Pandora's Box

 

In Greek mythology, Pandora was given a box by the gods and warned that she must never open it.  But Pandora was curious and the urge to open the box overcame her.  She looked in it.  Horrible things flew out of the box.  These included greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war, and death.  All of life’s miseries were let out into the world.  Pandora slammed the lid of the box back down.  Only hope remained inside the box.  Ever since, humans hold on to this hope to survive the wickedness that Pandora let out.

So, we warn against opening Pandora’s box.  This means that when someone makes a single, simple miscalculation it can be a source of endless complications or trouble.

Today, Thursday 22 October, members of the Constitutional Reform Committee, including me, received an email from the Ministry of Home Affairs with a draft Order in Council attached.  It says it will be signed by the Privy Council on 11 November 2020.  That is barely 14 days away.  It will amend our 1982 Constitution.

It is true that the proposed amendment appears to be of minor significance.  It merely prohibits the House of Assembly from appointing one of the two ex-officio members, the Attorney-General or the Deputy Governor, to serve as Deputy Speaker.  In future, the Deputy Speaker must be one of the elected members who is not a Minister of government.  It is not a big issue.  That is not the point.  It is the way the government is going about amending our Constitution that is the concern.

No one has explained to us what is so wrong about one of these ex-officio members being called on occasionally, in case of the Speaker’s illness or absence from Anguilla, to act as Speaker.  Nor has anyone explained why it must be a sitting member of the House who acts as Deputy Speaker.  There are several qualified, experienced, and unemployed ex-Speakers.  Any of them would, presumably, be willing to donate their services in case of emergency for a day or two.  In exchange, they might be entitled to be called “Honourable” for the next five years.

There is no issue of principle against a person from outside the House being elected Deputy Speaker.  The Constitution permits the Speaker herself to be elected from outside the House.  The present one is elected from the community.  We originally did it that way because the numbers in the House are so few.  If an elected government member is appointed Speaker, the number of debaters is reduced.  The quality of debate is diminished.  What if the government has a majority in the House of only one?  The proposed amendment would destroy that majority if no opposition member agrees to be elected Deputy Speaker.

Instead, we could have the Constitution amended to allow any person who is qualified to be elected to the House to be made the deputy Speaker, like the Speaker herself.

It is apparent that that our government has with the British government come up with this, in my opinion, meaningless and unnecessary plan without any warning or explanation to us.  No doubt, it was instigated by either or both the A-G or the DG.  They must have felt they were being imposed on.  They must have put pressure on the government to do this thing.

There was not a hint this amendment was coming.  The draft is dated 30 September 2020, so they have been working on it in secret for some weeks or months.  During all that time, our government did not think it fit to consult with us the public or to get either our input or our consent to the amendment.

It is an insignificant amendment, someone will say.  That is not the point.  A Constitution is a contract between the people and the government it elects.  A contract is made between two or more parties.  It is not permissible for one party to unilaterally amend a contract.  No, not even to change one word of it.  This is not written in the Constitution.  It is a fundamental, unwritten principle of modern British colonial constitutional law.

The British government has promised us repeatedly in the past that they will never permit our government to go behind our backs and negotiate a constitutional amendment without our approval.  If the amendment is so insignificant, why not try first to secure our approval.  If we were asked, it would not be difficult for us to show our agreement.

First, explain to us why the amendment is a good idea.  Explain what ill it is intended to cure.  Explain exactly what in the present structure is inconvenient.  As a lawyer, I may understand what the amendment is intended to achieve.  But the average Anguillian on Island Harbour beach or the South Valley main road needs to understand too.

Do not make the same mistake the previous Administration made and rush to make an amendment without consultation and agreement.  There is no indication even that the Administration intends to submit the proposed amendment to and seek the approval of the House.

The first time our government tried to amend our 1982 Constitution without public consultation and approval was in the year 2007.  The proposed amendment was to change the name of the Royal Anguilla Police Force from “Force” to “Service”.  We learned of the proposed amendment just days before the Order was to be signed in London by the Privy Council.  Our government apparently considered the amendment so minor that they made no effort to inform or seek the consent of the people.  I wrote an article about it on 17 January 2007.

The public uproar at that arbitrary and arrogant act on the part of our government was so loud that the Privy Council heard it.  They withdrew the draft Order just 10 days before it was intended to be signed.  In the end it was never signed.  There is no doubt that if we had been consulted, we would have agreed to the change.

We recall that just last year the previous Administration, in cahoots with Lord Ahmad of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, amended our Constitution without real public consultation.  They deleted some of the provisions recommended for deletion by the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Committee.  But they did not do all the recommended deletions.  They inserted some of the new provisions recommended by the Committee.  But they did not do all of them.  And they invented some new provisions of their own.  These were not recommended by anybody.

We were never given any real explanation why the proposed provisions of this 2019 Amendment Constitution were so important that they had to be rushed just before the general elections.  It was obvious to all of us that the intention of the amendments was to try to give the outgoing Administration a political advantage before the elections.

The result was a fiasco.  We ended up with a miserable abortion of an Amended Constitution.  And the government lost the election.  This betrayal of the people was, in my view, one of the main reasons why the past Administration were defeated at the polls.

There are barely two weeks between this first revelation of the proposed amendment and the day it will come into effect.  Explain to us why the amendment is so urgent and critical that it must be rushed in this way.  We are not so dumb that we cannot understand.  We are not sheep who can be forced to accept any arrogant act by government.

We endured enough secrecy over the past five years.  We did not appreciate this treatment.  The present Administration should be concerned about being compared to the last one.

We can learn from previous mistakes.  We can take the time to explain.  Ask us to accept the amendment.  Perhaps consider all the amendments that are needed and bring them all into effect at the same time.  There is no rush.

The precedent was set by the 2019 Amendment Constitution.  This Administration now feels free to negotiate constitutional change with the British government without consulting us.  Yes, there has been an announcement on the daily news bulletin that the Order in Council is going to be signed on 11 November.  But that is hardly consultation and agreement.  There is a political price to pay for perceived arrogance.

Those that wish to take advantage of us will now say that Anguillians do not place any value on the need to be consulted before our Constitution is amended.  There is nothing now to stop the British government from arbitrarily amending it in the future without even our government’s consent, far less ours.  We have opened Pandora’s Box.

Anguilla in Quarantine

 

Anguilla is a typical small island developing state.  We have a tiny population of twelve thousand persons.  But we are required to provide most of the basic services for our people that large states do.  We have the same number of people as a small village in the UK or Nigeria.  But we are obliged to have a similar infrastructure as London or Abouja, including police, customs, and immigration departments.  While the world’s economy was booming, we were easily able to pay for this luxury.

When the international leisure industry was at its peak, we could pick up the crumbs to meet our public administration bills.  Before terrorism and money laundering became a world-wide issue, we could provide liberal financial services to the international community, and cream off some of the wealth to cover our government costs.  That has all changed now.

Unlike the islands around us, Anguilla has managed to stay Covid-free since the first 3 cases in March 2020.  We have done this by imposing strict quarantine and border control regulations.  So long as we maintain quarantine regulations and border closure, we can be relatively confident that we will remain safe.  At present, we insist that anyone arriving must quarantine, initially at government’s expense, in a secure location for between 10 and 14 days, depending on whether they come from a relatively Covid-free country or not.  They must also pay a charge to cover the cost of their quarantine and the ancillary services, such as food and security personnel.  But, with the economy collapsing, the good sense of these regulations is now being questioned.

From what I hear, hotel guests are cancelling their reservations for the 2020/2021 winter season.  As a result, it seems to me that most of the major hotels of Anguilla will be obliged to shutter for the season.  Restaurants, water sports companies, car rentals, holiday apartments, and other tourism-related businesses will be forced to close.  The excuse being given by some cancelling guests is that Anguilla’s quarantine restrictions prohibit their arrival on our shores.  They say they are going to spend the winter instead in Antigua and Saint Lucia.  There, they say, the Covid-19 regulations are much laxer.  We will have to wait and see.  Personally, I very much doubt there will be much tourism to Antigua or St Lucia in the coming 2020/2021 season.  Reservations in October do not automatically equate to warm beds in December.

Unemployment increases daily.  The hotels, especially the foreign-owned ones on Anguilla’s coastline, are now pressuring government to open.  We read that they accuse us of being unreasonable in our quarantine regulations.  They loudly proclaim in the press, and on TV, and radio that it is government’s fault that staff are being fired.  They say that, if only the quarantine regulations were slackened to be the same as Antigua and St Lucia, the staff would all be back at work.

This is all nonsense, of course.  Any thinking person who keeps up with the international news knows the truth.  It does not matter if every quarantine restriction is removed.  Few visitors will come to the Caribbean this winter.  Only the most reckless US or European traveller, careless of his or her health, will visit us for a holiday.

There is the problem with air lift.  We read that the world’s major airlines are mothballing their planes and laying off their staff.  Air France, Air Canada, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, each are applying for tens of billions of dollars from their governments to help them keep afloat.  They will likely not get it since there is no more money.  The cruise lines have all laid up their ships.  It is not likely they will get any more bail outs.  It seems to me that it will take another decade, if ever, for them to recover.

The bottom line is the leisure travel industry as we knew it pre-2020 is dead.  Few international travellers will be arriving on any Caribbean shores.  In my crystal ball, I see a full one half of the luxury hotels of Anguilla abandoned.  There will be palm trees growing out of their windows before long.  Most of the luxury restaurants will have sold their pots and pans and shut for good.  No more caviar and champagne.  From now on, we dine out on johnny cake and corned beef.  We must find other ways than tourism to occupy our time and earn an income.  And none of it will be due to the strict quarantine regulations now in force.

Perhaps most ominous for Anguilla’s economy, a recent report in the newspaper indicates that government’s revenue from taxes and licences is less than half what was budgeted for this year.  This revenue is needed to pay our bloated public service their salaries and other emoluments.  The situation is not sustainable.  Something has got to give.  Logically, with only half the revenue, we must cut our costs by a half.  Either we let go half of the public service, or they all stay on, but at half of their salaries.

Even with cost-cutting, the Anguilla as we know it is not sustainable.  The nanny-state that Anguilla aspired to be in the good times is now out of our reach.  We cannot afford any more subsidised education, health care, or social services.  These will shortly have to be met by user fees.  We must cease paying the cost of hospitalising in Panama our gunshot gangster youth.  These social services will soon be a thing of the past.  We just have not realized it yet.  And it is nothing to do with the strict quarantine and border control regulations.

Then, there is the possibility of coming international political and economic instability.  Trump has threatened that he is not going to leave the White House in January.  If civil disturbances break out in the United States this winter, there will be no airlines flying out of Kennedy or Miami International Airport to the Caribbean, even without the pandemic.

It may not happen on election day, November 3, or on December 14 when the Electoral College meets.  But, if by January 21, Inauguration Day, there is turmoil all over the United States, there will likely be no leisure travel from the US to the Caribbean.  If this occurs, we cannot blame either Covid or the British for the resulting economic catastrophe.

Then, there is natural traveller caution.  Covid-19 spreads fastest through the air in confined spaces.  In early 2020 at the start of the epidemic, cruise ships were centres of infection.  They are all laid up now.  I expect that, with a few foolhardy exceptions, they will not resume their cruise schedules until 2022.

Everything depends on the availability of a safe and effective vaccine.  The epidemiologists have explained why one will not be approved until early in 2021.  Even then, it will not be widely available to us until mid- to late-2021.  Without being vaccinated, no sensible person will choose to go on holiday overseas by sea or by air.

Meanwhile, doubts and confusion about vaccinations are being spread by anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists.  These operate both locally and internationally.  Recent surveys in the USA and Europe reveal that the result is that, even when a vaccine does become available, it will not quickly be taken up by everyone.  It may take years for most of the public to enjoy the benefits of vaccination.  Which one of us is going to be so negligent as to travel unvaccinated to a foreign country with medical services of an unknown quality for a holiday, amid a pandemic?  Even if Anguilla opened promiscuously, abandoning all health precautions, I do not believe that a single additional passenger will risk arriving on our shores at this time.

The conspiracy theorists are not helping.  Anguilla’s more racist conspiracy theorists are now filling the airwaves with dire warnings.  To hear their panicked voices, the UK public health system is putting pressure on Anguilla to shut our borders.  They express certainty that the white British are out to punish poor little black us.  Quite why the British would want to do such a thing to Anguilla is anyone’s guess.  But anti-British feeling, fuelled by a pernicious and ingrained racism, is prevalent among certain elements in our society.  As if the British have the slightest interest in causing Anguilla any harm!  They would probably have to pay to bail us out of it in the end, anyway.  But, there never had to be any good reason for conspiracy theories to flourish in the best of times.

Anguillians must face a new reality.  Nothing will be the same when this pandemic is over.  Public services will be pared down to a minimum.  The days when the Anguilla public service was used as a sponge to mop up the unemployed and the unemployable are over.  We can no longer afford to employ five persons to do the job of one as we presently do.

There is the little matter of our failure to enforce our own tax laws.  No enforcement proceedings have ever, to my knowledge, been brought against a single tax defaulter in the modern history of Anguilla.  We can no longer afford to continue forgiving persons who neglect to pay their taxes, as we have done for decades past.  If we do, why should any foreign taxpayer contribute to our self-created folly.

One last prediction.  The next time our government appeals to the British government for another hundred-million-dollar bail out, we will finally lose our entitlement state of mind.  The British deficit is presently about £300 billion.  I see the British PM responding to our Premier with these words, “Colonialism has been over for a long time.  We have looked at the books.  It appears that Anguilla has never in its history contributed anything to the British Treasury.  Do you not think it is about time that you helped us with our fiscal deficit?  We were thinking of a token contribution from you in the region of ten million US dollars.  How about it?”

If my cautionary words appear exaggerated to some, hopefully they will serve to counterbalance the ridiculous claim that our health quarantine regime has been imposed on our government by an oppressive and uncaring British government.