I cannot believe it. Impossible! What? The Executive Council of the Government of Anguilla, myAnguilla, approved the payment of $40,000 to the Hon. Hubert Hughes, Chief Minister and Minister of Finance, for telephone calls made from his home phone, some twelve to fifteen years ago? My Chief Minister, our Chief Minister, heading our Anguilla Government has been awarded $40,000 for telephone calls that were made a long time ago. And did you say he had previously made the claim, the same or a similar claim, on the Anguilla Government during the tenure of the Hon. Osbourne Fleming as Chief Minister, and was turned down?
I have to let this sink in. I have to try to put this in perspective. It has been stated that Mr. Hughes failed to justify and establish the validity of his claim to the Osbourne Fleming Government. Therefore his claim did not receive the nod from that Government. So what did Mr. Hughes do? It is fair to conclude that he bided his time and waited until he regained control of the Anguilla Government, not that he was certain that he would. And once again he sought to get the Government to refund him to the tune of $40,000 for telephone charges from his home phone, while he was Chief Minister from 1994 to 2000.
And wait! The total amount of the bill for which Mr. Hughes has claimed re-imbursement was racked up over two years and four months. Even so, how come such a level of monthly telephone expense was incurred at home on behalf of the Government? How did the average get so high, in spite of calls made from the Chief Minister’s Office and in spite of the telephone allowance that he received, as one of the allowances paid to the Chief Minister?
How come Cable and Wireless permitted the Chief Minister to run up such a woefully delinquent account over such an extended period of time? How come no action was taken to bring pressure on him for the non-payment and to press him to bring the condition of the account back to normal? Or am I wrong and efforts were made by Cable and Wireless?
I wonder about connections that do not meet the eye. Is it possible that the big $40,000 delinquent account was permitted because of some relationship and understanding, spoken or unspoken, between the then General Manager during that period of Cable and Wireless and the Chief Minister, Hubert Hughes?
The period during which this huge bill was run up coincides with that during which Cable and Wireless was engaged in the shedding of a significant number of jobs as it reorganized itself regionally. This, of course, resulted in the redundancy and early termination of some employees that had lengthy employment with the Company and were near retirement age. It would be interesting to be reminded of the level of redundancy and retrenchment payments that Cable and Wireless made to the employees it cast off.
I remember the present GM advocating on behalf of his fellow employees that were axed. In just about every case the $40,000 exceeded the individual redundancy payments made to the staff that were let go, after lengthy, loyal and faithful years of service to Cable and Wireless. Compared to employees laid off in other regional countries, our Anguillian brothers and sisters received peanuts. It is reported that payments as high as a quarter of a million dollars ($250,000) were received by employees terminated under its reorganization programme in those countries.
And who says that the telephone bills to which the $40,000 pertains totaled exactly this figure? Is the total significantly different from $40,000? Could it be closer to $50,000 and if so, why was only $40,000 claimed, or why was not less than $40,000 claimed? What is magical about $40,000? These are some of the questions that come to mind, when I consider the issue.
Here are some other questions that we should ask the Chief Minister:
i) Why did you not make an issue of the refusal of the AUF Government, in which the Hon. Victor Banks was Minister of Finance, to approve the payment of the telephone invoices? If your claim was truly justifiable, and its validity beyond question, I see no reason why you would decline to go public with it, when you go public with everything. Or perhaps you practice selective transparency.
ii) Did you declare an interest and recuse yourself from taking part in the decision? You are the mouth champion of good governance in Government, and the Don Quixote tilting at the imaginary windmill of your alleged rampant corruption and bad governance by the AUF Government, especially by Victor and Osbourne. Did you excuse yourself?
iii) Is it good governance to take part in an Executive Council decision in which you are the interested party who will directly benefit? Had Victor or Osbourne or Kenneth, Neil or Eric behave in that way during their time in office, they would not have heard the end of the matter. You and your drumbeat about their corruption would have been deafening.
iv) What was and is the policy of the Anguilla Government on covering use of telephones by Ministers? Is it different now, since you returned to office, from the period before February 16, 2010, especially between 1994 and February 15 2010?
What disturbs me most, however, are the larger implications for bad governance, linked to the disturbing style, attitude and approach of the Chief Minister. This is not the first time that he has either sought to have the people ofAnguillafoot the bill for questionable transactions. Some of us well remember the story, which alleges that Mr. Hughes sought to rent a formal suit (not quite as extreme as coat, tails, top hat, pocket watch and monocle) to attend an official, I guess black tie function overseas, and to charge the cost to the Anguilla Treasury. Needless to say he did not succeed in this. It dates to his tenure as a Minister before he became Chief Minister.
For sure, this one is no allegation. He was quite happy to accept the largesse of Chief Minister Osbourne Fleming and his AUF ministerial colleagues in the form of an expensive jeep, while he was in opposition during the AUF’s ten years in office. It was only when he saw the economic tides turn against the AUF that he returned it. And his apologists sought to justify his actions.
It is an open secret according to friends and acquaintances that Chief Minister Hughes has had a habit of travelling every opportunity that came his way, spending as much time out of the country as he spent at his Ministerial desk. The common view is that this habit is fuelled by a huge ego and exalted view of himself relative to otherCaribbeanand indeed international leaders, but also by the perks, financial and otherwise, derived from travelling so often.
The drumbeat to which Chief Minister Hughes appears to move has to do with what some have termed a tendency to autocratic, dictatorial one man rule, even in a system with the trappings of democracy, as we have in Anguilla. The image of Chief Minister Hughes comes to mind in which he imitates the illustrious scholar and Prime Minister of Trinidad andTobago, the late Dr. Eric Williams. Dr. Williams’ unforgettable image is that of a pensive professor with a bald head, glasses topped by dark clip on shades, and a harness attached to the handles of his glasses to allow him to take them from his eyes and let them hang from his neck.
This image of Dr. Eric Williams was at one time closely imitated by Chief Minister Hubert Hughes. It appears that he has also sought to imitate Eric Williams’ style of governance, which led some political commentators to describe him as a constitutional dictator? Even so I have never heard that Dr Williams travelled every chance he got. I have not heard of any allegation of him using his position to make what could appear to be questionable financial transactions.
The late Forbes Burnham ofGuyana, the late Robert Bradshaw’s very good friend, allegedly exploited his position as Prime Minister for personal gain. Burnham, in addition, wielded autocratic power and exercised authoritarian control under the guise of Cooperative Socialism. Is it that Hubert at one time took on the image of Dr Williams, but sought to imitate the dictatorial behavior of Forbes Burnham? An interesting and dangerous combination.
This is not to say that Dr. Williams did not exercise considerable power and was absolute in his control over his Ministers and Cabinet. As an intellectual, which our Chief Minister is not and could never be, Eric Williams was able to skillfully work the British model of parliamentary democracy inherited byTrinidad and Tobago, to exercise firm and authoritarian control over his country. I believe that Hubert is dreaming of doing the same thing, and worse perhaps, like the late Eric Gairy ofGrenada.
The Mighty Sparrow penned a classic calypso about Eric Williams’ autocratic control within the British type parliamentary system of his country, summing up his constitutional dictatorship inTrinidad and Tobago. I will go into it a next time but suffice it at this stage to share with you the chorus of Dr. Slinger Francisco’s “Get to Hell Outa Here”, a vintage calypso of political commentary that is unmatched:
“This land is mine, I am the boss
What I say goes and who vex loss
I say that Solomon will be
Minister of External Affairs
If you ent like it
Get to hell outa here.”
All we have to do is substitute the clause “Solomon will be Minister of External Affairs” with the clause “Haydn will be Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism”, and the chorus applies to Chief Minister Hughes perfectly, given his autocratic and dictatorial style, attitude and approach.
