When Shakespeare wrote ‘A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, the character of Puck was the right choice to let us know that things might not go as planned, as he proceeds to wreak havoc on everyone. However, to his credit, he delivers the prologue of the play stating that he knows that the play is unreal, and if we didn’t like it he’ll make it up with another one. However, the phrase of ‘what fools we mortals be’ has an entirely different connotation today in that it means that we’re not using our heads properly – that it shows us as rash, lacking in sense, judgment and seriously wanting in worldly wisdom.
Isn’t it amazing then that a group of islands, all sovereign in design, failed to learn anything from that failed flop of an experiment called the West Indies Federation some fifty years ago? So here we are, fifty years later, still trying to work as a group, this time under the aegis of an Eastern Caribbean Central Bank whose job, as its mission statement claims, is to maintain the stability of the Eastern Caribbean dollar, and the integrity of the banking system, in order to facilitate the balanced growth and development of member states.
Those are all grandiose and lofty goals, if someone can actually point to any success with regard to us in Anguilla. It is very easy to create a vision, but without the execution of that vision, as Mr. Isaacson says, we’re only hallucinating. In addition to having lofty goals, the bank claims as its purpose: the promotion of credit and exchange conditions of a sound financial structure, conducive to the balanced growth and development of the economies of the territories of the participating governments.
For a minute there, I thought it was just to bolster the egos of a bunch of men who likes to play with other people’s money. Now that we know why the bank was created, perhaps someone can explain just what is it that they’ve been doing for us other than using our deposits to stabilize their currency. It is no secret that Anguilla possesses a whopping 65% of all the foreign currency in the region. Our leaders may have thought that it was a good idea back in ’83 when ECCB was founded, but given what has happened, and continues to happen, it might very well be time to chalk this one up to time served and make a hasty exit while we still can.
Folks this is serious and I don’t think that we can just afford to sit around and wait to see what will happen. Let me spell it out for you. We are the gold standard by which everyone else is measured. To give you an idea, when our guys went to England to try and get bail out money, the Brits response was that our standard of living is higher than theirs, so why should they bail us out, and they didn’t. They have since helped several independent Caribbean countries though, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines and all who coincidentally fall under the aegis of Dwight Venner’s ECCB. As to why they didn’t include us in that group? Our GDI was the reason given by our governor. It appears that our resilience, strength and our progress over the last four decades with all due respect to our Governor, has made us ineligible to receive aid even though we sorely need it. You see we are too well off here in Anguilla unlike the other countries that chose independence. We in Anguilla are an arrogant bunch and justifiably so. When you’ve been treated the way we’ve been treated, we have the right the talk the talk and walk the walk.
The Governor of the ECCB has disrespected and insulted us in the worst of ways. After our esteemed CM stood by and singlehandedly gave the banks to St. Kitts, Sir Dwight said he was going to bring in outsiders to recapitalize the banks and he was going to form a consortium to buy the toxic assets. My fellow Anguillians, the ‘toxic assets’ to which he so callously referred are our houses on our grand parents land, that he wants to sell to foreigners. My fellow Anguillians, are we prepared for when the Governor sends a communiqué, saying Anguilla does not need two indigenous banks and that in the interest of all concerned in this region, amalgamation is the only way out? How the hell would he know what Anguilla needs? My fellow shareholders, what’s the plan? We don’t need some foreigner to tell us what we need or don’t need. This guy hasn’t been paying attention. He ought to know by now that we don’t take kindly to being bullied, and that is exactly what this whole episode is about. Talk to Leslie Richardson and Starry Benjamin and I’m sure when the time is right both will have a lot to say. Since when did we go to a neutral corner and cower? Sir Dwight ought to know by now that we frown on anything statement that includes Anguilla in the third position. If he doesn’t, he better bone up on his history.
We flew our own planes, built our own boats, owned our land, did not live in slums, and were unlike anyone anywhere in the world. We are a unique people and the fact that we created our own banks, which allowed us to flourish unlike people anywhere else in the Caribbean, in the world for that matter, I think may irk some folks, but that’s their problem. To say that we are the envy of the Caribbean, would be an understatement. Sure we have taken one on the jaw, but what a jaw it is. It will take more than one shot to the jaw to take us out. Meaner and more ruthless, we’ve dealt with, and we vanquished them all. If the ECCB is trying to put us in our place, by shutting us down then, I say, we kick them out of our banks and sue the pants off of them to have our 80 plus million repatriated back to us.
The idea of a Central Bank may have appealed to our leaders back in ’83, but the fact of the matter is that the EC dollar is not our primary currency and why we would sign on to something like that is beyond me. We hardly trade with the Caricom countries so the EC dollar is not something that we’re going to lose any sleep over. We ought to set in motion plans to exit from ECCB since it is clear that we’re held in low esteem and we ought to let the powers that be know that we’re not just going to sit back and let them do whatever. The large shareholders need to come forward and let their voices be heard and stop sitting on the fence waiting to see what the others are going to do.
So here we are some fifty years later trying to do something that was an abject failure before – only this time rather than countries coming together, its banks. Winston Churchill was quoted as saying that: “he who does not learn from his history is deemed to repeat the mistakes of the past.” Having said that, why are we engaging in this exercise in futility that is the ECCB? Did we not learn anything from the Federation – that you cannot throw a group of islands who are as different from each other as night is from day, and expect them to agree to any one thing? Getting this group to agree is like herding cats. The only thing that we can agree on is to disagree. We’re seeing one problem after another from these islands, and their leaders are the same ones who will decide the fate of our indigenous banks. I agree with Mr. Peter Binose, writing in the 360 online newspaper, a while back “that these leaders [allegedly] can’t even manage a household budget, much less the budget of a country.”
Our homeland faces many challenges on numerous fronts. We’re in the fight of our lives – political, economical, social and last, but not least, spiritual, and how we handle these challenges will determine our future. So when you hear those in power making a big deal over a non-issue, such as “the repatriation of passports back to England”, one is forced to ask are they serious? Here we are fighting for our lives and this is what the blowhards of this government are focusing on! Do you people not understand that in this era of globalization the landscape has changed? It is obvious that anything proposed by the British will be viewed with much suspicion by those in power, we get that. Is that all you have? Do we have a better idea, and if so what is it? All passports now have that chip embedded in it. That’s the nature of the beast; it’s there for a purpose. We want to be world players and this is part and parcel of what’s involved. This is ‘much ado about nothing.’ There are more pressing issues facing us and I’ll tell you what: something as miniscule as a passport will mean nothing if we don’t take care of the more pressing issues.
We’ve faced challenges before and we did just fine, not great, but good enough to change our trajectory on to the world stage. So going forward, what do we do? We have to learn from our past mistakes but, unlike the whimsical characters from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, we don’t get a chance to come out and recite a prologue telling our people that this was all a dream and we will change it next time. This time it’s for real and should be treated as such. F. Scott Fitzgerald said that in life there are no second acts and I would tend to agree with him.
We’ve faced much adversity and have come too far to let a group with their own agenda, determine our fate. The bible tells us in James 2:28 “that you shall know me by my actions.” Folks, the time has come for us to take action. True, the road is fraught with obstacles, and we know that, and we didn’t let that fact deter us in the past. We can do this. Tortola, our brothers and sisters, and I mean that literally, started out where we are now and never looked back. Our currency is the U.S currency the same as theirs, except for a few EC dollars here and there. They did not sign on to the ECCB and are doing just fine.
Like us, they’re also an Overseas Territory and I’m sure that because of the collegial relationship that exists between our two territories, that they’d be more than happy to let us observe their model and even help us to adapt it. Our ties to them are closer than our ties to St. Kitts. Not that we have anything against our brothers and sisters in St. Kitts – it’s an institution housed there that we in Anguilla don’t believe is acting in our best interests.
We can easily sit back and accept our fait accompli whenever it is handed down or we can, with the help of those majority shareholders, let the Central Bank know that we don’t intend to be buried on this. They’ve done nothing to help us. It has been business as usual. When will we know? It’s like we have the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads and only one man knows whether the thin thread will break. Let us put our collective heads together and let the ECCB know hat we mean business.
We can rectify this situation in an instant. Our CM can fix this mess in an instant. After all, he is the minister of finance and this whole process had his blessing. Well, he can stop it just the same. The bank had more than enough time to right the ship. We can continue to give him a pass and wait for whatever the ECCB wants to do. Remember, this time it’s for real. Unlike Puck and his cohorts in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream we are dealing with reality, and how we do that will determine where we go from here. We as a people can’t continue to sit around closemouthed and expect others to do our bidding. Martin Luther King said that in the end “we’ll remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Can we afford to remain silent on as important an issue as our indigenous banks and our country in general? Think about it. Until then may God bless us all and may God continue to bless Anguilla.
