A Discussion Site for Good Governance and Corruption in Public Life Issues in the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla in the West Indies, moderated by Don Mitchell CBE QC, of PO Box 83, Anguilla, British West Indies. Email me with your comments and contributions at: idmitch@anguillanet.com.
Public Accounts Committee (PAC): We are considering the lack of accountability and transparency in the government of Anguilla. We are looking at the three essential headings of integrity, accountability and transparency. We have finished with integrity, and now we are dealing with accountability. We have in the last post dealt with the first essential instrument for guaranteeing accountability, the Ombudsman. The second essential institution is a functioning Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Assembly.
The PAC is perhaps the most effective mechanism designed by our Constitutions to enable Members of the Legislature to question and investigate the manner in which public officers have spent the monies voted by the Legislature. Yet, we do not use it. In most of our territories no PAC has ever been appointed, far less functioned as it should.
We all know the reasons for this relaxed state of affairs. Those presently in government have no interest in setting up a tribunal that will expose the wrongdoings that they may have been engaged in. Those who are in opposition now have no desire to erect walls and boundaries that will limit their ability, when their turn comes to take power, to misuse public funds. Similarly, the British Governor wants to keep everyone as quiet and as calm as possible, so that he can go back to London at the end of his term to receive his pats on the back and other accolades. He has no interest in ruining his reputation by having an effective PAC reviewing unauthorised expenditures made by his Executive Council and public service. None of the institutions of government in Anguilla have any interest in making sure that the PAC functions.
It is time for our legislatures to appoint and to work the Public Accounts Committees in the way that they are intended to work.
The Interests Commissioner: Following on from the previous post, the first institution we would look for in a country’s system of government, to give us some indication that integrity in public service is taken seriously, is a functioning and strictly enforced Integrity Act. This is the law that in well-regulated countries requires public officers, that is, civil servants, politicians and directors of statutory boards, to publicly declare their assets and liabilities. In Anguilla, as in most of the British Overseas Territories, there is no such law.
We need to have laws and regulations, backed with sharp teeth, put in place. In the absence of such a law, members of the public are entitled to suspect that politicians and civil servants retire much richer than when they went into the service. And, we are entitled to believe that they have come by those riches in an unethical and criminal way.
Nearly three weeks have passed since the elections.And, nothing has tickled my fancy or made me clench my teeth in dismay. I have nothing to report on, except that Sutcliffe Hodge filed his election petition against Evans McNiel Rogers’ election this morning. I am as relaxed as fresh road kill.
I hope everyone else is as laid-back and worry-free.
Anguilla Revenue Study.This is the point at which we Anguillians have to pay for our government's excesses over the past couple of years. I understand that our public debt now exceeds EC$200 million. Now, it has been revealed that one Mr Alan Roe, an Oxford Management Policy Consultant, is coming to Anguilla to study our economy and finances and to make recommendations as to how we are to improve our revenue to meet our bills. Our agreeing to this exercise, you will remember, was a condition that Minister Chris Bryan laid down for permitting our Ministry of Finance to borrow more money. Mr Roe is a former World Bank economist, and a lecturer in economics at Warwick University.
I see from his Itinerary that Mr Roe is arriving on 29 February. I hope the relevant officers of the Ministry of Finance do not do all their counting in this way!
The most scandalous situation exists in the area of property tax and hotel accommodation tax. Will Mr Roe be successful in impressing on us our need to pay our taxes? Or will we continue our historic path of habitual tax evasion? Would someone please remind Hubert what he is supposed to do now that he is in government? There is no excuse for his continuing to refuse to pay his property tax.
My contributions to Mr Roe's exercise are as follows. Now that the accounts are all computerized, and since government does not have to pay for postage, would it be such a problem for the various government departments that collect revenue to send out a reminder or bill to all taxpaying citizens at regular intervals? I know that governments do not usually remind people of their obligation to pay, but is it so difficult to organize? I never remember that I have not paid my property tax until later in the year when I am writing up my accounts and find that column empty.
Can I suggest that he recommend that we begin to move to a value added tax system? It would be relatively easy to introduce VAT for services. All of the major service providers in Anguilla have computerized accounts. We do not pay income tax. It would be comparatively easy to introduce and to enforce a 20% tax on all services. Small tradesmen will be able to evade the tax comparatively easily, but not the major ones whose accounts are computerized. We could continue for the present to pay customs duties on imported goods until we have developed the expertise to replace customs duties with the VAT.
Anyway, now we know that Victor did sign an agreement with the British to engage in this study in exchange for them permitting him to borrow for the elections! That is how he was able to pay some of our bills last month.
Why I do not believe that Jerome will join Hubert in a “national government.” To recap, for those who do not realise what is at stake in Anguilla's political establishment. Hubert Hughes and his Anguilla National Movement was the successful party in the recent Anguilla general elections. The AUM won four of the seven seats in the Anguilla House of Assembly. The Governor appointed Hubert to be Chief Minister. Acting on his advice the Governor has appointed his other three successful party candidates, Edison Baird, Walcott Richardson, and Evan Gumbs, to fill the three remaining seats on the Executive Council. Victor Banks' outgoing Anguilla United Force lost the election, retaining only two seats in the Legislature. This transferred the AUF to the opposition benches in the House. The Anguilla Progressive Party of Brent Davis won the one remaining seat. That winning APP candidate was Jerome Davis. That places Jerome on the opposition benches. There, he joins Othlyn Vanterpool and Neil Rogers of the AUF.
Throughout the election campaign the members of the APP repeatedly assured their supporters that none of them would break ranks, if elected, to join with another party in forming a government. We were invited either to elect a majority of APP candidates to form a government, or, if a minority was elected, they would serve the next five years in opposition. In spite of that promise, Jerome is said to be consulting with his constituency stalwarts on whether he should break with his party, leave the opposition ranks, and join Hubert's government.
It has been widely published that Hubert has invited Jerome to join in a “national government”. Hubert has been quoted as saying that a national government is needed in Anguilla at this time. National government in time of extreme external threat is permissible. It calls for the most exceptional circumstances. National government is a code name for government with no opposition, a dictatorship in short. When the outside threat is so severe that we are prepared to give up our freedoms and liberties, surrender our democratic right of opposition to certain elements of government policy in the interest of defeating the enemy, then only is national government acceptable. During the Second World War, the British Labour party joined with the Conservative government to form a national government. It dissolved immediately the War ended.
From Hubert's point of view, if he can tempt Jerome into joining him, there are only advantages. With his superior political experience, he could ensure that Jerome was no threat or challenge to his government. To quote Lyndon B Johnson on why he did not fire J Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI, “It is probably better to have him on the inside of the tent pissing out, than on the outside pissing in.” There is no doubt this is a brilliant move on Hubert's part. Trust the old fox of Anguilla politics to think up such a smart move as that!
By securing Jerome's allegiance, Hubert's government would become more secure. Instead of having a bare majority in the House of Assembly, he would have a comfortable majority. In case Sutcliffe Hodge did not prevail in his promised challenge to Neil Rogers' successful recapturing of the Valley North constituency, this would give him a vital buffer in case one of his Ministers became ill.
Sutcliffe is said to have promised to support Hubert's government if he should win the North Valley seat. He lost the vote, but is suing for Neil's win to be overturned. Even if he successfully challenged Neil, he might not do any better in any bye-election, in the event that the judge ordered one. Or, if he prevailed, Sutcliffe might prefer to remain in opposition, and to fight for honest government from the opposition benches. Hubert needs the reassurance of another seat in the House now, he cannot afford to wait for Sutcliffe.
From Jerome's point of view, there are temptations to join with Hubert. He would be gaining a front seat at the banquet of power. This should mean that he could lobby for some of the crumbs of patronage that will fall from the table of government. He may be able to get positions for himself and his main supporters, a pay-back that some of them may expect and may desperately need. He will have a taste of power, a seat at the decision-making body of the nation. Politicians drool over such a prospect. He might even convince himself that he could be a force for good once he was in government.
The critical point of view in all this is the people's. From our point of view, Jerome joining a government that did not belong to his party would be only a negative development. We could no longer rely on him to keep government honest, something he could only do from the opposition benches. If he gave his allegiance to such a government then, when government made a mistake, he would have to keep quiet about it. He would no longer be available to introduce independent Motions, Resolutions, and Bills in the House, and lobby and argue for their passage. He could not organise the Public Accounts Committee to oversee government expenditure of public funds. He could not challenge government from the government benches. A voice for the people would have been lost. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either naïve or simply does not know how government works. Hubert's reign would become essentially unrestrained.
Other than Neil, who has never been known to speak in the past on any of the topics of transparency, accountability or integrity in government, there would be no advocate for good government in the House. Othlyn Vanterpool, the sole AUF member of the House if Sutcliffe were to win the election petition, would be as equally unreliable as Neil would have been as an advocate for transparency, accountability, and integrity in the new government. His timidity and inactivity in his last position as Director of Fisheries does not give us any confidence that he would suddenly become a champion for integrity in government.
Don't get me wrong. I am not assuming that Hubert's government is inevitably going to go rogue. I am not attacking Hubert. I am assuming that, no matter how hard Hubert tries, there will be a need for an opposition to do what a good opposition does: to point out the mistakes that are being made, the concerns that are not being addressed, and the promises that are not being fulfilled. The likelihood is that Hubert will be so busy worrying over the economy for the next couple of years that he will put his undertakings to introduce good-governance measures on the back burner. We shall need a vocal and active opposition in the House to remind him of his campaign promises. That is why we need a Jerome on the opposition benches.
If Jerome were to be seduced into Hubert's 'national government', he would have shown himself to be unreliable. His reputation for integrity would be shot. He would have turned his back on his party. He would be seen as having been willing to sell them out for thirty pieces of silver. A viable, energetic, enthusiastic, developing political force, the APP, would have been betrayed, perhaps mortally wounded. It might be difficult for the party to recover from such a near-mortal blow. Neither Jerome nor the APP would be likely to gain an increase in public support in the next general elections. It would more likely than not be the end of Jerome's career in the House of Assembly. The likelihood is that, having cut ranks and crossed the floor, he would never win his seat again. Could this be what President Abraham Lincoln meant when he famously asked, “Am I not destroying my enemy when I make a friend of him?”
The damage to Jerome would be the least of the loss to Anguilla. It is vital for a healthy democracy that we have a robust and active opposition in the House of Assembly and in the country, whether it be the AUF or the APP, to keep the new government on their toes. It is precisely the absence of such an effective opposition over the past ten years that is largely to blame for the island having sunk insensibly into bankruptcy and discredit. Jerome joining a “national government” with Hubert Hughes would be a loss for Jerome, for the APP, and, most of all, for Anguilla.
The Jerome I know has too much political savvy to make such a short-sighted, party-destroying, nation-denying, career-ending mistake.
Some reflections on the elections.I am happy with the election results. I have no doubt that the Anguillian electorate has spoken loudly and clearly. Congratulations to the victors, and commiserations to the losers. Better luck next time. And, there will be a next time, perhaps sooner than we all realise.
This is DeFosto’s satirical calypso on Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s palace that he has just had government build for him in the heart of Port of Spain in Trinidad. The music reflects so clearly what Anguillians thought about the United Front Party and the incumbent politicians that I invite you to look at it to get a sense of how relieved we all are in Anguilla at the outcome of yesterday’s elections.
The elections are not completely over. The likelihood is that, in the coming weeks, Sutcliffe Hodge will challenge Neil Rogers’ victory in the courts. To this day, Neil has refused to demonstrate something that only he can do, and that would have cost him nothing: that he has effectively renounced his US citizenship, something that he is required to do under our Constitution if he is to be legally qualified to sit in the House of Assembly.
Will the Hon Hubert Hughes, our new Chief Minister, remember James Frankel of La Samana hotel in St Maarten? In about 1979 Frankel was given an Aliens Landholding Licence by the Government of Anguilla to purchase land at MaundaysBay from Emile Gumbs, and to lease more of it from Government. He began building what was to become the Cap Juluca hotel. The following year, during the election campaign, Hubert took as one of his main campaign planks a threat to force Frankel to re-negotiate the Licence. He said he wanted to see more density on the beach. Now, a licence of this sort, which contains mutual undertakings and promises by both government and the developer, can be considered a contract. Ronald Webster made Hubert Minister of Tourism in the new government that took office in 1980. Hubert continued to make it clear to Frankel that his licence was not going to be honoured. Frankel sued the Government for anticipatory breach of his licence agreement. I do not know what advice the A-G gave government. But, government hurriedly agreed with Frankel that in exchange for his dropping the suit, he could sell his licence and project for a goodly profit to Friedland and Hickox, who became the next developers of the hotel. If Frankel had continued with the case, the likelihood is great that Government would have lost it, and been ordered to pay him substantial damages. Will Hubert make the same mistake all over again, as he is promising to do?
Congratulations are due to the IT team which put together a brilliant website to cover the results as they were coming out. If you have not seen the web pages before, you can get the election details here. The elections map which showed the results as they developed was particularly good. Congratulations again to Rudy Webster, Romero Kelsick, Garson Kelsick, Ludwig Grant, Damien Harrigan, Vaughn Hazell, Roxanne Romney, Duquaine Brooks, Dwayne Smith, and Karenda Brooks. You did a magnificent job of bringing the elections to those of us who stayed home glued to our computer screens. Don’t put away the software just yet!
Well, there, I have voted.I really don’t want to write anything on the elections taking place in Anguilla today. There is this irrational, but visceral, fear that, whatever I write, I’ll end up putting ‘goat mouth’ on the outcome. So, I shall just keep quiet about my hopes and fears for the results expected late tonight.
One comment I feel obliged to make is that I found the atmosphere in the line of voters at the RoadMethodistChurch to be very light hearted. Everyone seemed to share the same unbelievably friendly and gregarious mood. There were no scowling faces and menacing looks as I have experienced in previous elections. Everyone was chatting and laughing with everyone else. And, the large number of people that were there standing in queue from early was itself unusual.
I can only hope that these are good omens for the future.
Accountability.I have obtained a copy of the Airport Project financial report presented earlier this week by the Hon Victor Banks, Minister of Finance, to Members of the House of Assembly at the request of the Hon Edison Baird. I read it and had an immediate allergic reaction. I realise I could comment on it in temperate language. Intemperate language, I find, is the best antihystamine.
We will all remember that Mr Baird had complained approximately one year ago in the House of Assembly that there were rumours that some proprietors of land taken by government for the airport extension project had received many more times the value of compensation that other equally deserving proprietors had received.He demanded a list of the value of the compensation paid to each proprietor so that he could determine if there was any truth to that rumour.The Minister of Finance denied that anyone had been singled out for special compensation.He promised to produce a complete accounting, listing the amount of value in land, money or whatever, that each proprietor received so that everyone could see how transparent and accountable this government was.
The document that Mr Banks has now produced is 8 pages long.He said at the time he distributed it that it was incomplete. Some information had not yet been received. Some transactions are incomplete. But, you would expect that, for those transactions that are complete, all the information is in the report. You would be wrong.
I have scanned the document into my computer. I can let anybody who wants to receive a copy of the complete document have it by email, if you send me a request.
I publish below a cropped version of page 1 only.The six columns show the name of the proprietor, the property taken by government, a description of any property given in exchange by government, and the total acreage/payout to the proprietor.I have cropped two columns of irrelevant information.
The first thing you notice when you read the entire document is that it omits the most expensive piece of property acquired.I cannot find DameBerniceLake’s family land mentioned on the list of names at all.There is no reason why that acquisition should have been omitted from the accounting on the Airport Project.It was an intrinsic part of the airport extension project.I do not know the value of the land acquired but it was several acres.At a guess it is probably worth as much as all the land and property listed. It may not yet have been paid for, but it has to be paid for in due course, and government must have had it valued and knows what it expects to pay.
In other words, the accounting that Mr Banks has produced may not cover one half of the property acquired.That is woefully inadequate.He gave no reason for his omission to give any amount of compensation already paid to the Lake family, and any estimate of what the government expects to pay in all for the property.
The second thing you notice is that in the sixth column, ‘Acreage/payout’, only the area of land and any money paid in cash is listed.There is no estimate of the value of the property given by the proprietor, or the value of the property given by government. There must have been some attempt by the Land Valuation Department to value the individual properties being acquired.Mr Baird was entitled to know that any particular property being acquired was valued at a particular amount.Similarly, there must have been a value put to the land that was being offered in exchange.
Then there are the replacement homes.In some cases, in addition to an exchange of land together with a cash amount, there was a replacement home built by government.A perusal of the document reveals that a total of eighteen (18) replacement homes were part of the compensation packages paid to proprietors.That must have been a significant cost. There is no attempt to account for this money paid by government to construct the replacement homes.
If, say, in exchange for a house on a quarter of an acre of land altogether worth $500,000.00, government gave the proprietor (i) a half an acre of land worth, say, $100,000.00, (ii) cash of $20,000.00, and (iii) a replacement house that cost $480,000.00 to build, then, if the list contains only the first two items, it will have accounted for only 20% of the total amount of compensation actually paid.And, we will not know how close to or far away from the value of the property taken was the total amount of compensation paid. This is information that government already has. It has already taken one year to produce this account.
There is no reason I can discern why the Ministry of Finance cannot instantly put its hands on the figures for the cost of building each replacement home.Don’t tell me that no account was kept of it, house by house.They had to know that they had agreed to build for a particular proprietor a three-bedroom house costing, say, $500,000.
There would have been agreements with the proprietors. There would have been tenders and contracts with the building contractors.There would have been Ministry of Infrastructure supervisors ensuring that what was contracted was built.There would have been Ministry of Finance officers keeping a check on cost overruns and other financial information.
We will recall that, in relation to the proposed 500 ft extension to the east of the airport, PS Larry Franklin assured us just a scant few days ago that:
4. There are already procurement guidelines for the Government of Anguilla. There will be project oversight by the permanent secretaries in Finance, Economic Development and Infrastructure. There is a functioning Internal Audit Department and I expect the Internal Audit Department to audit the project both during and after the execution stages. I also expect the external auditors to audit the project.
5. [Your comments on procurement as a source of graft] maybe true and I appreciate your concerns on this matter. However, there are policies, standards and procedures in place. The project has to conform to those policies, standards and procedures. The Department of Infrastructure has managed significant roads projects before including the Rev. CL Carty Road, the Jeremiah Gumbs Road, and the road around IslandHarbour. There have been no major accountability issues with the management of the construction of those roads.
It is my opinion that the Minister has short-changed Mr Baird in supplying such inadequate, incomplete and misleading information to him.He was required by the rules of parliamentary procedure not to give an incomplete and misleading answer to a request for such vital information.
To summarise, the minimum information that Mr Baird was entitled to receive was (i) the value of the property acquired from each proprietor; and (ii) the value of the total compensation paid to or estimated to be due to each proprietor. Even accepting that some of the transactions are not yet complete, and the final figures not known, the vast majority of transactions are complete, yet the figures for these is not given.
This document does not begin to demonstrate that government is prepared to publish and reveal the true amounts paid or due to be paid to all the proprietors.Whatever the alleged policies, standards and procedures alluded to by Mr Franklin are, they are clearly ineffective to permit an audit of the airport project.I would hate to think what waste and worse there has been on other projects managed by the Department of Infrastructure in such a lax way as this one obviously was.
If this is the best government could do, then, in my opinion the document is evidence that our government departments lack the capacity to manage and supervise any major public works project satisfactorily or at all.
God help us all when the additional airport extension is built later this year!
The Ministers propose to take a motion to authorize additional borrowing to the House of Assembly, regardless of the British Government’s disapproval.We have looked previously at the British Government’s refusal to permit the United Front government to increase Anguilla’s borrowing in the absence of any hope or plan to repay the debt. Now, the Minister says he is going to take a proposal to the House to authorize some $40 million, whether the British government sanctions it or not.
Can he do that?
Section 55 of the Anguilla Constitution 1982 sets out the limitations to the powers of the Anguilla House of Assembly. It states that “Except on the recommendation of the Governor” the Assembly shall not proceed upon any Bill, or any motion, or any petition, which in the opinion of the person presiding makes provision for increasing any charge on the revenues or other funds of Anguilla.The person presiding is the Hon David Carty, the Speaker of the House. He has long served as chairman or other high party official of the ruling United Front and its predecessor ANA party.
Once the Governor informs the Speaker that he objects to the motion or resolution or proposal to increase Anguilla’s borrowing, it would be the constitutional duty of the Speaker to prevent the government ministers from debating the matter.
The first big question then, is whether the Governor will make any objection known to the Speaker in advance?
The next big question is, will the Speaker permit the Ministers to introduce such a motion in the face of its evident illegality?
In my view, any lender proceeding to advance funds to government in the face of the illegality of the borrowing will be at risk of a court ruling that the Assembly had no power to authorise the borrowing. A court would be likely to rule that the borrowing was illegal and was not an obligation binding on any future government. The lender would have to look elsewhere to recover their funds.
In the event of a law suit brought against them, the members of the House who acted illegally would be at risk of having their personal property and possessions seized in repayment of the illegal debt that they incurred.
If the Governor does not inform the Speaker that he has any objection then, in my view, the Speaker will be entitled to assume that the Ministers would not be bringing the motion unless they had the Governor’s permission, as required by section 55.
As an Anguillian, how do I get registered to vote?Getting registered to vote in Anguilla has never been easier.The law provides for a system of continuous voter registration.If you are over 18 years of age, and you are not on the voters list, get registered.Pricilla Gumbs is the Electoral Registration Officer.She has explained how it is done.Go and see her at the Passport Office, or telephone her, if you have any question.
Priscilla Gumbs and Chantel Ruan
If you are young, never voted before, but are qualified to vote, make sure you are registered this week. You never know when the next elections will be called.
Anguilla needs a spring cleaning. Sweep them out, sweep them out. It is time to sweep them all out.
The APP needs your vote in the upcoming elections.
Who will we be voting for, and why?The people of Anguilla go to the polls sometime in the next few months.A few words on who we will be voting for, and why, are in order.Petty used to do most of the writing and explaining in this area, but since he is Supervisor of Elections, he has been keeping his oar dry.Let us take a first look at how we vote and why in very general terms.
The Anguillian system of representation and government is the Westminster system.This is quite different from the USPresidential system.Most of us are familiar with the US system from looking at TV coverage of the recent elections there.In brief, the US system can be described as follows.The people elect both the Executive and the Legislature.Everyone gets to vote for the President.They also vote for members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.The winner of the contest for President then appoints his cronies and hangers-on to his Cabinet.The checks and balance are that the Senate must approve his appointments to Cabinet.The system was deliberately designed by the first great US statesmen.It was the product of thought and debate, and has lasted for over 200 years.
The Westminster System evolved in England over a period of 900 years.In the days of the British Empire, it was transferred to all the countries ruled by Britain.It continues to live on in the Commonwealth today.This is true even in those countries that are republics which have replaced the Queen by a President.In the Commonwealth, the people elect representatives to a Parliament.The parliamentarians appoint the executive.The people have no say in who becomes Prime Minister or Premier or Chief Minister.After the supervisor of elections has declared which party has won the most seats in parliament, the party leader can expect to become the next chief minister.The party leader goes to the head of state, the president or the monarch, or the governor in our case.The party leader informs the governor that he or she has the control of the parliament.The governor appoints him or her as the chief minister.The chief minister appoints the members of cabinet from among the members of parliament.The executive thus sits in the legislature, and controls it from within.
It is a representative system that was wrung by the people through force and conflict out of the hands of the hereditary kings and nobles who claimed to rule by divine right.Unlike the US system, it was not the product of any thought or planning.To this day, there is no written British Constitution.Much of the practical working of the British Constitution rests on practice and convention.Vitally important constitutional principles are not laid down authoritatively in any statutory document.Academics and politicians argue to this day over what exactly are the basic principles of the British Constitution.As with all such accidental systems, it transfers to other countries very badly.The British Constitution works fairly well in practice in the UK.It has been a disaster for most of the ex-colonies who have adopted it without adequate safeguards.
An essential characteristic of the British Constitution is that it retains the forms of absolute rule, while insisting on democratic rule in practice.The freedoms of the British have been won by them through centuries of conflict, including the execution and forced abdication of kings.No such struggle of the people occurred in the vast majority of the ex-colonies.Coming so recently out of a system of absolute colonial rule, our traditions of democracy and liberty are weak.The result is that the executive branch holds all the strings of power, both formally and informally.There are few, if any, checks and balances.The Westminster system has been described as a dictatorship of the Prime Minister.Absolute rule has been transferred to the Prime Minister and his colleagues.This is so everywhere except in the UK, where the press, parliament and the people ensure practical limits to abuse.Most of the time, anyway.
With no checks and balances in our colonial Constitution, we the people are left with no remedy except to throw them out every five or ten years and hope a new lot will do better.
That is why I will vote APP this coming election.There is no alternative.If my favoured candidate’s party wins, and they do a good job for the first five years, I’ll vote for another five years.If they do a good job for ten years, it will still be time to change them in the end, by voting for a new lot of representatives.
In the absence of a whole raft of checks and balances, it is the only tool we have for insisting on good governance.
Hon Hubert Hughes returns free government car to the Chief Minister's Permanent Secretary.I was pleased when I heard the news on the radio this morning.Hubert Hughes took a big hit in his popularity in Blowing Point when he accepted the free car given to him by government last year.He gave it back yesterday.He has gone some way to making amends by this gesture.
I don't know if he realises quite how he was used by government.He was turned into both a guinea pig and a scapegoat at the same time.He came out of the exercise looking very bad.I see his return of the car as an attempt to recover some of the political capital that he lost.
Each Minister of government in Anguilla drives a government car.These vehicles are serviced and gassed at regular intervals, I presume, at the tax payer's expense.It was, as I recall, in the budget debate for last year that the Hon Chief Minister announced that the Ministers were working so hard, they deserved the 40% hike in pay that they were awarding themselves.They so deserved all the increases and bonuses that he announced that he would in addition be proposing that, when this administration came to an end in the year 2010, each Minister should be permitted to take home his government car.It would be given to him by a grateful nation in appreciation for all the hard work and sacrifice.
When this announcement was made, there was outrage expressed in the community.It is true that the government revenue was doing well at the time, and the public purse could afford the generosity.But, the average Anguillian can smell a rotten fish when it is put down on the table in front of them.Now that the economy is in the pits with the world-wide recession, the sullenness when you raise the topic with the average Anguillian is almost palpable.
So, during the year following the announcement that the ministers were taking home their cars at the end of the term came the experiment.It was announced last year that the government so appreciated the work of the two members of the opposition that they were to be given brand new cars for their private use.The explanation was that Hubert Hughes and Edison Baird, as Members of the House of Assembly, drove up and down the country giving lifts to old ladies and doing other community work, and deserved a government vehicle to do it in.
At a ceremony attended by all the members of the Anguillian press, Mr Hughes accepted the keys to a vehicle.It was clearly stated that government had decided to give Mr Hughes the vehicle.He accepted the keys with words of thanks and appreciation.The speeches made in handing over the car and in accepting the car were broadcast over and over again on the radio.The language used at the hand over of the keys appeared to say that the ownership of the car was being transferred to Mr Hughes.That was the only interpretation that one could give to the language of the hand over.
Mr Baird announced that he would not be accepting the offer of a free vehicle.That shows us how politically astute Mr Baird is.It was a brilliant stroke of political genius.Just as the government's attempt to discredit the opposition might be counted a brilliant stroke of political genius.
I also assumed that Mr Hughes had taken title to the vehicle.I published a post on this blog condemning the gift of ownership of a vehicle, or money's worth, to the members of the opposition.
Even Mr Hughes' son Haydn Hughes evidently assumed that his father was taking title to the vehicle.He wrote and published articles in mitigation of his father's decision to accept the gift.He wrote that Mr Baird was not doing anything different.He wrote that Mr Baird's acceptance of the money was just as bad as accepting the car.
Government members took up the refrain that Mr Baird was accepting in cash the value of a vehicle in lieu of taking possession and ownership of an actual vehicle.Mr Baird got very upset at that suggestion.What he was doing, he pointed out, was to accept the small travel allowance that had long ago been passed into law as the entitlement of every member of the House of Assembly.He was not, as everyone assumed, taking the monetary value of a car similar to the one that Mr Hughes had taken possession of.
There was public outrage expressed in radio talk shows and letters to the editors.Taxi drivers sitting in conference at the airport and at the sea port spluttered their indignation. Underpaid nurses, teachers, and police officers were observed lifting their eyebrows in disbelief and sucking their teeth loudly.Emails flew about the country from one end to the other.All condemned the decision of Mr Hughes to take ownership of a government vehicle.It was obvious to even the most jaded and cynical Anguillian that it can never be correct for public materials and money to be donated by politicians to themselves.Not, at any rate, without the sanction of a law debated and passed in the House of Assembly.
Within days of the hand over the story changed.Both the government and Mr Hughes announced that the intention had never been to “give” Mr Hughes a vehicle. The intention all along had only been to give Mr Hughes the “use” of a government vehicle.If that had been the plan all along, why, one wonders, was it not announced as such.
My conclusion is that it was partly an attempt to tar Mr Hughes with the same brush as the government ministers.If government Ministers were to suffer politically from the announcement that they were going to take home their vehicles permanently at the end of their term in 2010, then the opposition would not be allowed to take the high moral road.They would be destroyed by giving them each a free vehicle.
It was also, I assume, partly an attempt to see just how furious the public would get at this act of generosity towards Mr Hughes.Would they accept that the gift was the right of Mr Hughes as a member of the Assembly?If so, that would suggest that there was not much opposition to the idea that Ministers should be able to take home their cars.If the gift was met by significant outrage, then the idea could be quietly scrapped, leaving Mr Hughes the only member of the House of Assembly to have received ownership of a free government vehicle.
Only Mr Baird appears to have seen through the stratagem, and avoided the trap set for the members of the opposition.
By giving the vehicle back to government, Mr Hughes has attempted to recover some of the reputation and integrity that he lost when he was made the scapegoat for this proposal by government ministers to give themselves a government car.His intention was clear from the public way he chose to return the keys.He invited the same press to be present when he handed the keys to the Permanent Secretary.He made sure his action was widely broadcast.
Only time will tell if he has been successful in this tactic.
