The more things change, the more they remain the same, or do they? In the movie The American President – the president, played brilliantly by Michael Douglas, gets into a heated debate with one of his junior staffers who said: “People want leadership. In the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. “The president replies: “They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert towards a mirage and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand. We’ve had presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink it because they don’t know the difference.”
In Anguilla, we have people who can easily put very coherent sentences together without the aid of a flashlight. So what then seems to be the problem? That depends on who you talk to, or who you listen to. Our problem right now is that we’re a very divided country and, to quote the lyrics of a famous pop standard: “United we stand, divided we fall.” So what’s it gonna’ be? We seem to have accomplished in less than fifty years, what it took other civilizations hundreds of years to achieve. Not a small feat.
We find ourselves at the dawn of a period in time what will determine the future of Anguilla as we know it. With the so called mandate that was given to this government, we had high hopes that things would be different. Winston Churchill was quoted as saying: “He who does not learn from past mistakes is doomed to repeat them.” It has been almost fifty years that Anguilla has been trying to make a go of it and, try as we might, the will to succeed just doesn’t seem to be there.
Our GDP which might be a bit misleading seems to dictate to the Foreign Office that we’re doing quite well, thank you, and we don’t need any help. Seriously? Where are our elected officials? Folks, we have a representative government and, if my history serves me correctly, that means that we elect you to represent us. That means that you have to, on our behalf, fight tooth and nail, if you have to, for our best interests. Where have you been?
During the election campaign, you were highly visible and you were willing to do just about anything to get elected. Well the election has come and gone with one party, in particular, doing very well. Have things changed? Not really. Are the banks fixed? Not really. Will the banks be fixed anytime soon? Who knows? I am not trying to be alarmist here, but look around you. St. Lucia is bordering on anarchy, Gonsalves is in the fight of his life, Grenada is trying to enact constitutional reform and it’s not going very well. I raise these issues to give you a snapshot of what is happening in our region.
There’s a direct correlation between what is going on in our tiny paradise right now and the way we have let things happen. Again, Winston Churchill said at a different time and place that: “We apply too late the remedies that may have affected a cure.”
If you listened to the Mayor Show on Kool FM Saturday last, you would have heard the esteemed Ms. Paulette Harrigan discuss Mr. Banks’ property tax – and if you were paying close attention, you would have gleaned that it is not something to be taken lightly. In other words, we need to know of every nook and cranny of this law. And we very well know that once laws are passed they are very hard to rescind or repeal, so we had better be damn sure that we understand all that there is to understand for, as a people, we tend to be too passive and we assume that the guys we elected will be looking our for out own best interests. By now we should have figured out it’s not always the case.
Like an after thought, the British threw us together with a pair of islands with whom we had nothing in common and who, themselves, were having their own problems, thus leaving us to fend for ourselves. And through our own will and determination, we’ve managed to get to a place which seems to be just as bad, if not worse, than we were before. We are in a sorry state and it appears that there isn’t much urgency to deal with the issues at hand. We allowed GE to disassemble their desalination plant – we let LIAT, American, and Winair all leave for whatever reason. We let the airport contractor go before he finished a decent airstrip. What gives?
Dating back to ancient civilization, people settled close to water because it was the one thing you couldn’t do without. That our leaders would allow a company such as GE to remove that plant, with no alternative, was criminal, and over what, a few thousand dollars, or however much it was, does not justify what was allowed to happen. What was the alternative, go to the stores and buy bottled water? Have you tried buying bottled water in Anguilla recently?
I’ve been told that there is an outbreak of chicken pox at one of the schools – both teacher and students were infected. How will they deal with this without having running water? How are people expected to clean themselves? Without water, we’re looking at a public health disaster. Get the damn plant back and pay the people their money.
Today, as we strive to move forward, we often see just the few reaping the benefits, while the many continue to be shut out of the process. It is time that the younger generation step up and assume their rightful position. We too often find that those who run for office, time and time again, are woefully lacking in ideas, and basically maintains the status quo.
I alluded to earlier to a piece written by Whitman T. Browne in which he stated that Britain did transfer the forms of its governmental institutions to the area, but did little else which basically left us alone to figure it our for ourselves. Said Whitman Browne: “The early Caribbean politics was often based on trial and error. There was no Caribbean focused examples to follow. So mistakes were made.” Our leaders were at the mercy of a very sharp Foreign Office.
So when we look around and see what we’ve been left with, after fighting for a lifetime to make things better, one is left to wonder: Are our politicians really looking out for our best interests or their own? When one sees our crumbling infrastructure, and some of the other inept actions that have been taken by our governments of the past, what’s one to think?
I think Mr. Browne sums it up beautifully when he asserts that: “The politicians today are not committed to the people, or the area, as was the case at an earlier time. That commitment has changed to self, family, selected friends, and a growing number of non-Caribbean persons whom they serve for a price. Often the agendas the leaders attend have little to do with the Caribbean.” He claims that there is still doubt in the Caribbean over who decided to invade Grenada in October 1983 – the U.S. Government or Caribbean Governments.”
Saturday on the Mayor Show, on Kool FM, we heard Ms. Paulette Harrigan, admonish us all to hold our government accountable. She also exhorted us to not put rich investors in control of our economy. It would be a mistake to allow them to hold our country hostage. The old standards to which we once adhered, are no longer sacred anymore. We are still expected to maintain increasing levels of economic, social and political expectations as a Caribbean people but Mr. Browne contends that: “Limited resources and poor planning leave the island governments incapable of meeting expectations. As an alternative to facing that reality, many of those governments have secret deals with foreign individuals. This is especially related to real estate speculation and the tourism trade.”
Early in our revolution, the Father of the Nation, Mr. Ronald Webster, famously said that he didn’t want us to be a nation of bus boys and waiters. You think perhaps he had a premonition? So here we are once again making the assertion that: “The more things change, the more they remain the same” or have they? That is the question. So till next time, may God bless us all and may God continue to bless Anguilla.
