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.

Apologies to Lord Ahmad

Government published its draft new Constitution on its website on 24 September.  It is a perverse and distorted version of the original recommendation by the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Committee.

At the time of Government’s publication, they announced that there would be public consultations at the Teachers’ Resource Centre on 30 September and 1 and 10 October.  All members of the public were invited to attend.  They gave us just 2 weeks to register our objections and comments.  Then, it appeared, they intended to send it off to London with the good news that we all agreed to it, so could it please be now signed into law by the Privy Council.  There was no suggestion that the FCO was interested in speaking to the Opposition, far less the people, before bringing the new Constitution into effect.

A breath of fresh air, a point of light in the darkest tunnel of botched constitutional reform, has now appeared on the horizon.  It is found in a speech of the Chief Minister (by now dubbed the Premier) on 30 September reported in the 4 October 2019 issue of “The Anguillian” newspaper at page 2:

Premier Banks disclosed that a number of technical officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office would be coming to Anguilla, in the middle of November, to participate in another round of public consultations.  He said constitutions were very complicated documents with far-reaching implications, and certain elements of the constitution must be in sync with the laws on our books.

This is the first indication we have that the British were not entirely hoodwinked by Government into passing Government’s draft new Constitution.  They would be coming to see for themselves what our attitude is to Government’s proposals for constitutional and electoral reform.

Three things need to be noted from the above announcement by Premier Banks.

1.   He says that the British technical officers will be coming to participate in another round of public consultations.  He must mean that the FCO’s lawyers are coming to Anguilla.  He seems to be suggesting they will sit in on the existing two-week period for “public consultations.”  That is hardly likely to be correct.

2.   When the FCO visits an Overseas Territory to discuss constitutional reform, they constitute what in Anguilla’s case will be called something like “The Anguilla Constitutional Conference.”  They expect their negotiating team to meet with a local negotiating team.  They invariably demand that the local team consist of representatives of government and the Opposition.

The two teams meet across the table from each other to negotiate.  The FCO do not consider only the representations of Government’s team.  They expect the local team to be fully briefed on local expectations for reform.  The local team must be able to put forward the public’s expectations.  The FCO team will have their own demands. 

Their proposals for reform may include new matters that the local team has never considered before.  They may, for example, be quite strong on rights issues that will be new to the locals.  These will include freedom from discrimination in marriage, and the right to a clean environment, and to education.  Yes, they will want gays and lesbians to have the right to marry.  This is because that right is now recognised everywhere as the fundamental right not to be discriminated against on the basis of one’s sexuality.

3.   The Premier seems to have been misled into believing that the new Constitution will need to be “in sync” with the 2019 Amendment Order.  This is a mistake.  The coming new Constitution will set aside the 1982 Constitution along with all amending Orders in Council.  A similar erroneous suggestion was made by the Hon Minister of Home Affairs in the last meeting of the House of Assembly.

This error is our clue that the draft new Constitution published by Government on its website was not prepared by qualified legal draftspersons.  These would know that there is no need for a new Act or Constitution to be “in sync” with a previous one.  This is especially so when we are speaking about a previous amendment.  These would know that a well-drafted new instrument sweeps aside all previous instruments.  The lawmaker is not constrained by any earlier legal provision, particularly an amendment to an instrument that is being replaced.

All the evidence indicates that the new Elections Act, the Anguillian Status Commission Act, and the new Constitution on Government’s website were drafted by persons who are not experts in drafting legislation.  We can hope and demand that the FCO will insist that they all be replaced with properly drafted instruments.

It appears that both Government and the Opposition underestimated Lord Ahmad and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.  It seems the UK officials recognise the need to consult with a representative body of Anguillians, not just a partisan incumbent Government, before making fundamental constitutional changes.  This is what the FCO normally does. 

Over the past months I have repeatedly accused Lord Ahmad of betraying Anguillians by ignoring the expected consultative procedure and going along with Government’s unilateral proposals.  This accusation may have been true about the 2019 Amendment Order.  It appears the FCO will do the right thing for the remainder of the reforms.  For doubting Lord Ahmad’s integrity in insisting on this procedure, I personally owe him an apology.

Meanwhile, a great deal of damage has been done by the 2019 Amendment Order and the Elections Act 2019.  But, if the FCO is now coming to Anguilla to meet with the Opposition as well as the Government to finalise a new Constitution, it is not too late to correct the errors.

Any new Constitution will set aside both the old Constitution and all amending Orders in Council.  The opportunity to restore the integrity of the 2017 Report’s draft Constitution and its attendant draft Acts is there. 

It is much to be hoped that the FCO will also insist that the missing Acts necessary for giving effect to the watchdog institutions be prepared and put in place immediately after the new Constitution comes into effect.  These include (a) an Integrity Commission Act, (b) a Freedom of Information Act; (c) a Public Service Commission Act; (d) an Appointments Commission Act; (e) a Complaints Commissioner Act (or Ombudsman Act); (f) an Act for the Remuneration of the Speaker and the Members of the House of Assembly; and, (g) an Anguillian Status Commission Act.

The Constitution states that these provisions in the Constitution depend for their efficacy on the related Acts being passed into law.  Accompanying these Acts would be the Regulations and other statutory instruments necessary to make the Acts work.  Without them, no substantive reform will have been achieved.

Dr Ellis Webster, as leader of the biggest opposition political party, and his team including his legal advisers, should be invited.  Mr Sutcliffe Hodge, as leader of the third party, and his advisers must be there.  Mrs Pam Webster, as the Leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Assembly, and her advisers must be included.  Without each of them being present at the table, no eventual solution will be acceptable.

If the FCO is wise, their team will insist that any proposed new Anguilla Constitution that is negotiated must be submitted to the people for their acceptance before the draft is signed into law.  That is the only sure way to achieve a peaceful acceptance of what up to now has been a highly contentious and acrimonious process.  That acceptance or otherwise can be easily shown in a yes/no referendum.

At-Large Seats

The Great “At-Large Seats” Trick

Anguilla’s population is approximately 13,000.  Demographically, Anguilla is a typical developing country.  A majority of the population consists of school children and babies.  These are not included on a Voters’ List.  The Voters’ List supposedly contains only persons who were resident in one of the electoral districts at the time they were registered.

In the 2015 general elections, there were 10,908 registered voters.  It must be questionable that, with a majority of the inhabitants being children, Anguilla could muster 10,908 voters out of a total population of 13,000.  It is evident that a large number of registered voters must reside outside of Anguilla.  It must be questionable whether they ever qualified to be included on the Voters’ List.

In 2015, some 7,978 persons voted.  These included plane-loads of supporters flown in from overseas the day before the poll.  They voted for 7 representatives from 7 districts.  The AUF won 6 districts with 54.47% of the votes cast, thus forming the government; the AUM won no districts with 38.24% of the votes; and Pam Webster won her seat with 5.92% of the votes, thus becoming the sole member of the opposition in the House of Assembly.

When the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Commission of 2006 (and the succeeding Committee of 2015) was established and began its work, it was soon agreed that Anguilla’s representative arrangements for the House of Assembly were undemocratic.  One of the major tasks set by the Committee in its 2017 Report was to restore Anguilla’s representative system to a reasonably democratic state.  Why is the representative system of Anguilla said to be undemocratic?

First, there are two Nominated Members who sit and vote in the House.  They are nominated by the Governor, who can sometimes be under the undue influence of a persuasive Chief Minister or Premier.  Nominated members are a hold-over from the ancient colonial period when the governor nominated all the members of the House.  They have no place in a modern democratic system.

After the 2015 elections, 2 members of one influential Island Harbour family that generally supports the AUF party were nominated to fill both Nominated Member positions.  After a shaky start, both Nominated Members demonstrated their total and unwavering support for the AUF administration, and their rejection of every opposition initiative in the House. 

Further, in most of the electoral districts in Anguilla, success in general elections depends on a combination of how many family members reside in the district and how many (disqualified) supporters the candidates have infiltrated into the Voters List.  The numbers of voters in each is so small that few are unrelated to one or more of the candidates.  Elections are more a matter of tribal alliance than issue based competition.

Second, the 2 ex-officio members of the House (the Attorney-General and the Deputy Governor) have a theoretical vote, though they seldom exercise it.  They sit in the House as full voting members even though no one elected them to the House.  That is clearly anti-democratic.

Third, there are 7 elected seats in the House, and 4 of them supply Ministers to fill the government.  That meant that Cabinet Ministers formed a majority of the 2015 elected members of the House of Assembly.  The result is that when proposals from Cabinet come to the House for a vote, the House is at best a rubber stamp for the decisions taken by Cabinet.  That arrangement is clearly anti-democratic.

Constitutionally, the House is supposed to be an equal branch of government, not a rubber stamp.  In any event, 4 Ministers of Government cannot effectively handle all the portfolios of a modern government.  There is a long-standing demand for the number of Ministers to be increased from 4 to 6.

Fourth, the people of Anguilla are entitled to more or less equal representation in the House of Assembly.  However, the 10,908 registered voters are unevenly distributed among the 7 districts as follows.  There are 1,696 in District 1;  964 in District 2;  2,005 in District 3;  2,355 in District 4;  1,187 in District 5;  1,718 in District 6;  and 983 in District 7.  This is very uneven representation and is anti-democratic.

Equal representation can be achieved by having the boundaries of the 7 districts periodically adjusted to ensure there are more or less similar numbers of residents in each district.  This is common throughout the Commonwealth Caribbean.  It is achieved by having the House of Assembly from time to time accept the recommendations for new boundaries proposed by an independent Boundaries Commission.  Anguilla has never, since modern government began in 1971, had an independent Boundaries Commission.

It is noticeable that in the 2015 elections, 3 of the 7 districts won by the AUF contained over 6,078 voters, more than half of the 10,908 voters on the List for all 7 districts combined.  Each district elects only one representative, so the voters of those 3 districts can be said to be underrepresented in the House.

Fifth, with only 7 elected seats, there is bound to be a scarcity of talent in the House.  There are not enough voices to raise the level of debate.  Many important issues never get an airing because there are just not enough representatives to take hold of the issues.  There is a need to increase the number of elected representatives, if only to raise the quality of debate in the House.

The result of these weaknesses in Anguilla’s House of Assembly is what has been called “Anguilla’s democracy deficit”.  There is no real democracy in Anguillia’s system of government.  Whoever can trick the system wins.

It was to solve these democracy deficit issues that the 2017 Report of the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Commission recommended (1) nominated members be abolished; (2) the ex-officio members be deprived of a right to vote; (3) the number of Ministers be increased from 4 to 6 and never exceed 50% of the membership of the House; (4) the boundaries of the districts be adjusted periodically so that each district contains approximately the same number of voters as the other districts; (5) the number of representatives be increased to 13.  That last was to be achieved by increasing the number of districts from 7 to 9 and introducing 4 “at-large’ seats which would be voted for by the entire voting list, so that the number of elected representatives would be increased from 7 to 13.  This is a total package for reform.  It is not amenable to being split up.  You cannot introduce one of the reforms, and omit the others, and at the same time achieve progress.

And then somebody did the arithmetic.  If the party that controlled the 2 Valley Division districts could persuade the British to introduce the 4 at-large members into the Constitution, while keeping the existing fraudulent Voters List, and retaining the original 7 districts, with no revision of the boundaries, then the voters from these 2 districts (plus any support from others) would be enough to win the 4 at-large seats in the 2020 elections.  The Opposition might win the vast majority of the districts, but they would never win a majority of seats in the House.  The party controlling the 2 Valley districts would be guaranteed 6 representatives in the House, and control of government after 2020.

In late 2018, without any discussion with the Anguillian public, an appropriate representation was secretly made to Lord Tariq Ahmad, Minister for the Overseas Territories in London.  He agreed to the proposal.  Once this proposal was revealed (by publication of the draft Order in Council), the united Opposition in Anguilla protested about the malign effect of allowing the administration to cherry-pick the Committee’s recommendations for political advantage.  Lord Ahmad, however, had already succumbed to pressure from the local administration.  The result is the Anguilla Constitution (Amendment) Order 2019 which was signed into law in February.

This Order in Council allows the Elections Act to be amended to introduce the 4 at-large seats without any of the other related reforms.  This instrument represents Lord Ahmad’s betrayal of the constitutional and electoral reform project in Anguilla.  It is a betrayal by the British Government of the promise of good governance for the people of Anguilla.  The Elections Bill 2019 published on the government website is their attempt to carry out this trickery.

The Elections Bill 2019 is an election gimmick.  If the British government was serious about good governance in Anguilla (which all the evidence indicates we should doubt) it would never be signed into law.

Latest Disappointments

Latest Disappointments in Electoral Reform – Letter to the Editor of The Anguillian Newspaper

Dear Mr Editor,

Your readers will be aware that government has now published on its website a Bill for an Elections Act, 2019 (the 2019 Bill). http://www.gov.ai/documents/Elections%20Act%202019%20-%20BILL%20Final%20for%20consultation.pdf.  I have to register my disappointment at this attempt by government to sneak this 2019 Bill into law.  I invite everyone to have a look at the table of contents at the beginning of the document if you do not have the time to read the entire 2019 Bill.

This is supposed to be Government’s effort to bring into effect the election-related recommendations of the 2017 Report of the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Committee (the 2017 Report).  But, the 2019 Bill omits two of the most sincerely desired and widely welcomed reforms to our elections procedure recommended by the 2017 Report.  These were: (1) the revision of the Voters’ List by holding a new enumeration, and repeating it every ten years; and (2) introducing into our elections procedure for the first time provisions for campaign financing regulation.  We can’t revise the Voters’ List and clean it up unless the law provides for enumeration to be held periodically.  We can’t prevent vote-buying unless the law obliges politicians to publish their accounts.  Under the recommendations of the 2017 Report, all politicians and political parties were going to be required under heavy penalties to publish their audited financial statements in a timely fashion.

I say “sneak into law” because of the applicability of Mr Hubert Hughes’ well known aphorism.  He said, “If you want to keep something secret from Anguillians, most of whom do not read, you have only to write it down on paper and put the paper in front of them.  They will never read it.”  In Anguilla, to be transparent and accountable about some important new proposal, it is necessary to talk to the people and explain what you propose.  It is not sufficient merely to write it down and put the paper on a website and never speak openly about it.

Government has now held its first public meeting on Tuesday May 14 to present the 2019 Bill to the public.  This was at St Augustine’s Anglican Church at East End.  I was away from Anguilla, and was not able to attend the consultation.  But, a perusal of an article in the 17 May Anguillian Newspaper appears to show that none of the government representatives at the consultation took the opportunity to explain what was being proposed (by way of deviating from the major recommendations).

In addition to being a betrayal of Anguillian expectations, I believe this 2019 Bill is contrary to what our government promised Lord Ahmad (the British Minister for the Overseas Territories) would be the way going forward.  Lord Ahmad, it will be recalled, gave in to government’s request to urgently introduce by Order in Council the constitutional and electoral changes taken from the 2017 Report that they wanted done immediately.  In exchange, government agreed that they would thereafter turn their attention to implementing the remainder of the constitutional and electoral reform proposals set out in the 2017 Report.  Government promised Lord Ahmad that they would enact ALL of the major constitutional and electoral reform proposals, save where they secured the approval of Anguillians to making any variation.  Government appears not to be living up to that promise.

All well-intentioned Anguillians must demand that the Attorney-General’s Chambers incorporate in the 2019 Bill the omitted recommendations for cleaning up the Voters’ List and for introducing campaign financing regulation.  The sections have already been drafted in the main part following best practice elsewhere in the Caribbean and can easily be incorporated.  Only bad faith with the Anguillian public would cause the provisions to continue to be left out.

If your readers consider this matter important enough, they will make their views known at any future “town hall” meeting and at every other opportunity and through every medium until government accedes to the wishes of the people.  They might indicate their dissatisfaction directly to their elected representatives.  Letters, emails, telephone calls, WhatsApp and other electronic messages to their elected representatives will help.  A quiet word at the Post Office, in the supermarket, or outside church on Saturday or Sunday mornings would not hurt.  Hopefully, government will as a result of public pressure come to its senses and do the right thing.

If any of your readers should have any question on any of this, they should not hesitate to contact me by email at idmitch@anguillanet.com.

Two Editorials

£60 million of Humanitarian Aid

There are two recent editorials in The Anguillian newspaper that I want to comment on.  They are critical of the conditions that come with the £60 million (EC$250 million) of humanitarian aid that the UK has offered to Anguilla post-Hurricane Irma.

The editorial on page 2 of the issue of 30 March asserts that “it is difficult to reasonably conclude that the UKG, by stipulating stringent conditions for the release of the grant funds, is acting primarily in the interests of Anguilla and its people.”  The piece then goes on to criticise the “insistence on the placement of a UK official within the Ministry of Finance . . . who would have considerable responsibilities over the public finances of Anguilla.”  This is described as a “slap in the face of the Minister of Finance and his finance officials.”  The proposal is said to be “abhorrent to all right thinking Anguillians as it can only be seen as seeking to diminish the dignity of resilient and persevering Anguillians.”

The editorial on page 2 of the later issue of 6 April continues to play the same theme.  The author urges that when the aid was originally offered, “it was taken at face value with no mention whatsoever of onerous and discouraging conditions.”  Then, “All of a sudden enter Mr Ben Merrick, Director of Overseas Territories, and Lord Ahmad, the Minister of the Overseas Territories, springing the surprising conditions on the people of Anguilla.”  The UK Government is urged to “quickly release the promised 60 million pounds in humanitarian aid . . . and exercise faith in the Anguilla Government and the highly-qualified and responsible local financial and economic experts in the Ministry of Finance.”

These two editorials are part of an expected smokescreen.  Humanitarian aid by way of a gift of money that is not subject to safeguards over its spending is money that is often thrown away.  Which donor country in its right mind would release any sum of its own taxpayers’ money, far less such a significant amount as £60 million, to a government which many, including Anguilla’s Chief Auditor, believe has proved itself incapable of properly accounting for its own taxpayers’ funds, unless it puts in place the most stringent safeguards?

The UK conditions in question were analysed in my two-part ‘Anguilla: Sustainable Recovery and Resilient Development Post Irma’ published on my website on March 11[1] and March 18.[2]  They were both published in recent weeks in The Anguillian newspaper.  In my view, few of the conditions that are asked of us in Mr Merrick’s letter are unreasonable.  None of them is new.  Nearly all of them are conditions that we should have imposed on our Ministry of Finance when they were spending our own money.  The only shame is that instead of us imposing those conditions on ourselves we had to wait for someone else to force them on us.

As for the threat of imposing an all-powerful ‘Chief Financial Adviser’ on us, we were warned about this since the year 2015 when we were first threatened with its imposition by Order in Council.[3]  We opposed the creation of a ‘finance tsar’ then and, as I explain below, we should oppose it now.

Such an appointment is not a matter of “seeking to diminish the dignity of resilient and persevering Anguillians.”  Those emotional words are an appeal to false patriotism.  There is a real principle at risk here.  As a matter of background, while it is true that some of our past Ministers of Government were irresponsible in their handling of public funds, they did it under the negligent supervision of the UK appointed Governor.  The Governor had the constitutional power to insist on our Ministers and senior Administrators, such as Permanent Secretaries and Heads of Department, following the existing provisions of the Financial Administration and Audit Act.  Instead, successive Governors neglected their duty to ensure good governance.  The Chief Auditors complained about these defects for years as they repeatedly refused to give our Public Accounts a clean certificate for just this reason.  No Governor or British official it seems took notice.  There was no one else in our system of government to follow up on the Chief Auditor’s complaints.  It is only in the past two years that, for the first time in the history of Anguilla, a Public Accounts Committee (the PAC) has begun to meet and to call public officials to account for their spending of public monies.  We can hope the PAC will begin to demand that the Chief Auditors complaints are heeded.

The principle that is at risk here is that, as a developing society, we must constantly strive to improve our systems of government.  Where we are negligent or ineffective in this struggle, it is the constitutional duty of the FCO to help us stiffen our spines.  They can do this by loudly and openly insisting that we follow the correct path, instead of apparently shutting their eyes to our financial transgressions.  They can tell the Governor to do his duty in insisting Ministers follow the law.  In this way, with our own efforts propped up by the guidance of those UK administrators (theoretically with more experience in good governance than us), our democratic institutions will grow in strength.  Imposing, instead, a ‘finance tsar’ who will simply set aside bad decisions of our Ministers of Government and bad laws of the House of Assembly (after those decisions were made in ExCo under the chairmanship of the Governor) will teach us nothing except how to become very angry and insubordinate.  The appointment of an all-powerful Chief Financial Officer, however named, will amount to an increase in the democracy-deficit in our society, not to an improvement in our democratic systems.  In my view, no good can come of such an imposition.

Calling such an appointment a “slap in the face” is mere propaganda.  Those words are designed to appeal to our nationalistic emotions and to stir up a misguided patriotic fervour.  They are used in an attempt to “pull the tam down” over the collective eyes of the FCO.  The idea behind these editorials is that the FCO will be made so guilt-ridden that they will release the funds to us with no effective controls put in place for their proper use.  We must sincerely hope they are smarter than that.

And so to return to the so-called “stringent conditions” that we must meet to receive the grant.  I am not going to repeat why the conditions in question, even if stringent, are right and reasonable.  I already did that in the two articles referred to above.  If we can meet the conditions, and the grant begins to be disbursed, this will be “the best-managed economic reform and infrastructure development programme ever enjoyed in Anguilla.”  If we can maintain the conditions, even after the grant is exhausted, we will be well on the way to proving that we can handle public funds responsibly and in accordance with law.  What an improvement that would be on the existing practice!

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[1]       https://donmitchellcbeqc.blogspot.com/2018/03/sustainable-recovery.html

[2]       https://donmitchellcbeqc.blogspot.com/2018/03/sustainable-recovery-part-2.html

[3]       https://donmitchellcbeqc.blogspot.com/search/label/Chief%20Financial%20Officer

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

It has been such a pleasure to see BV Islanders of every persuasion rallying around to resist British imperialism.[1]  There have been many radio talk-shows and presentations to the public.  They show our people maturing as a nation as we come together to fight a common enemy.  All patriots are invited to rally round.  The ex-patriots are invited too.

How dare Lord Ahmad ask our Chief Minister if he really understands the seriousness of our own financial position?  The good Lord Ahmad has never even visited to see our position.  What does he know of us?  Does he think we are children to be spoken to in this way?

The £300 million grant was never intended to be used for fiscal engineering.  It was promised to us as emergency hurricane relief.  We are entitled to it free and clear.  They never said there would be conditions.  They tricked us.  They continue to abuse us in an evil, exploitative colonial system.  The £300 million is reparations.  They owe it to us.

After all, for decades the British Governor sat in the chair in Executive Council.  He observed our Ministers misusing our own taxpayers’ money.  He said nothing.  He was complicit in every bad decision they made.  What right does Lord Ahmad have now to insist that we properly use and account for British taxpayers’ money?  None at all.  It is payback time.

The British gave us the secretive, manipulative system we struggle under.  Why do they talk now about transparency, integrity and accountability?  The Chief Auditor has for many years refused to give our public accounts a clean certificate.  The FCO could have insisted on high standards then.  But they let us carry on our little ways.  What has now changed?

Come on, Lord Ahmad, no more stalling.  Just drop the moolah on us.  We will very efficiently share it around amongst ourselves.  Let all the big contracts come to us and our friends.  It will work its way down through all the crevices and crannies in society.  That is how trickle-down economics works.  That’s the way to stimulate the economy.  Look at it as our version of quantitative easing.

We have done it before.  We can do it again.  Just give us the £300 million without any conditions.  Or, we will report you to the United Nations as colonial exploiters.  Worse, we will go independent!  Once we are independent we will have no restrictions on begging for international money.  No one will check our accounts to see how we spend it.  We will at last be masters of our own ineptitude.  That will show you.

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[1]       http://www.bviplatinum.com/news.php?articleId=28819