Do not drink the “kool-aid” Mr. Hughes is peddling! It is no good! It is no panacea! Instead it is a placebo that is not a remedy to our problems. Neither is it the cure we are looking for. Believe it or not, you do not have to be a “house slave” or even a “wood slave” to know what is good for you and what is not! You know when it hurts and when it is ok. As you look around you will hear and see for yourself, and observe, that more people in Anguilla are hurting now than any other time in the last twenty years. In the face of this, the regime after more than two years in power has done nothing to help them. You will also recognize the emptiness and futility in the government’s direction and course of action. They speak only of petty politics and of nothing that is positive or that would uplift this place. We are in a rut! The people do not know where they are being taken — except maybe for a ride around the bend.
The placebo that they are serving is to escalate the old feuds between the Chief Minister and successive Governors; frame it into a constitutional debate; appeal to the emotions of the populace; and, by deception, drag them into making a decision on an issue that only Hughes and his surrogates have thought about. It is only a decoy and a detour laden with pitfalls.
The Chief Minister does not, by any means, approach politics from an intellectual standpoint. But in terms of Anguilla political standards he has political “street smarts”. To some extent he is as cunning as Brer Fox and in this way he is practicing political gamesmanship on the electorate. This time, however, it is easy to unravel the plot. It seems that for a long time Mr. Hughes has been seized of the idea that he should always have the last word on all political issues on the island, and now he his trying to make it happen. It cannot be over emphasized that this is the wrong time for him to try. We are hurting badly and we need more than a new constitution at this time to stop the hurt. And if there is one that can make a difference, and elevate the people, it would have to be brought by MOSES — not by HUGHES. Nothing good comes out of vendettas or by doing things simply to prove a point. There must be something more substantive. The internal wars in the Constitutional Committee thwart all efforts for putting together a document that meets the real needs of the people. They are drafting something that cannot happen that way. Some of the proposed changes are unrealistic and miss the point on major constitutional advancement.
However, to accomplish his purpose the Chief Minister is prepared to serve the kool-aid. The decoy or the bait to make it palatable is to appeal to the emotions more associated with nationalism than with intellectual analysis and reasoning. His aim is to use political abuse to set up the Governor and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as bad people trying to hurtAnguilla. That is a falsehood. British contribution toAnguillaover nearly fifty years flies in the face of everything that the Chief Minister has been saying. People inAnguillawill remember where they were, and what they did, before the introduction of the COUNTRY POLICY PLAN that provided for the building of the police station, the courthouse, the House of Assembly, H.M. Prison, School Buildings, the Public Library and the best of everything that we have. What have they taken from us? How have they used us? How many of them are in Anguilla? Where about on the island are they? How much land do they own that would make us fear that they want the island for some sinister purposes? They are not the ones to fear! The bad ones are those among us who fail to realize that charity begins at home. The phony patriots who attend forums and speak inAnguilla’s name and yet take plenty money from the people for land that is needed to build a road for them and us to use and could feel good about it.
If the British wanted this island they would have stayed here! Instead they left empty handed. Therefore the purveyors of that silly idea should sit down and shut up, while they consider the real facts surrounding what happened that allowed us to get to this present position. They should remember who paid for most of our infrastructural improvements. We are hurting now but that is not a reason to get emotional and become irrational. Now is the time to have a hard and critical look at the leadership, and see what they are doing to move us forward, and make them accountable. First of all they lied to the people on the question of taxation, and secondly about the pace of development. We know what they did with taxation and we are not seeing anyone coming here to invest. The sounds while traveling tell the story of the declining economic times. Unlike a few years ago, when the AUF was in power, you can now travel from one end of the island to the other and seldom hear the sound of a back-hoe. Things are really bad now and will get worse if this Government does not change its outlook. “People who used to drink Johnny Walker Black now drinking Anguilla Worry Vine – that’s how hard ti be!”
So Mr. Hughes, not sure where he is going on the development route, decides to make a detour and go down theIndependenceroad hoping not to hit a cul de sac. He sees this as the easy part. All he has to do is to hope people will not fully examine the gravity of the problems, that they will face now and in the immediate future, and blindly follow him in his folly rather than think for themselves. The road to connect with, is the one that leads to where the jobs are. It is noticeable that it has been a long time since anything positive has been said about a new MOU or a development project. Everything here is dead! So to move concern and comment away from his failures, he turns off the road of “promised development” onto the alley of “silly politics” where he can ambush and confuse the people on the real issues concerning independence. One of the important things to note is the cost, because, as they say, not “even freedom is free” – there is always a price to pay.
Anguillians will have to come up with more money. The size of the budget will have to be expanded to support the trappings associated with independence, thereby causing the need for increasing existing tax rates and to further create new tax bases. (Like adding a land tax onto what is now the property tax.) Also as factor costs increase these taxes will also have to go up in order to cover them. These inherent problems, a derivative of Mr. Hughes’ folly, tell us that his flawed ideas must not be followed. This detour – sidetrack and back flaw – moves us away from the reality of our situation and will sink this island, at this time, when all that people are asking for is to take them back to somewhere near to where they were when Flag was here.
A hundred-page document with various sections and subsections does nothing for people who want to work and cannot find a job. Finding ways to bring jobs here should be the number one priority on the mind of this Government. They should be on the road seeking opportunities for building up industry, and should not be satisfied with the way things are. It has become quite clear that they are only spinning their wheels and going nowhere. To do what Mr. Hughes says would be “to cut off your nose to spite your face”! Anguillians thought they knew Mr. Hughes and took him at face value. Now he is being revealed to them for what he is. A man who placed all kinds of blame on the HMG and the Governor now show himself to be “ brazen and bold-face”. He is so daring as to go to the Executive Council, with the same Governor in the chair, and facilitate the approval of money for phone calls incurred by him some ten years before the said Governor got here. That is a lesson in “barefacedness”. However, the Governor acquiesced to that demand and did not raise the questions of morality or the validity of it publicly — something that he could have done. In comparison with regular circumstances that debt would probably be barred by the statute of limitations. The behavior of the Chief Minister also sheds some light as to how much the man really cares forAnguilla. This action clearly shows that when push comes to shove in situations between Mr. Hughes’ interest and that ofAnguilla, allegedly Mr. Hughes will say: “Me first!” As another example, he knows that his proposals are inconsistent with what is best for Anguilla now, but he prefers to satisfy his ego regardless of what happens toAnguillalater. He is on an ego trip and the noise he makes is the propaganda that feeds it.
The question for us to answer is, what has to be done that will enable us to build a better community based on knowledge and understanding of the real issues? Can we devise solutions that are compatible with our human resource capacity, our culture, and our lifestyles to take us forward? The promotion of such ideas as far as we have seen will not come from Mr. Hughes. For the last half century he had opportunities to offer suggestions and, as of now, he has not put forward a single fresh idea. He has not produced any creative ideas and as time goes by he will naturally become even less capable of doing so. So why drink the kool -aid that he is offering? And as it is said in the vernacular: “Uh hope that if ayah get tru to do wah ayah say ayah want to do — uh hope ayah know wah ayah doing toAnguillapeople!”
There is, after all is said and done, no written constitution that provides food for anybody! To do that you have to get someone to agree to put down a factory; a hotel or some facility and employ people! Let these things first be done and the constitution will fall into place. We have to eat first then we are going to talk after! Remember a hungry man is an angry man! What is the rush? Is somebody going to die tomorrow?
