The following letter was sent to The Anguillian by Chief Minister Hubert Hughes for publication.
11th June 2013
His Excellency Alistair Harrison
Governor
Governor’s Office
Old Ta, AI-2640
Anguilla
Your Excellency,
Your letter of 27th May 2013 refers.
You have sought to remind me in your communique of what each of our roles is as informed by the Constitution – that Executive Council can identify a position to be filled; that we as the Government have no further role and that it is your duty to appoint whomever you choose after receiving advice from the Judicial Service Commission. I have taken it that by your specifying the ‘roles’, you wish to emphasize that I as Chief Minister am to have no part in whom you select for a position. I have become accustomed to that level of disrespect on your part and am fully aware that you do not subscribe to the harmony and spirit that the Constitution envisages. However, what I will not let you succeed at doing, is disregarding the policies to which my Government subscribes particularly where your action seeks to threaten core principles favouring the People of Anguilla.
Both your attempts and that of the Attorney-General who has worked closely with you over the past few months to ensure that an expatriate, Ms Kellie Bailey be appointed to a position in the Attorney General’s Chambers as Senior Parliamentary Counsel as opposed to a local individual, Miss Dawn Richardson, has known no bounds although Miss Richardson has more qualifications for the particular area of law for which the position requires. To secure Ms Bailey being appointed to the position you have gone as far as purporting to exercise your ‘reserved powers’ in the Constitution to override the decision of the Executive Council on 2nd May 2013 supported by the Attorney-General. Interestingly, the use of the Reserved Powers has never occurred in the history of Anguilla and that you should have sought to invoke the same in support of an expatriate over a more qualified Anguillian supports my position that this issue will not be treated lightly by me, my Government nor I hope the People of Anguilla.
I am committed not to let this issue rest which is why you may view my action by this communication as being premature, but I do not intend to sit idly by and await your appointment. In the climate which has characterized your tenure of office – and as it appears – literally until the curtain falls, I am forced to remind you of the factual basis which ought to have attended the process of this appointment to the post of Senior Parliamentary Counsel. Therefore unless the ‘process’ of appointment took account of certain actions by you or that of the Attorney-General, then your attempt to make the appointment as you have said “in the usual way” may well operate as a direct and contrary action to the same EXCO decision on which your ability to so appoint is premised. This is why I have taken the step of reminding you what these facts are in advance of the appointment because with ‘refreshed’ knowledge of the same your actions and that of the Attorney-General can then be assessed through the prism of ‘mala fides’ or bad faith and my interest is to ensure that the record is clear.
(i) EXCO was aware that the Attorney-General had been engaging in restructuring of the Attorney-General’s Chambers and that coming out of such proposal was the consideration that that there would be two (2) Senior Parliamentary Counsel.
(ii) I had been informed by the Attorney-General (and I conveyed the same to my Ministerial colleagues) that he intended recommending Miss Dawn Richardson to be promoted to one of the positions as she was qualified to fill the same and that he would be advertising for the second position of Senior Crown Counsel. The Attorney-General also made the indication that he had communicated to Miss Richardson that he had recommended her to the Judicial Services Commission to be promoted to fill one of the positions of Senior Parliamentary Counsel.
(iii) In the meantime, by January 2013 the position of contract worker Ms Kellie Bailey who had held the position of Parliamentary Counsel in the Attorney-General’s Chambers had expired and the decision was taken at EXCO that there would be no further renewals of her contract; therefore in the ordinary course in accordance with Immigration policies she ought to have been repatriated to her home country at the end of two (2) weeks.
(iv) This decision of EXCO that no further contracts would be offered to Ms Bailey did not find favour with either yourself or the Attorney-General and notwithwithstanding EXCO’s decision Ms Bailey continued to remain in Anguilla, even being employed in your office in the interim in breach of the Work Permit regulations.
(v) The Budget for Anguilla did not recieve Assent until April 2013 and at that point Government of Anguilla decided that it could not support two of the same positions of Senior Parliamentary Counsel. As such I presented a paper to EXCO that made redundant the second position of Senior Parliamentary Counsel and made clear the following proposals:
“b. A recommmendation should be made as discussed and agreed for the vacant position of Senior Parliamentary Counsel to be filled internally.
c. Persons who applied for the second position should be informed that the position is no longer available. Government will only fill one position of Senior Parliamentary Counsel and will not fill the second position within this budgetary year.
d. Opportunities should be sought for the development of staff within the Chambers. Attempts should be made to secure attachments or other training opportunities in some of the other OverseS Territories or other Caribbean countries that would be beneficial to the development of staff.
e. Vacant Positions within the Chambers should be filled by qualified Anguillians and if non-belongers are employed, provisions must be made for Anguillians to understudy the non-belongers to assume those positions after the contracted period is ended.
f. Persons granted scholarships by the Government of Anguilla should be given first preference for consideration for positions within the Chambers when the need arises.”
(vi) On the 2nd May 2013 EXCO approved these proposals.
(vii) On the same 2nd May 2013 acting under the advice of the Attorney-General you purported to invoke your ‘reserved powers’ under the Constitution in light of the discussion emanating from the proposals in which you wanted to insist on the ability of Ms Kellie Bailey to be appointed and in which I as Chief Minister supported by the Ministers in attendance emphatically rejected your position in light of my Memorandum as referred to in Clause (v) above ante.
(viii) It was communicated to us by the subsequent week that you had withdrawn your Decision to use your reserved powers thereby reinstating the decision of EXCO.
(ix) Of concern to me and to the Ministers in my Cabinet is whether the Attorney-General acting as a proper Minister of Justice conveyed to the Judicial Sercvices Commission the new parameters within which the Commission would now have to circumscribe their considerations. On this aspect we have great doubts in light of the positions taken by the Attorney-General which appeared to be adverse to the Government’s position following his verbal claim to me and to Miss Richardson and as it would seem to other administrative persons that he had made a recommendation in her favour when he had thought that there would have been two positions. Furthermore, I became aware that Miss Richardson was advised by the Attorney General not to apply for the position advertised because she would have been recommended for the second position. However, by his own admission rather than a firm recommendation for the promotion it appears as if the Attorney General simply made the indication to the Judicial Service Commission that perhaps Miss. Richardson could be offered the position. In the scheme of things this appears to be deceptive. These added facts again appear to me to put Miss. Richardson at clear disadvantage and cast the entire situation as favouring Miss Bailey..
(x) What we do know however is that notwithstanding the clear position of EXCO an advertisement was allowed to be placed in the media when the same would no longer have been applicable.
Based on these circumstances as set out herein I wish to make it clear that for you to properly exercise your powers of appointment for the position of Senior Parliamentary Counsel on the advice of the Judicial Services Commisssion, it would have had to be premised on the fact that it was dutifully communicated to the Commission about the postion taken by EXCO to which I have referred herein. Unless the Judicial Services Commission was so informed, any attempt by you to make an appointment would amount to an abuse of the process and or an act of mala fides with a clear intent to manipulate the process.
I am therefore offering both yourself and the Attorney-General who supports you on this initiative an opportunity to clarify and/or confirm to me in writing whether the terms of the proposals which formed the Memorandum to which EXCO agreed were conveyed to the Judicial Services Commission. In a different climate where you shared the principles of harmony which the spirit of Anguilla’s Constitution envisages we may have been able to clear this issue with a phone call, however that shared principle has regrettably never attended your approach and therefore in the interest of the People of Anguilla I am forced to pen this missive.
I look forward to your response no later than mid-day tomrrow since you had made an earlier indication that you intended announcing the appointment on 12th June 2013.
Yours faithfully,
Hubert B Hughes
Chief Minister
Cc: Hon James Wood Q.C., Attorney General of Anguilla
Chairman, Judicial Services Commission
Ministers of Government
Members of the Press
