The Editor
The Anguillian
“LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET OUT OF THE WAY.”
In the absence of true leadership, people will follow any voice; in fact they will wander through the desert to a mirage and drink the sand. They don’t drink the sand because they are thirsty; they drink the sand because they don’t know the difference. American President.
Thomas Paine, the English born American patriot, author of several politically charged pamphlets, among them, Common Sense, was said to have made the statement, “Lead, Follow, or Get out of The Way.” In Anguilla we seem not to know which one to adhere to. Our application of any of these three represents the Anguillian version of a Chinese fire drill, (no offense to our Chinese population) complete with a leader who is as competent as the captain of the SS Titanic.
A true leader leads by example. He motivates his team to accomplish the tasks with which they’ve been assigned. A true leader does not make excuses, will not cave or quit and is man enough to admit when he is wrong. A true leader does not blame others for his failures. He offers inspiration, a vision, and is totally on board with whatever needs to be done. We need a true leader, now more than ever, and given that we are about to retire our esteemed CM, we hope that those candidates applying for the job, will take note: it’s high time that you know what we expect of you.
After we’ve listened to and read the tripe that’s being pedaled by our esteemed CM, one has to ask the question: How did we get to this point? One can look no further than our leadership. Granted, the events of the last few years have had an impact on not just us, but the world in general. Everyone reverted to some form of belt tightening or austerity measure – some more drastic than others. The United Kingdom, for example, initiated some of the harshest cuts, the results from which they’re still reeling and are still struggling to recover – and, given that we’re an Overseas Territory falling under the auspices of the UK, we were expected to follow suit.
Though we did not follow the path of our British counterparts, we instead, against our better judgments, taxed our people into submission to the point where we may have very well dumped our tea into the Road Harbour. In that we had no tea to dump, we took to the next best thing that we’re good at, and we remained silent. We have stood by and let our esteemed leader run roughshod over us time after time. We have religiously stood by and let him rewrite Anguilla’s history as he sees fit. We listen to the dissemination of the truth according to Mr. Hughes and we accept it as gospel.
Just recently, he seized the Anguilla Day ceremonies to continue his revisionist history of our revolution. I say our revolution, because I don’t think that he supported what we were doing. He had the temerity to call it a skirmish. How dare he even talk about what happened in the revolution. Let him tell the young men who risked their lives in St. Kitts, that it was just a skirmish. Let him tell the pilots (some of whom were no older than 20 years) who flew endless hours on a moments notice that it was just a skirmish. Let him tell the people living in the Virgin Islands and elsewhere for that matter. Let him tell Keith Gumbs and his band who played those long Sunday evenings at the Sundowner Nightclub in St. Thomas, after playing all night Saturday. Let him tell Ronald Webster, Bob Rogers, Cardigan Hodge and the men and women who guarded the beaches or in their own way supported the revolution, the late Atlin Harrigan and Walter Hodge, Jerry Gumbs, Collins Hodge, John Webster, Wallace Rey, and Peter Adams, Ruby Gumbs, Fred Richardson and a host of others, that what they did was just a skirmish. How dare you, sir, cheapen what those valiant men and women did by referring to it as a skirmish? And while we’re at it, where were you when this so-called skirmish was going on? Sir, you are nothing but an insignificant opportunistic coward who wants to be relevant, an example of the Peter Principle at its zenith. You, sir, in front of a packed Ronald Webster Park, praised Premier Bradshaw with Mr. Webster being present. Are you kidding me? Isn’t it ironic that you, sir, and your family have benefitted more from our little skirmish than anyone else? Well as the saying goes, “man work and dog reaps.” What’s wrong with this picture?
For as long as we’re willing to sit idly by with our mouths clenched shut, this kind of nonsense will continue. In the Caribbean 360 newspaper, a former Bahamian cabinet member, political economist Zhivargo Laing, went on record with this assertion in which he said:
“The decline and trust in government is partly due to the highly publicized and seemingly increasing moral or ethical failures of our political leaders.”
Every time that a new government comes to power, it is so anxious to make itself look good, and in the process tarnishes its predecessors. That is to be expected, but at some point in time, the new government needs to put its programs in place. It has promises to keep and it has to justify why it was elected. The old adage of “to the victor go the spoils” is taken both literally and figuratively. The first thing that they do is to reward those people who supported them with plum assignments, qualified or not. Mr. Laing seems to think that this confidence crisis can be blamed on what he refers to as “the persistence of social and economic problems facing large groups of people despite the promises of relief brought on by political change after political change.” So this “vote for me and I’ll make things better” is fed to an electorate time after time, who are not without fault and, as Mr. Laing contends, have themselves to blame: “If they didn’t contribute fully because of their disappointment with government failings, and as a result withdraw from the political and democratic processes.”
He goes on to say, what we should have all figured out by now and that is when we withdraw ourselves from the process “it’s not the politicians that suffer, but them and their fellow citizens that do.”
We seem to be caught up in a whirlwind that has left us reeling, so much so that we don’t know which way to go. We don’t seem capable of making up our own minds about anything. We listen to the CM constantly talking nonsense and no one calls him out. We know that he’s an excellent orator and he’s is counting on that if you hear something often enough that sooner or later it becomes truth.
The old saying says “fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you, fool me three times, shame on both of us”. The CM has had his three shots – and in baseball a called third strike and you’re out. Anguilla, the beautiful place unlike any other, forged out of hard and difficult times, abandoned and left to perish, like the Phoenix, rose from the ashes only to be put in the hands of the most incompetent ne’er do wells in the history of this young nation, to the point where a once proud and self-sufficient people now have to depend on the kindness of others.
That is not who we are. We’re a very proud people who, when things were rough and just about everyone was hesitant to come to our aid, said “to hell with it, we’ll do this on our own”, and we showed that determination too. We had the audacity to do things. We flew our own planes, we sailed the seas in our own vessels, after we had built them. We were an entrepreneurial people who did not sit around waiting for the cavalry to make a last minute rescue. We seized the initiative. We were creative and we used our Anguillian ingenuity. Don’t misunderstand me now. I’m not advocating for independence, at least not at this time. I’m simply stating who we are and from whence we came. I will not sit idly by and let some “Jim Jonesian” politician, concerned only with his own posterity in perpetuity, take us down some road in which he’s totally incapable of navigating. As has been pointed out by many learned legal scholars, more recently by the esteemed Justice of Appeals, Don Mitchell: “we simply don’t have in place the checks and balances which good governance requires.”
He references the FCO white paper in what the FCO sees as the guidelines for good governance. The paper lists five key elements as being: (i) the rule of law; (ii) transparency; (iii) accountability; (iv) the responsiveness of institutions; and (v) effectiveness and efficiency. These five elements, for our convenience, may be summarized under the three headings of (a) integrity (b) accountability (c) transparency. Justice Mitchell contends:
“In my opinion our system of government in the British Overseas Territories has generally failed in all three prerequisites for good governance. We have been running our own internal affairs for decades. We have done so with such in-competence, venality and hubris among our leadership that observers generall hold our leaders in quiet contempt.”
So there you have it. Can anyone truly stand up and say that we’ve done a good job? Do they really want to move forward absent of these checks and balances? They are in no way even ready to contemplate such notions. Anyone selling you that line of manure is chasing fools gold, and anyone following is just as much a fool.
Earlier I asked the question of, how did we come to this? Can anyone truly answer my question? We came out of the starting gates with such speed and poise, that any spectator in the stands would have gladly bet a hundred to one on us but, alas, somewhere along the way arrogance, showboating and finally fatigue set in. Instead of pacing ourselves, we went for the win in one fell swoop and consequently the race was lost. Now we’re doing Monday morning quarterbacking in which we’re saying we should have done this and we should have done that. We’re parceling out enough blame to go around several times. Where did we go wrong? What should we have done, and what do we need to do to get back in the race? Folks, the answer is a no brainer. In professional sports, when the team is struggling, the owner fires the coach. Well, guess what? We are the owners and therefore, coach you’re fired. Change is inevitable and in our case we’d rather get it sooner than later.
A smart politician knows that in order to win, he needs to tell the electorate what they need to hear. He will promise just about anything knowing full well that he will not be able to deliver on most of those promises, yet we nevertheless fall for his spiel time after time. He will invoke Marcus Garvey and Nelson Mandela and a lot of African dignitaries. He will be seen hobnobbing with these guys to give the impression that a connection is being made with our African ancestors. Folks, a charismatic politician knows which buttons to push in order to win over his people. He knows who to bash and he knows who to praise. If you consistently blame the British and go out of your way to show your contempt for the crown, to some you are seen as a hero, to others – the sensible – ones you are nothing more than an embarrassment, a buffoon. Mr. CM, you are the leader of this young nation which you profess to love, but you are willing to walk off the cliff with us in tow just to satisfy your own selfish ambitions.
Folks, all of this will become irrelevant if we continue to sit around looking morose and not wanting to be involved. We have stood around long enough while the few in government continue to do what ever they want. Now we are complaining, and who do we have to blame? Some think that we’re a bunch of yahoos, unskilled in what it takes to handle the everyday operations of government. They seem to think that we don’t have the sense we were born with. Why else would the hotels continue to owe us tons of money that is rightfully ours? Why would the CM be able to pay himself $40000 for phone calls when that very same bill had been disallowed by the previous administration? Folks, the world is constantly changing and we need to change with it or we’ll be left behind. We take too much for granted. We’re not an aggressive people and I think, the time has come that we start changing our ways.
That will require everyone pulling in the same direction to get where we’re going. We need a society that looks out for everyone, not just some. In order for that to happen, we need a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We need leaders with a vision – leaders who can convince everyone to come together for the greater good. While we’re obsessed with independence, the question becomes what type of society we wish to live in? Given that government plays an integral role in molding a society, it behooves us then to elect those persons who will represent our best interests at heart. Thomas Paine, whom I earlier quoted, writing in his pamphlet Common Sense came to the conclusion that:
“Most writers have so confounded society with government as to leave little distinctions between them, whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness, the former promotes our happiness positively, by uniting our affections; the latter negatively, by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, and the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last is a punisher.”
It is fair then to assume that society determines the type of government we get and vice versa. If we have an educated electorate, the chances are likely that we will have a government that will be held accountable. We just can’t elect these guys and sit back and wait for them to act in our best interests. Zhivargo Liang, the prominent political economist and former Bahamian cabinet member, writing in Caribbean360 contends that an alert, attentive and active citizenry keeps government honest. He further contends:
“Politicians should be scrutinized both before and after they are elected. They need to be subjected to rigorous scrutiny as to their thoughts about governing and their conduct in the governing process. The issue is to get at the heart of their policy content, intent and execution.”
In an earlier edition of this paper, I posed the question when we discussed our politicians. I asserted that we accept our politicians on faith. We naturally assume that because these guys are running for office that they have an inkling as to the task at hand. However, we have found out that our politicians are woefully inadequate. Don Mitchell writing in his piece “Beyond Walls.” Had this to say:
“We in the West Indies with no more than half a century of universal franchise are still in many ways frontier societies. We have fancy written constitutions with amateurish politicians who sometimes behave like cowboys, and we have no mechanisms in place to rein them in.”
We’ve been given a precious commodity, and, instead of appreciating it, we proceeded to abuse it. Zhivargo Laing says that “only an alert, attentive and active citizenry will ensure a high level of inspection. It is too much to ask of people caught up in everyday lives and burdens of making ends meet, but when a politics matter to the quality of everyday life, then involvement is mandatory.”
And so it comes down to what we want to do: lead, follow, or get out of the way and I suppose that it all depends of who is leading, who is following – and those who choose to do nothing, in which case then get out of the way. Those are the options.
Before I go, let me say this: Week after week we wait for something positive to happen. Our people are frustrated. All we hear is petty bickering between the governor and the government, between members of the government and between members of the government and the opposition. At what point will the involved parties grow up and stop behaving like a bunch of morons and start acting like adults? Is there truly anyone who is willing to break away from the pack and start to deal with the problems that are facing our people?
At this point in time, it appears that the dye is cast. People continue to call into the talk shows and it’s an us versus them mentality. When they don’t agree with what’s being discussed, they want to change the agenda with comments like why don’t you all talk about this or that. When they do decide to discuss the topic on the table, they don’t have the common decency to discuss it in a civilized manner. At last check we still had freedom of speech in our country, and with that freedom of speech comes the responsibility of using it in a manner that is not hurtful or injurious to another. You don’t cry fire in a crowded theatre and claim that you are exercising your right under the constitution. It appears that no matter how much we try to educate the general public, there are always exceptions.
Last Saturday, on the Mayor Show on Kool FM, the topic was identifying an issue of national importance and finding a solution. Well things went well for a moment until a specific caller made his presence known. He asked a question of the co-host Ms. Webster with regard to the Dolphin situation with such venom in his voice. Anyhow, Ms Webster as she usually does in her own unflappable style answered the question to the best of her ability. Well, the caller being dissatisfied with her response called back for a follow up. It was on the second call that he got real nasty. He decided to up the ante and challenged Ms. Webster’s nationality. I thought he behaved like a jackass previously and has done nothing since to change my mind. These loudmouths bring absolutely nothing to the table except their dye in the wool loyalty to the party in power.
It is sad to see what has happened to our country. Sooner or later we have to wake up and let those in power know that their time has come to seek another line of work. We have to begin to use our common sense and ask ourselves if this is what we voted for. Ask yourselves are you better off now than you were three years ago? If you are by all means keep things the way they are. If not, you have some serious soul searching to perform. Mr. Laing in his article contends that the media cannot do the heavy lifting alone. He goes on: “It is not enough to leave the media to this inspection. It plays its role, but an active media and an active citizenry can make for a powerful mechanism for politicians. If you want to make an inept politician shake, tell him that both the press and his constituents are demanding to speak to him or her and have some tough questions to ask.”
We have to look beyond charismatic leaders whose only concerns are what history will have to say about them in perpetuity. I’m sorry – that’s not good enough. Let us rescue our homeland from the charlatans who have seized it. Until then, may God bless us all and may God bless Anguilla.
Tyrone Hodge
