Consequences of Betrayal

 

I heard the Minister of Home Affairs speaking on the radio the other day. He was attempting to explain why his government had abandoned the constitutional reform project. He said that the government had been too busy with other projects like rebuilding the schools and expanding the airport. He claimed there was no time to pursue the promised constitutional reform. He was not convincing. It is just a matter of prioritising. It is a betrayal of those of us who put so much effort into soliciting the opinions of the public and reporting back to government. It is a betrayal of the vast majority of the people who so ardently supported the proposals for constitutional advance. It is a betrayal of the voters who voted for a change in government.

The most time-consuming aspect of the constitutional reform exercise is public consultation. The various Constitutional and Electoral Reform Committees that have criss-crossed the island since 1995 have done all or most of the necessary public consultations. The majority views of the public have been placed before the government for implementation. Most of the recommendations for reform were designed to introduce integrity, accountability, and transparency into our weak system of government as demanded by the public. The British and Anguillian negotiating teams have already agreed ninety nine percent of the proposed reforms. There is no need for more public consultation. They should have kept the promises that got them elected in 2020. One of them was to work diligently on constitutional reform.

There is only one reason I can think of why the government would not want to carry out their promise to make these amendments. That is because they don’t consider integrity, accountability, and transparency to be an advantage to them in the way they govern. It seems to me they have given these principles very low priority. It is also possible that the extremist Muslim and Christian minority have them terrified of losing votes in the next elections. Perhaps they feel it is safer to let constitutional reform die quietly.

I don’t know about females in politics. As regards males, I have always suspected that there are three main reasons why we males go into politics. There may be other reasons, but self-sacrifice and civic concerns do not seem to be genuine motives or attributes of most male politicians. Mainly, we men appear interested in three advantages that come with political power.

One is a generous dose of sex. There are always women who frantically throw themselves at powerful men. The female obsession with powerful men has been long studied. It is thought to have a genetic root. A woman wants and needs security for her children and her home. Having a husband or a lover who possesses power, makes her feel more safe and secure in her nest. So it is that generous amounts of sexual opportunities seem to flow naturally to us men from our acquisition of political power. It is the same thing with the female preference for the “bad man”. Intellectually, she may know he is the wrong choice. But her instincts trick her into seeing him as a “strong man”. So, she will often prefer the bad man to the good man.

The second reason why men are attracted to politics is the love of money. I have heard of one politician, whose friends witnessed him accepting a bulging envelope from a stranger. He only half-humorously told them, “I don’t understand these Americans. They keep handing me envelopes full of money I never expected.” If he knew he was not owed the money, then logically he should not have accepted it. Why did he not refuse to accept it? He only had to say “No, I can’t take your money. I have to decide whether you deserve the licence you have applied for.” But, no, in his case those envelopes were the very reason why he entered politics. Besides, the average cost of buying a vote in the last election was reputed to be US$300.00. It must cost a lot of money to win a district in Anguilla. And, famously, “The cow must feed where she is tied.”

When the Central Bank was about to close the two local banks several years ago, I was in a group with a politician then in power. He told us that he was worried about his savings. He had accumulated several Time Certificates of Deposit of over a million dollars each. He was going to the bank the following day to convert them into savings accounts. He considered that was safer than keeping the money in Certificates. He did not need to explain to us how he managed to collect so much money. It was obvious.

The third reason is the love of power. There are some men who relish the ability to tell some supplicants yes, while telling others no. These politicians are not overly interested in money or sex. The pleasure they get from exercising power must be as near as they can get to sexual gratification without actual sex.

There must be some male politicians who have never taken a dollar while in power or taken the opportunity to cheat on their wives. Almost inevitably you will find that their addiction is to power. They might be congratulated for their lack of acquisitiveness and their self-control in the face of an obvious offer of sex. But the abuse of power is just as much a form of corruption. It is worthwhile remembering the remark the famed orator Robert G Ingersoll made of Abraham Lincoln, “Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. That is the supreme test”.

I have not heard any accusation against our Premier in matters of money or licentious behaviour. But he famously becomes vengeful when he is crossed. Feel pity for the person he feels has blocked him. No matter how rightly or correctly that person acted, he will be relentless in his pursuit of retribution.

Such love of the exercise of power, especially to hurt his perceived enemy, or to unfairly favour his own family or friend, is a corrupt act. Who of us can forget the Premier’s recent failure to deal properly with his minister’s outrageous display of violence in a local restaurant. Repeated threats by a minister against the life of a citizen, accompanied by a vicious attack on him with a chair, all evidenced on a widely circulated video recording, brought only silence and inaction from the Premier. His far-too-late explanation that he was waiting for a police report on the incident before taking action was a pathetic excuse for his failure to act promptly to chastise his errant minister. He did not need a police report. All the relevant evidence of her conduct was there in the tape. In my opinion, that was not the reaction of a strong person. It was evidence of character weakness and a lack of principle.

I heard him on radio recently giving a much-delayed explanation for his cowardly caving in to the British on the question of the Goods and Services Tax the day after he won the last general election. One of the main planks of his party’s political platform was the refusal to introduce the GST that the British were insisting on. He reneged on that promise without any explanation at the time.

His recent explanation for his forcing the tax through the House of Assembly without majority political support was unconvincing. We remember that two of his ministers voted against the Bill. He only got it through the House with the votes of two ex-officio members of the House appointed by the Governor, the Attorney General and the Deputy Governor. His explanation was that two or three days before the general elections, the previous AUF Premier had secretly signed a memorandum of understanding with the Governor. The previous Premier promised the Governor he would introduce the tax in exchange for a British contribution of one hundred million dollars needed to pay civil service salaries due just days after the elections. Dr Webster said that promise put him in a corner. He claims the Governor threatened that if he did not sign on to the previous Premier’s promise to introduce the tax, the British government would not make the promised gift. The resulting failure to pay public service salaries on time would lead to the collapse of government. He gave in to the implied threat. So, our Premier’s first act of government was to betray the very promise that got him elected.

The introduction of this new tax was not what was most objectionable. Personally, I think it is a fair and reasonable tax. For me, what was unforgivable was that the Premier did it secretly. He did it sneakily, without a word to his people about the quandary he says he found himself placed in until many months had passed. Maybe he thought he would benefit from the notorious eight-day life cycle of Anguillian scandals. In this he is seriously mistaken. Some of us will not forget or forgive such betrayals of the public trust. This was Victor Banks’ style of government. We were promised this would all change. In future we were to have transparency, accountability, and integrity. We were betrayed again.

There was another Webster who many years ago headed the government of Anguilla. There is no Anguillian who could have any doubt how that Webster would have reacted to such blackmail. It would not have been neat and tidy. It would have been messy and painful. Ronald Webster would have called the people to a meeting in Webster’s Park for the very next day. He would have put his quandary to them. He would have explained to them the hard spot he was placed in by the AUF’s secret deal. He would have asked their opinion on whether to give in to the blackmail or instead to stand his ground and refuse to pass the tax as he promised. Whatever the outcome, he would have been a hero to all Anguillians.

If he was minded to introduce the tax to help public servants meet their financial obligations, he should, in my opinion, have come back to us. If he and his colleagues put a convincing argument for the tax to the people, I have no doubt he would have had our support. But instead, he showed us he is no Ronald Webster.

Even if he did not call a public meeting, he should not have waited until just months before the end of his term of office to try to explain what he says happened. He should have come out to the people immediately. Whatever the mood of the public, he would have had their enduring support for coming back to them. He would be guaranteed re-election. Despite the recent splashing around of public money, that guarantee has now evaporated.

It is not the tax itself that has most people upset. It is his concealment from us of the corner he says he was pushed into by the previous AUF government. His secretiveness is what was distasteful and disrespectful. It seems to me that he has proven himself to be a weak and unprincipled man. His party does not deserve a second term in government.

Because of these and other betrayals, no member of his political party will get my vote.

Because of historic political betrayals, no member of the AUF opposition will get it either.

Depending on who the other candidates are, sadly, I may effectively be deprived of my franchise.

Mitchell's West Indian Bibliography, 12th Edition

https://iandonmitch.wixsite.com/booksai

In about the year 1978, while on a visit to London, I purchased my first antiquarian West Indian book. I no longer recall its title or its cost. Acquiring antique books about the Caribbean became my hobby that lasted for two decades. Well, perhaps it was an obsession.

By the time the passion dimmed, I had acquired over two thousand books and pamphlets.

My only rules were that the books must be in the English language, concern the West Indies, and be non-fiction. There were hundreds of travelogues, studies on geology and geography, politics, economics and sociology, biography and autobiography, and ethnographic studies. History and travel predominated, but included were volumes of Parliamentary Papers concerning the colonial administration of the West Indies, and items on both sides of the slavery abolition controversy.

In the early days one was required to visit antiquarian bookshops and conduct physical searches to find a book, but gradually bookstores began to issue catalogues which one could request by mail. Additionally, one could subscribe to publishers of West Indian books and scour their annual catalogues. These proved useful for adding to the collection and to the list I had begun to keep. Published bibliographies on a number of relevant topics proved invaluable for developing the booklist. Later, when the catalogues of the British Library and the Library of Congress became searchable online, the number of West Indian books published over the previous 500 years grew exponentially. A visit to the ILAB and ABAA websites proved invaluable as a source of inexpensive second-hand items for the collection.

On a bus tour through South Island at the 1990 Commonwealth Lawyers Conference in Aukland, New Zealand, I found a book that was on my must-get list. I saw the price and realised I could get it for less than half the price I had previously seen it listed elsewhere. I purchased it immediately. When I got home, I found I was adding it to two other copies that I had forgotten I had. This happened several times.

I realised I had to do something to stop accidentally purchasing unneeded duplicate copies. The solution was to make a list of the books in my collection noting the author, the title, the edition number, and whether it was a hard-back or a paper-back. Thereafter, I travelled with the list everywhere so I could consult it before purchasing anything. Eventually, I added to the list the titles that I would like to see in the collection but had not yet collected. I noted the editions of each item that I had, noting every other edition that existed. If I had the first edition, and came across a third, I did not hesitate to buy it, even though it might be counted as a duplicate.

At first, the list was on paper. By 2001, when I last printed it out, it was over 500 pages long in Ariel .9 font, and too cumbersome to carry with me on my visits to bookstores. I decided to abandon paper and use only an electronic version.

My definition of the West Indies for the purposes of my collection was a personal one and not a conventional one. It was any English-speaking Island or Country in or bordering the Caribbean Sea, excluding the United States. The list of Islands and Countries of the West Indies was eventually to become quite long: https://iandonmitch.wixsite.com/booksai/islands-and-countries.

As the collection grew over the years, the problem of housing them also grew. I was not happy keeping them in my law chambers in the Valley in Anguilla on exposed shelves. I worried about silver fish, termites, and other tropical vermin doing damage. I was concerned about the possibility of damage from ultraviolet radiation from daylight coming through the windows and from fluorescent bulbs. Published studies on archival documents recommended they be stored on bookshelves closed by glass fronted panes. A windowpane filters out as much ultraviolet light as several feet of water. There was the risk of damage from passersby handling them with oily fingers. Then, there was the danger of theft from leaving them lying on exposed shelving. With the help of Anguilla’s renowned furniture maker brothers, Arthur and Albertus Richardson of Richardson’s Furniture Makers on the Waterswamp road, I had eight-foot high, glass-fronted, mahogany bookcases made to house them. Each of the bookcases was kept locked in my law chambers. The number of bookcases grew over the years, until there were ten of them. I stored the books in alphabetical order by name of the author or editor.

By the time I turned the books and pamphlets over to the Anguilla National Trust (ANT) in about 1999, as I was temporarily leaving Anguilla to take up a judgeship in St Vincent, the numbers had increased to over two thousand. I decided it was time to donate them to the Anguilla National Trust. Because the ANT did not at the time have room to house the collection, it was temporarily placed for safekeeping in the national library in a locked room normally used by the chief librarian where it is to be found today. A visiting librarian from the University of the West Indies complimented me by describing the collection as one of the best in private hands he had ever seen.

Some of the items were quite old, others were recently published. Two of my proudest acquisitions were:

The 1666 History of the Caribby-Islands by Charles de Rochefort…Rendered into English by John Eden of Kidwelly;

Aucher Warner – Sir Thomas Warner, Pioneer of the West Indies...(A limited edition of 500 copies most of which were lost during WW II)

Ken Evoy, a Canadian computer expert resident in Anguilla and the publisher of one of the first on-line travel websites about Anguilla, first published the booklist for me on the web. We called it books.ai. He, and subsequently his daughter Nori, kept the publication up for several years until unknown to me it was abandoned, and I lost it. I recently found a somewhat distorted version of the Eleventh Edition on Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160113224400/http://www.books.ai/. It took another twenty years for me to find a young and talented website designer, Carlton Smith of East End, to help me publish online a revised edition. He used the Wix platform. The result is the Twelfth Edition which went live in February 2024: https://iandonmitch.wixsite.com/booksai.

Some of the antiquarian bookstores I visited on my travels included sections of antique maps, including maps of the West Indies. I began collecting them and shipping them home to Anguilla. I had no specialisation, the only requirement being that it must generally be a map of Anguilla or of the West Indies, preferably showing a mention of Anguilla. Some of my prouder acquisitions included:

Benedetto Bordone – Isolaria, (first published in 1528, of which I had two copies of his map of the West Indies from later sixteenth century editions);

John Alder Burdon – The Presidency of St Kitts-Nevis (Printed in 1921, the first work to contain a map of Anguilla correctly shaped. Carter Rey was credited with having done the survey. Previous maps tended to show Anguilla as tadpole shaped).

I kept the map collection in large, hardcover portfolios in no particular order. Each map was stored in archival quality, transparent envelopes for protection from light and from handling. I included this collection in my 1999 donation to the ANT. The portfolios are stored laying flat on the tops of the bookcases.

I have reminded ANT’s executive director and the Chief Librarian of the danger of damage or theft. No visitor to the library, local or foreign should be left alone with the collections. Some of the illustrations and plates are on sale internationally for substantial sums of money and can be easily removed with a razor blade. Some of the more valuable books and maps would fetch thousands of pounds today. For the collection to be kept safe and intact, it is best to assume that any foreign visitor asking to see the collection, is, especially if he is a collector or a dealer, intent on stealing what he can. The keys to the cabinets should be kept secured, accessible only to a very few senior staff.

I am happy to have been relieved of the responsibility of keeping the collections safe in my possession. My hope is that if they are preserved well into the future, they will prove useful to future generations of Anguillian scholars needing to refer to them for research purposes. The box of white cotton gloves I provided with the collection will help to ensure the paper is not damaged by handling, if use of the gloves is insisted on.