Warnings

I receive my first ever warning from the police. There is a popular remedy or relief available to any person in Anguilla who has a complaint against someone else. You make a report at the police station of your concern, perhaps that a crime has been, or is about to be, committed. If you do not want the person prosecuted, you ask the police merely to visit the accused and warn him not to repeat his conduct. It is a simple-to-use procedure. The police love it. It requires no police investigation. It can be carried out quite quickly. It probably is a very useful process in preventing the commission of more serious crimes.

So, what was my alleged crime? The warning was to the effect that Lolita Richardson had made a formal complaint at the Police Station. She had complained that I had slandered her name on the Elkin Richardson radio show, “To the Point”. I was warned. I thanked the police officer who delivered the warning to me.

And, to think that I was under the impression that what I said on the radio programme was meant to preserve her name. This is my recollection of what happened.

On the Friday, Elkin had called me on the telephone. He had told me that he had obtained a copy of the proposed new constitution for Anguilla. I have previously written about how anxiously we in Anguilla were awaiting our first viewing of this document. See the links below.

Regular readers of this Blog will recall the sequence of events. In the period January to August 2006, the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Commission had worked with the Anguillian public on preparing recommendations for the reform of the Constitution of Anguilla. In August 2006, the Commission had published its Report. Subsequently, the Chief Minister had established a Chief Minister’s Committee. This had spent several months reviewing and discussing the Report. After much discussion, the Committee had come up with a number of amendments of its own. They had then decided that they would prefer to see in print what the finished product of what they had approved would look like. A written draft of the proposed new Constitution would make it easier to discuss the recommendations with the public. They would have something in their hands that they could refer to.

The Chief Minister had consequently given Lolita Richardson her instructions. She was to prepare a draft Constitution. It was intended for circulation to the public and for general discussion. She was to incorporate in the draft (a) the recommendations of the Commission, together with (b) such amendments as the Chief Minister’s Committee had approved. The main amendment that the Chief Minister’s Committee had come up with was that Anguilla should go for “full internal self-government”. Most of the other amendments were relatively minor.

Mrs Richardson had proceeded to prepare an initial draft constitution. This draft had been further reviewed by the Chief Minister’s Committee for several more months. No member of the public saw a copy of it during the several months it was under discussion. The Committee, we must assume, had made a number of further amendments to Mrs Richardson’s draft. Eventually, as we understood it, Mrs Richardson had incorporated the corrections. She had delivered a finished product to the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister had called a press conference. He had with much fanfare officially handed it over to the Attorney-General. The A-G’s instructions were to publish the draft to the public for discussion.

Since the hand-over some months ago, we have been waiting for the promised publication. To this day, you cannot obtain a copy of the draft that was handed to the A-G. It must be some sort of State secret. So, I was excited about the opportunity I was being offered to see it. Elkin asked me if I could study it and appear on his show on the following Monday and give my views on it. I was happy to agree. [This call-in radio programme on the radio station Kool FM takes place every Monday evening at 7:30 pm, approximately. There are often interesting speakers on the programme. You should tune in. The link above even permits live streaming to anywhere in the world].

I collected the document from Elkin. He told me he had got it from an official source. He had been assured that it was the final draft that the A-G was supposed to publish to the public. I read it as promised. I compared its contents paragraph by paragraph with the 2006 Report of the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Commission. On the following Monday evening, I turned up at the radio station. That Monday evening, I duly gave the listening public my impressions about the document. As I recall, they were, and are, principally these:

1. The draft was very disappointing in that it contained less than half of the recommendations made by the Commission and accepted by the Chief Minister’s Committee.

2. The draft was objectionable in that it included the exact opposite of some of the recommendations made by the Commission and approved by the Committee.

3. The draft could not be a final draft. It was filled with so many typing errors, grammatical mistakes, and contradictions, that it must be a very early, uncorrected draft. It could not be the finished draft. The document appeared to be really a very amateurish effort. I do not believe that Mrs Richardson would have permitted such a rough draft to be submitted to the A-G’s Chambers as a finished product. Another reason why the document I was shown could not be a finished product was that the initial draft had gone through month after month of discussions among the Chief Minister’s Committee. This Committee had included some of the most powerful and some of the most highly educated government officers in Anguilla. They would have noticed the obvious typing errors, and corrected them before the document was handed over to the A-G. All this I explained on the radio programme.

Now, tell me what was so objectionable in what I said!

Elkin tells me that he received a similar warning from the police as the one I got. His theory for this bizarre incident is that Mrs Richardson could not have heard the radio show herself. She must have missed listening to it, and relied on a skewed account of it given to her by some mischief-maker.

I accept that as a possibility. I forgive Mrs Richardson. But, she should know by now not to believe everything she is told in Anguilla.

Related Blogs:

New Constitution: 18 April 2009

Constitutions: 18 December 2008

Constitution: 2 December 2008

Shallowness: 7 June 2008

Big Chief: 29 May 2008

Checks & Balances: 28 May 2008

Garden Path: 26 May 2008

Open Mic: 24 May 2008

FOI Act

Freedom of Information Act. Last Monday, Elkin Richardson hosted the Hon Chief Minister on his radio call-in programme “To the Point”. He treated him with all the respect that is his due as the head of our government. At no time did Elkin or any of the callers challenge the Hon Chief Minister, even when he said the most outrageous thing.

One particular exchange caused me concern. It is the subject of this post. Elkin asked the Chief Minister if he did not think it was time for the introduction of a Freedom of Information Act. The Chief Minister sounded as if he had been stunned by this question. He eventually replied with words to the following effect. “But, Elkin, you know that my government does not censure the news. Any radio or any newspaper in Anguilla is free to publish anything at all that they want. We do not need any Freedom of Information Act”. From which it became apparent that the Hon Chief Minister did not have the slightest idea what a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act is. I have kept quiet on the issue up to now. I wanted someone else to do the necessary explaining. However, I have not seen any newspaper, nor have I heard any radio station, attempting to clear up the matter. So, I am obliged to do so now, at the risk of appearing to pick on the chief minister.

The first point is that an FOI Act does not guarantee freedom of the press or freedom from censureship. That freedom is already guaranteed by law. The Constitution contains in section 11 all the guarantee of freedom of expression that we will ever need. We do not need an FOI Act to give that to us.

Freedom of information legislation is also sometimes called “open records” law. In the US it is described as “sunshine” law. The FOI Act is a law which sets rules on access to information or records held by government. Such laws define the legal process by which government information is required to be available to the public. Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 is thought to be the oldest of such laws. Today, over 70 countries around the world have it. Each State of the United States has its own law governing access to public documents of state and taxing entities. That is in addition to the FOI Act which governs records management of documents in the possession of the federal government. Other countries, particularly British Overseas Territories, are working towards introducing such laws.

What FOI legislation does is to alter the burden of proof. Any citizen can find out what is on any file in which he is interested. The burden of proving that the matter should be kept confidential rests on the person who argues that it must be kept confidential. The assumption is that the public has a right to all information kept by government. You have the basic right to ask for and to obtain the information. You do not even have to give a reason why you want the document. But, if the information is not disclosed, a valid reason has to be given. If the reason is unacceptable, you can take it to court for the court to rule on it.

In many countries with FOI legislation, “privacy” or “data protection” laws may be part of the freedom of information legislation.

A related concept is “open meetings” legislation. This allows public access to government meetings, not just to the records of them. In some British Overseas Territories, meetings of the Land Development Commission and even of Executive Council are open to the press and public, within reason. In Anguilla, by contrast, everything done by every government agency is shrouded in secrecy.

Under our present system, each public servant swears an oath under the Official Secrets Act on becoming a public servant. It is this oath which is probably the cause of the problem that this legislation seeks to cure. By this oath of secrecy, the civil servant essentially swears never to reveal to anyone any matter that he or she learns about in the course of his or her duties. Everything in government becomes secret. This secrecy is then used as a cover for committing acts of prejudice and injustice upon the ordinary citizen. A public servant can put a false and prejudicial note on anyone’s file that will forever stop that person from progressing, in the sure knowledge that the victim will never get to find out about it. The result is that the island is overrun by half-crazed theories about what is going on in government.

I hope that the next time Elkin asks about the Freedom of Information Act, he will not be satisfied with an answer that is completely unrelated to the question.

Related previous posts:

Freedom of Information: Guest Editorial 5

Land Development Control Committee

Open Government

Too Much Information Can Be Dangerous for your Health

Transparency

Name and Shame. I do not know if you were as astonished as I was today. In the police report published on the "Radio Anguilla" news, the police have actually, for the first time, named – no initials – named – five recently charged suspects. The police press release will, hopefully, be published in the next edition of “'The Anguillian” and "The Light".

This was probably some terrible mistake. It has always appeared to me that the police and media are there to protect the privacy of alleged criminals, not call their names. [I can't give you the link to the page in the newspaper. It has not been published as of today.]

Perhaps if we commend them publicly for their courageousness it would encourage this new openness.

Look out for the Foreign Affairs Committee Report due to be published on Sunday. What will it have to say about Anguilla?

Journalism

The Role of the Media in Exposing Corruption. I was very interested to read a recent speech by Victor Hart. He is the Chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute. He was addressing the 27^th General Conference of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association. The meeting was held in Nassau from 23-26 January. The theme of the conference was Innovative Ways of Exposing Corruption – The Media and the People. Anyone wishing to read a copy of his speech, just email me.

He urged journalists to bring to their job more professionalism by proper checking of sources to ensure factual, legal and ethical content in their reports.

He asked them to show more balance in their reporting by eliminating all personal, political and other bias and challenged them to expand their areas of interest and to do more research.

He encouraged them to practise more investigative journalism.

Turning to the owners and managers of Media Houses, he urged them to give more support to their journalists by providing adequate resources and a work environment free from interference.

He asked them to reject the indolence of those reporters and editors who accept and publish 'set pieces' of news and press releases without searching to find the real stories behind the headlines.

They should make their journalists understand that quality and not quantity is what is expected of them and should encourage them to ask the hard questions without fear or favour.

It seems to me that we in Anguilla could have benefitted from our various media houses attending this conference. I sense that Anguillians would love to see any investigative journalism at all taking place. Anguillian media houses have made a science of accepting and publishing “set pieces” of news and press releases. We never search to find the real stories behind the headlines. We have no interest in quality, only in quantity. We never ask the hard questions. We only act from fear or favour.

Or is this an exaggeration?