here at our back door.Labour and the government seem to acetp this. The Philepeno and the Indonesian and all the other people here . They are some that cap juluca who never get a day off. They work seven days a week. What is our goverment doing about this. All over the island its getting worst. Pay me less and I will work.
ReplyDeleteWorking seven days a week may be exploitation or it may just be that the workers want to earn overtime. Foreign workers from Asia don't come here for the beaches. They are ambitious people and came here to work. Implications that they are being treated like slaves, without evidence that they are being coerced or threatened, is irresponsible and quite possibly false.
ReplyDeleteif the local anguilla employees have it dificult to get representation and support from the government, who will represent the cause of the foreign labourers
ReplyDeleteoh yes he had business to attend
ReplyDelete