They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I remain receptive to the fact that some words might be worth their gold in pictures. You can imagine my dismay when I read the Chief Minister’s comments at the EXCO meeting, of August 21st 2014, when he alluded to the fact that Anguilla was heading for failed state status. In fact, his exact words, according to the minutes posted on the Government’s web site were: “He saw Anguilla heading in the direction of a failed state.” He goes on to say that: “For many years the FCO had been saying that the British Overseas Territories have the first charge on the British Development Aid, but everything in Anguilla was falling apart and no help was being received. What Anguilla needed now was an economic plan and he wanted Her Majesty’s Government to administer the development of it. Anguilla soon would not be in a position to produce an annual budget”.
American laureate James Baldwin said: “Know from whence you came. If you know from whence you came, the possibilities for going forward are endless.” Any Anguillian, vaguely familiar with our history, will tell you that it’s tinged with nothing but hard times. We have survived years of neglect, famine, hurricanes, starvation, pestilence, drought, marauding pirates, wars and Robert Bradshaw. When given the choice of abandoning our homeland for what was said to be a better life, we opted for our homeland. We have never been a people who threw in the towel; we have always triumphed over our adversaries. To say that we’re heading in the direction of a failed state was not only the wrong thing to say. It was downright disgraceful, given the fact that the person making the statement has never supported us as a nation in the first place. We know from whence we came, and we know what the possibilities for going forward are – now all we need is a government with the foresight, the outside of the box thinking and the cojones to get it done.
To hear the head of our government admit to failure goes against everything that my father and others fought for. One has to ask the question, what’s going on here? What will this do to our property values? What will become of our indigenous banks? What of our crumbling infrastructure? Now we know that the Chief Minister is an astute politician and he’s not prone to making off the cuff comments, so what is he REALLYup to? Remember this is the same person who planned to take Anguilla into independence, or at least set the wheels in motion for 2014. Will Anguilla have to reboot and come back as a 2.0 version? Each and everyone of us right now ought to be marching up to the CM’s office demanding explanations for his somewhat callous statements. Could this be the plan of a man about to exit public life, and has decided to give us a going away present – that of a failed country?
Anguilla has sat stagnant for the last four plus years – where we’ve seen one crisis after another. We have seen GE dismantle and remove their desalination plant with no alternative left to replace it. We’ve seen folks struggling to pay their electric bills. We’ve heard of healthcare crises. You name it, and we’ve seen and heard it, yet it’s business as usual. No one seems to care enough to do anything. We’ve not been told to this day what is happening with our money in the banks – our credit has been lowered, a situation that is yet to be addressed by the Chief Minister who also happens to be the Minister of Finance, the one tasked with managing both situations. We will invest money in a foreign country, while our own facilities are in disrepair. We invest money in things that offer very little in return. Last week, Mr. Sheridan Smith published a letter in The Anguillian and I totally agree with his assessment of the situation. Only in Anguilla will you find people who are woefully unqualified and paid a mint, all the while underpaying those who teach our children. We employ a police force that is staffed by non-belongers, some of whom have boasted that they make more money than the President or Prime Minister of their own country. Is that really how they see us, as their meal ticket? Why do we tolerate this sort of thing?
Almost fifty years ago, we decided that we had had enough of being treated like the illegitimate cousins of the Central Government in St. Kitts. We were a running joke; so much so that a dock earmarked for Anguilla was built on a deserted beach in St. Kitts and appropriately named “The Anguilla Dock.” Well if you take a quick glance at our history you’ll soon discover that we decided enough was enough and it was time to take matters into our own hands. Since that time we have sat back as though in a trance and have accepted the status quo. Look at what we’ve gotten in return. Instead of our government going out and getting something done, it has decided that we’re a failed state – the very same thing that it accused the British of perpetrating. We instill in our children that they should always put their best foot forward at all times – be the best that they can be – and yet here we are throwing our hands up in the air saying that we’ve failed. My fellow Anguillians, are we just going to continue to sit on our hands and let the CM and his government run us farther onto the rocks because they’ve run out of ideas? I think not.
Our forefathers put too much on the line to let this CM – who did not buy into our break with St. Kitts and Nevis in the first place – dictate what we do from here on out. I seem to recall once more that 2014 was the year in which we would determine our own destiny. Self-determination, I think, is what the CM called it. Well, 2014 still has a long way to go, and yes we can determine the direction in which we want to go. If the CM has the cojones to dissolve the House and call new elections then, yes, we can determine our own future. We can retire, once and for all, a government and a party that hadn’t a clue about how to get us out of this bog that we’re mired in.
Martin Luther King Jr. said: “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Folks, you’ve seen first hand what happens to a people when they fail to participate in their democracy? You’ve, no doubt, been following what has been happening in Ferguson, Missouri. When 12.3 % of eligible voters vote, when legislators contest elections unopposed, when your local police force comes from out of town, when 50 of 53 are Caucasian in a city that’s two thirds African American and other minorities, that’s a recipe for what you saw on television last month. When we fail to speak up and stand up for what is right, because we don’t want to get involved, then we are sending the wrong message – to both our children and those government officials – that it is ok to behave in that manner.
Commodore Perry said we have met the enemy and it is us. My fellow Anguillians, we have a long way to go. We have to travel a road that is filled with obstacles, the biggest one of which has been thrown out by our esteemed Chief Minister. We can continue to sit back and let him take his parting shots at us, or we can make damn sure that he does us no more harm. Let us take the first step which is the wholesale cleaning out of this government. Let us assess where we are right now and determine, with the help of a new breed of politicians, where we want to go and how best to get there. This is not a job for the feint of heart or the dimwitted, but someone who has the wherewithal and, most importantly, the interests of all Anguillians – not just a few.
As Anguillians, we have always been a very independent people. And, right or wrong, we have always done things our way. When we were left alone on a rock, that at best could only produce crops for our own subsistence, we nonetheless managed to survive. When no one visited our shores, we built our own boats to trade. We flew our own airplanes – we learned quickly because we had no choice. We were told Anguilla was fit for nothing more than goats. We showed them that goats that could fly airplanes and build and sail schooners. So now, my fellow Anguillians, does that sound like a failed state. Does that sound like something that we’ll tolerate?
Once again, the CM has abdicated his responsibility to govern us by throwing that job to the British, the government which he so despised, so much so that he was convinced that they were doing everything in their power to turn Anguilla into a failed state. We’ve fought long and hard to determine our own future, something that even this CM has touted and pushed for, and now he’s done a 360-degree turn and wants the British to come in. Does any of this make sense?
My fellow Anguillians, in his inaugural speech back in 1960, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy looked out over the mall and said these words: “And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” So I’m going to ask my fellow Anguillians, is this what we fought for? To have someone who was very much against us all the way, who referred to our revolution as a skirmish and in the presence of the Father of our Nation, Mr. Ronald Webster, refer to Robert L. Bradshaw as a great man, and now decide that all that we did was for naught? Anguillians, what are you going to do for your country?
Let us be the very best that we can be. Let’s not be crabs in a barrel. Let’s be our brothers keeper. Let us all get on the same page as we go forward. Let us for once put country first. Now is the time when we all need to stand up and be counted. Let us remember something else President Kennedy said in that speech: “Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking his blessing and his help, but knowing here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” And so I say, let us go forth in this time and place to build a new Anguilla, an Anguilla of which we can be proud, one in which we’re no longer the butt of the jokes, but one that will produce a new crop of independent thinkers with the ability to make a difference. Anguilla: A Failed State? Not hardly. So until next time, may God continue to bless us all and may God bless Anguilla.
