Marriages

I heard part of the Chief Minister’s weekly press conference on TV last night.  And, my stomach turned with nausea.  I have not witnessed such a sick performance in a long time.  He went on and on about how concerned we must all be about ‘marriages of convenience’.  Listening to him you would you would have got the impression that permanent liaisons between Anguillian women and Indian contract labour at Viceroy is the biggest challenge to Anguilla’s integrity and destiny that we face at this time.  He made it sound like a major crisis was on us.  Worse than an epidemic of swine flu.

The nausea is aggravated by the memory of his shameful speeches in the House of Assembly when he has accused Pam Webster of permitting herself to be the victim of a ‘marriage of convenience’.  Over the past year, with the connivance of an accommodating Speaker, he has shamelessly abused the privilege of the House to smear and denigrate Pam and her husband with this baseless and disgusting allegation.  When she wins the Island Harbour seat in the upcoming general elections, I hope she will have a few remarks to make in the House of Assembly about one or two so-called Christian Anguillian men I can think about and their hypocritical treatment of their long-suffering wives.

Did he think he could issue work permits for several hundred single men, and not one of them would stay?

No one takes him seriously any longer.

And, Jerome Roberts will easily take his seat in East End.

Hopefully we will now get our first genuine Indian Restaurant.  That would be a relief after all these Chinese Restaurants selling chicken and chips.

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Birthdays

Not many people can boast that their birth certificate is the country’s constitution. Billy Herbert was one. But, he has now passed on. James Woodley was another. But, he has passed on too. I wonder how many of us are left.

I am a Kittitian by birth. St Kitts is my native island. I had grown up in Trinidad and Jamaica. My Dad worked in those islands while I was a youngster. It never occurred to me to spend the rest of my life in either of those islands. I did not belong to them. I have inherited from my late father citizenships in both Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines. We never visited either of them when I was growing up. I knew no one there. To this day, I do not know if I have a single cousin living in either of those countries.

The Anguilla Revolution took place in 1967. At that time, I was a student in London. I closely followed events leading up to and after the Revolution. Members of my family lived in both St Kitts and Anguilla. In St Kitts, I had an uncle, Frank Henville QC. He was a well known lawyer of his time. He invited me to come and join him to do my law pupilage. So, when I had completed my law studies in the summer of 1971, I chose to return to Basseterre. There, I did my pupilage, and eventually hung out my shingle and started up my law practice.

Five years later, in August 1976, the Executive Council of Anguilla consisted of Ronald Webster, Emile Gumbs, Idalia Gumbs, and Albena Lake-Hodge. They invited me to come to Anguilla to serve as the Magistrate. That job lasted for four years. Then, I hung up my shingle in The Valley and went back into private practice, this time in Anguilla.

In 1980, the Peoples’ Action Movement of St Kitts and Nevis won the general election. Dr Kennedy Simmonds became the Prime Minister. Billy Herbert was one of his advisers. Billy was also the constitutional adviser to the Anguilla government. St Kitts-Nevis began to prepare for independence from Britain. Anguilla was about to become legally and constitutionally separated from St Kitts for the first time since 1825. The major objective of the Anguilla Revolution was in sight.

One problem was what to do with the many Anguillians who had chosen to work and to spend the rest of their lives in St Kitts. Would they suddenly become foreigners? And, the Kittitians such as Billy and myself who lived and worked in Anguilla? Were we to be made foreigners? The three governments of St Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla and the UK worked out a solution. All Kittitians living in Anguilla on the day of the legal separation of Anguilla would for the purposes of the Anguilla Constitution be deemed to have been born in Anguilla. All Anguillians living in St Kitts or Nevis on that day would be deemed to have been born in St Kitts-Nevis.

And, so we got section 4(3) of the Anguilla Constitution Order 1982:

“If a person who was born in St. Christopher or in Nevis before 19th December 1980 is ordinarily resident in Anguilla, having been so resident since that date, he shall be treated for the purposes of section 80(2) of the Constitution as if he had been born in Anguilla.”

Section 80(2) of the Constitution is the section that provides who is an Anguillian belonger. It reads:

“(2) For the purposes of this Constitution a person shall be regarded as belonging to Anguilla if that person—

(a) is a British Dependent Territories citizen—

(i) who was born in Anguilla, whether before or after the commencement of the British Nationality Act 1981 . . .”

So it is that I can claim with pride that the Anguilla Constitution Order is my Anguillian birth certificate. My birthday is the 19th December 1980. As I recall, twenty-eight is a good age to be!

Being born in Anguilla is one of the conditions or qualifications for election to the House of Assembly. Look out Eddie, here I come!

Belongers Voting

Constitutional Discussions 17: Only Anguillians to Vote. Section 43 of the Anguilla Constitution provides for a variety of persons living in a political constituency to be eligible to be a voter. The one constant is that you have to be a Belonger of Anguilla. There are citizenship tests, and Belonger tests, and residence tests, and domicile tests.

In meetings up and down the country, the majority of Anguillians were opposed to the citizenship test. Many Anguillians have had to travel abroad to work and support their family. Some of them have had to give up their citizenship in order to establish themselves in their new homes. When they retire and return to spend their last years in Anguilla, they may not have British Citizenship any longer. They may have given it up for economic purposes. They are not prohibited from voting. It is just that there are different rules for voters are not BOT citizens. Some non-citizens have to have resided in Anguilla for 12 months to be able to qualify. Others have to have resided for 5 years to qualify. It is all very confusing. Only lawyers can understand it!

The Commission, at paragraphs 103-105 of its Report, recommended keeping the Belonger test, getting rid of the citizenship test, and strengthening the residence test. In future, all voters must qualify by being Anguillians who have resided on the island for three years before the election. That was the view that appeared to the Commission to have majority support throughout the country. Members of the House of Assembly meeting in caucus at the Limestone Bay Café agreed with most of the recommendations of the Commission. As regards the recommendation at paragraph 103 that Anguillian status, however acquired, be a qualification for all voters, they disagreed. They preferred to keep the provision as is. That would mean that British Citizenship would continue to play a role in deciding who can vote and who cannot.

The meaning and purpose of this disagreement is not clear to me. It is a qualification for all voters that they must be Anguillian Belongers. The Commission was recommending that BOT citizenship qualification for some voters should go, and the residence qualification be extended to all voters. The Commission was not recommending altering the Belongership qualification. The Commission was recommending, as the vast majority of Anguillians requested, that the Belonger qualification remain intact. It is difficult to see what the members of the House of Assembly wanted to change in the recommendation of the Commission!

Do you have any idea?