I listened to the Chief Minister’s Budget Address last Thursday with much concern. Not because of that part of his address which was clearly written by himself or his partisan colleagues — but rather because of the labouring manner of his delivery. Either he was suffering from a serious case of jet lag or it was the first time he had the occasion to read the speech in its entirety. As a former Minister of Finance, who has delivered fifteen such presentations, I understand how challenging it can be to read over fifty pages of material and make it interesting — but at least you should be able to deliver it in the idiom in which it was written. As an individual the Chief Minister has been blessed with exceptional good health and, over the years, I have been amazed by the sheer stamina of the man. However, his performance last Thursday was deserving of compassion and concern. I am not alone in this view because I am yet to meet someone who has not expressed similar sentiments.
The preparation of a Budget Address is a team effort in the Ministry of Finance. I suspect that there have been no significant changes to that process since I had the privilege of participating in such exercises. I am therefore in a position to determine exactly where the technical officers made their input and where the Chief Minister and/or his colleagues inserted their “political spin”. On this occasion it was glaringly obvious that beyond the first two and a quarter pages; the three paragraphs of the conclusion; and some selective comments inserted throughout the text to raise the profile of the Ministers and denigrate the former Minister of Social Development — there was no real contribution by the political directorate. To be quite honest, the technical officers in the Ministry of Finance made a very fair and balanced assessment of the state of the economy and the projections for the future. The economy is still contracting and the prognosis is uncertain at best.
It is also clear that the Chief Minister is now desperately trying to project the image of a stable Government that is getting things done. And I have heard one of the AUM radio commentators making the statement that “you will not get anything until you make noise.” In other words, suggesting that the grants and “permission to borrow,” of which the Chief Minister and his colleagues now boast, are a result of the confrontational style and behaviour that they have espoused for the last four years. The truth is that if the Chief Minister and his colleagues had adopted a more civil approach to governance from the day they ascended to office; if they had stopped accusing the Governor and the British Government of sabotaging development in Anguilla; if they had focused on the way forward and stopped engaging in the “blame game”; if they would have only built positive alliances with the investment sector on the island; and if they would have only abandoned the implausible conspiracy theories which they used to disguise their incompetence — they may have been realizing positive outcomes from the British and the European agencies long ago.
The Chief Minister also continues to rewrite history by suggesting that he had something to do with the positive financial performance of the coalition Government of 1994 – 1999. The truth is the Chief Minister was hardly on island during the tenure of that Government. It was I, Victor F. Banks, as the Minister of Finance, who was the architect of the Hurricane Luis National Rehabilitation Project that brought Anguilla back in 1995; it was I who facilitated the development of the Transshipment Project which brought windfall revenue to Anguilla; and it was I who was the Minister responsible for all the initiatives in the Financial Services Department during that period. The seven months during which the Chief Minister served as Minister of Finance he did not even get to present a budget to the House of Assembly, and he had absolutely no clue what was going on in the Ministry of Finance — it was completely run by the technical officers. There was an overall deficit at the end of 1999 and there was Hurricane Lenny and the Constitutional Matter with the Speaker that took up all of his time. So when he speaks about having left a healthy fiscal position with virtually no national debt — he is just simply lying.
Again, in this address, the Chief Minister takes no responsibility for the tax measures imposed by his Government. He goes through a spurious explanation to suggest that the former AUF Administration had already agreed to those tax measures and he had no choice but to grudgingly agree to them. This is an ongoing line of argument that Hubert, his supporters, and AUM Radio Talk Show Hosts, employ with the hope that it will in some way absolve the Government from any blame for their decision to impose these measures. However, they are yet to provide a document that ties the AUF to the measures and especially to the manner in which they were implemented. And rather than spend the time to explain his government’s strategy over the last four years, he uses the occasion to take us back to the “mistakes” of the AUF Administration. It is unclear how he hopes to convince anyone that after four years of his term of office it is still the Opposition’s fault.
But after four years, all of a sudden the Chief Minister is trying to convince us that he and his broken Government deserves a second term. It is unimaginable that on the basis of the approval of a tranche of funding from the EDF 10; a grant from the UK; and approval for borrowing for the Community College, we should believe that the economy is turning around. I have heard Ministers and political appointees speak as if “the cat is in the bag”. One Minister is talking about EC$27 million being spent on the second phase of The Valley Development Road next year. While we are grateful for this funding these projects are hardly ready for implementation. The procurement and tendering processes have not yet begun and the preconditions for the EDF 10 second tranche are still not completed. Obviously, next year will be far spent before any major activity takes place on these projects.
Let me take this opportunity to wish all of my readers a blessed Christmas and a healthy, prosperous and Happy New Year when it comes. May the days ahead be merry and bright!
