Let me say at the
outset that I have great respect for the Hon Cora Richardson-Hodge as a person
and a professional. In my interactions
with her I have always found her to be an honourable and decent person.
I was listening to
Radio Anguilla’s morning news two Fridays ago when I heard her making a
speech. She claimed as one of her
accomplishments during her term as Minister of Home Affairs that she brought us
constitutional and electoral reform.
That claim is so upsetting to me that I am forced to put pen to paper.
Anguilla has not had
reform. We have had betrayal. Betrayal of the most hurtful form. As I reflected on her cynical boast, I became
more and more distressed.
The constitutional and electoral reforms
we want are set out in the 2006 Report
on Constitutional and Electoral Reform
(“the 2006 Report”) and the subsequent 2017 Report
to Government (“the 2017 Report”). [The links are live if you have the electronic
version of this paper]. We want to see
an improvement in accountability, transparency, and integrity in public
affairs. There were two principal public
demands, increased
democracy, and improved standards of public life. We got neither.
What
we got was the AUF Administration’s boast that they gave our foreign grandchildren
Anguillian status, created four new Island-wide seats in the House of Assembly,
and the Chief Minister could now call himself Premier. They hoped these boasts would help them to
get them re-elected in 2020.
So
far as I am aware, there is no continuing discussion on constitutional and
electoral reform for Anguilla. Neither
the local Administration nor the FCO appear to have any interest in any of the
real reform proposals that were so laboriously set out in the 2006 and 2017
Reports.
When
a Report is presented to Government, there is no expectation that every
proposal in it will be accepted without question. Government is free to select what parts of
the Report they will accept. But we all
expected that if they intended to make any alterations to the package of
reforms proposed, they would come back to the people and explain what they want
to do. They had an obligation to be
transparent about the alterations, and to attempt to get our approval.
I
listened from my hotel room in Antigua back in September 2019 to the Minister
and her assistants explaining in the Teachers’ Resource Centre the provisions
of the draft new amendment to the Constitution and the draft new Elections
Act. The public meeting occurred on the
very day the draft appeared for the first time on the government website. No one had a chance to read it. In case you are interested, I discuss the
events here: Constitution -
Government Proposals.
In
this first and in the few subsequent town hall meetings, the government
representatives made no effort to point out to the unaware members of the
public what was being omitted. They
offered no explanation at any time as to why the main reform proposals were not
being carried forward. They pretended
that what they were proposing was what the Reform Committees had
recommended. That lie so often repeated
was a hurtful part of the betrayal.
The
British FCO joined with the Administration in enabling this betrayal. That was particularly painful. The FCO team visited Anguilla for discussions
in November 2019. I was a reluctant
member of the Anguilla team that negotiated with the FCO. They assured us that the remainder of the
proposed reforms which we had agreed on would be in a draft new Constitution. They promised to send us a draft in December
2019. When December passed, I asked them
directly. They offered no explanation
for the delay. I assume the
Administration has pleaded the Covid-19 excuse.
I fail to see any relevance of Covid-19 to legislative reform. The FCO seems to be playing along with the
delay. More betrayal.
It
is not just the Administration’s failure to implement any meaningful kind of
constitutional and electoral reform that hurts us. They have failed Anguilla in so many other
ways. The Minister in the same speech
boasted that she had brought us labour reform.
She referred to the new Labour (Relations) Act of 2019. She warned the opposition parties. If they ever gained power, they must not
touch this reform she was so proud of.
Listening
to her speech, I felt myself getting more irritated. This new labour law brought no reform. There is no minimum wage regulation despite
the promises. Labour protections have
been weakened. This law is a betrayal of
Anguillian workers.
There
were a few failed start-up trades unions, but there is no real one in Anguilla
to stand up for workers’ rights in the private sector. There is only the Labour Commissioner and the
Minister of Labour. What these two offices
did over the past twenty years was to remove all the workers’ protections that
Ronald Webster introduced in his last term in office. I previously explained how Ministers and
Labour Commissioners illegally permitted workers to be treated as gig workers in
Ronald and Labour, published on my blog
in December 2019.
Workers
at some of the major hotels began, at first illegally, to be classified in
their contracts as gig workers. A gig
worker is an independent contractor, not an employee. None of the original workers’ protection
applies to gig workers. Employees, but
not independent contractors, are entitled to sick pay when they become
ill. Compulsory workman’s insurance does
not apply. Holiday with pay does not
apply. Social security contributions
from the employer are not technically payable, though since the new Act I have
heard that Government has twisted the arms of employers to force them to make
the contributions voluntarily.
The
original Fair Labour Standards Act and Labour Department Act became
disembowelled. Ministers and Labour
Commissioners allowed employers to terminate their workers each year. The workers would then be taken on the
following year and put on a new one-year contract as an independent
contractor. Earlier administrations
started the process. The Minister and
this present Administration finished off the job. The new law now authorises employers to
classify workers as independent contractors.
More betrayal.
The
Minister oversees immigration. Our immigration
and work permit laws are supposedly intended to protect Anguillians from
outside forces. But our laws have not
protected us for decades now. Various
Ministers of Immigration and Home Affairs have gutted the immigration laws of
Anguilla. In this endeavour the
Ministers were ably assisted by various Labour Commissioners.
The foreign-owned
hotels are in a different class. They
represent hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign direct investment which
has given jobs and advancement to Anguillians.
Foreign-owned restaurants that raise the standard of cuisine are part of
the attraction of Anguilla to tourists.
By contrast, dry-goods
stores and groceries add nothing to our economy or culture. But, because they are slightly cheaper, unpatriotic
Anguillians flood into them, abandoning the slightly more expensive local ones. Some of the older local groceries, dry goods
stores, haberdasheries, and hardware stores are nearly empty of customers. It will not be long before they go bankrupt
and close. This Administration has delivered
the coup de grace to the local retail business.
And,
now, just before elections, seems to come the final betrayal. In 2018 the British Government gave Anguilla £60
million, or EC$300 million, in reconstruction aid. The money was intended to put Anguillians to
work rebuilding the schools, port facilities, and other public buildings
devastated by Hurricane Irma towards the end of 2017.
Our
men could have done with the work in 2018 and in 2019. They had bills to pay and families to
feed. Did the children have to be put
through the continuing discomfort of attending damaged school buildings in morning
and afternoon shifts throughout 2018 and 2019 and going into the future? We saw the effect of the discomfort in the
lowered grades achieved by our students over the last two years. Reconstruction should have commenced
immediately after the plans were approved.
It
would be a shame if the delay was so that the Administration can boast, “See,
we have you at work now. If you want to
see more work like this, you must vote for us.
This is no time to switch horses.”
If this was the reason for the delay, Anguillians are quite capable of
seeing through the smoke screen.
