“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” (Edmund Burke).
Anti-war and social as well as political activist Father Daniel Berrigan passed away last Saturday in New York. He was 94 years old. Father Berrigan was a Jesuit Priest who was also a leading activist against the Viet Nam war. He was that guy in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath who said: “Wherever there’s a little guy getting beat up by a cop, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s injustice I’ll be there. Father Berrigan stood up for the little guy till the end.
With all of our stalwarts gone, who will come forward to represent the little guy? Who will stand up for us? Who will come forward to represent the little guy? Who will be the voice of the people? Who will come forward to accept the torch that has been languishing now for quite some time? Who amongst us will accept the challenge? Remember what the Father of the Nation said a while back: “Public service is a crowning achievement.” He also said that: “We are a maturing society and with national maturity must come responsible governance and political finesse by our leaders.” In 67 we were hungry. We laid all of our cards on the table. We had that insatiable commitment to the cause that was a free Anguilla – an Anguilla for all, not just the few.
My fellow Anguillians, it is said, by people who ought to know better, that if you want to say something to us you put it in the paper and you can guarantee that we won’t get the message for we don’t read. What a thing to say about your own people. In the days of old we had to read for that was how we lived vicariously. That was how we learned about world events – from books and the two newspapers that came from St. Kitts, The Democrat and The Labor Spokesman. Knowledge is power. You take away the ability to become knowledgeable and you take away power.
And one can’t help but think that in the grand scheme of things our destruction was all planned. Like a good story, the signposts were clearly foreshadowed, only we were either too dumb or too lazy to see them. Those of us on the front lines, both alive or gone, have got to be saddened to see what has happened. To see a once proud people left totally helpless and all because of incompetent governments. Winston Churchill famously said: “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” We’ve had almost 50 years to get this right. We have failed in the most basic rudiments of government and, consequently, we have failed future generations. What’s a people to do?
Do we accept what has been done to us and just go on as if nothing happened, or do we finally retrieve our balls and fight? This government, like all the others before it, is counting on that we will accept it as our lot in life – that we will just fuss and fume for a couple of days and then we will accept the outcome, only this time they are wrong. This time is like no other for what has been done to us is inexcusable. It is tantamount to economic water boarding for they have let us down by giving us a false hope with this government bank, and just when we think we’ve been given a reprieve, they’ll start all over again, this time to end it.
My fellow Anguillians, we have a very divided country and, as a consequence, we will probably suffer the indignities of a conquered people, for we have allowed ourselves to be conquered. And, as in the case of war, it is said to the victor, go the spoils. Well, we have been an unwitting participant in an ongoing war, one we didn’t start. Our generals, behind our backs, negotiated with the enemy and what we are now seeing is the result of their deceit.
One thing the Father of the Nation, Mr. Webster, despite what you may think of him, always did – he always talked to the people. Ever since he left government we’ve been at the mercy of successive governments who thought and operated as though Anguilla was their own private club, and we allowed them to do so year after year. We have looked on helplessly as they have negotiated away our hard fought gains. We have watched them operate in ways that would have bankrupted any business.
And now we have looked on helplessly one more time as Victor and his cohorts have driven the final nail in our coffin. There is no other way to say it than to say that we have been betrayed by our government, for it is no way that they can say that they were working in our best interests. And I think we should call this what it truly is – it’s the selling out of Anguilla right from under our noses. It was thought that we were a democracy and given the events of April 22nd one has no choice but to change his mind. Of a democracy, Dr Eric Williams in his Independence Day Address on August 31st 1962 had this to say:
“The first responsibility that devolves upon you is the protection and promotion of your democracy. Democracy means more, much more, than the right to vote. Democracy means recognition of the rights of others. Democracy means equality of all in the eyes of the law. Democracy means the protection of the weak against the strong. Democracy means the obligation of the majority to recognize the right of the minority. Democracy means responsibility of the government to its citizens, the protection of the citizens from the exercise of arbitrary power and the violation of human freedoms and individual rights.
Democracy means freedom of expression and assembly and organization…
All that is democracy…democracy, finally, rests on a higher power. It rests on an informed and cultivated and alert public opinion.”
When our leaders think that because they have a mandate and therefore the will of the people they would do whatever and whenever they please, that is just wrong. When we elect a government to look out for us and they don’t, our only recourse is the ballot box. We owe it to ourselves and future generations to be an informed electorate. We have to stand up and be counted. We have to stop going along just to get along. We just can’t stand by and let this masquerade that is the AUF continue. Party politics has finally done us in. We ought to say never again.
There is enough blame to go around and we the people deserve a fair share of it, for it was us who failed to let our voices be heard. It was us who denigrated the few who stood up. It was us who stood behind the barricades when our country was being sold out by a government who promised to make us whole again.
We have let our government undo everything that we have fought for – and it is shameful to listen to the different members of government, who, like puppets, rise in support of the party’s agenda. What will you folks do when they start to take people’s land? Why was nothing done to try and save the banks? Why didn’t the banks come up with a plan to work with those borrowers who were delinquent?
The time has come when we the people have to take a stand and demand that this law be reversed. The banks were found by Anguillians – whatever transpired was an Anguillian problem. How is it that we let a foreign entity come in and seize our lands to liquidate them?
The Central Bank never seriously tried to help Anguilla. This was nothing more than a way of destroying us. If the banks were Anguillian then it stands that the Anguillians would have to suffer some losses, and in time the banks would rebound. They weren’t given that chance. None of this makes any sense and there is some serious explaining to do. That we could invite an entity as incompetent as the Central Bank to come in a take control was, and is, asinine.
Also complicit in this debacle is the British Government for they have long thumbed their noses at the indigenous banks, so now it’s good riddance. Tell that to 3500 NBA shareholders and 60 odd CCB shareholders. How do you just come in and destroy those banks when there were banks in the region, St. Lucia for example, that you did nothing with? Maybe the answer can be found in the fact that neither the Central Bank, nor the Anguilla Government could act, for they were all compromised in one way or another.
Under the old Banking Act, Sir Dwight Venner and the Central Bank lacked the authority to force Chief Minister Mr. Fleming out of his chairmanship of the CCB Board of Directors. The Minister of Finance though had the authority to make the call. And so the band played on.
What will we tell our children when they ask us what did we do when our government voted on the interests of others rather than our own? I am once more going to quote Winston Churchill for what he said is applicable and has a direct bearing on what just happened to us: “When the situation was controllable, it was ignored, but now that it is totally out of hand, we apply too late the remedies that might have affected a cure.” The Hubert Hughes Government had two years to demand a remedy, but they chose to kick the can down the road to the AUF, the guys on whose watch a lot of this stuff happened, and they did nothing for another year until the Central Bank forced their hand which brings us to this place.
So here we are once more being dragged back to St. Kitts through the back door under the auspices of one of the most incompetent outfits, the Central Bank. And, to add insult to injury, we have just abdicated our sovereignty to them. They trump our constitution. Dame Bernice is turning in her grave. Are we that stupid? How can the British stand by and allow all of this nonsense to happen? Do they find us that contemptuous that they won’t lift a finger to help?
As was said earlier, who will lead us? Surely not the ones who occupy the seat of government. Once more we find ourselves in chains. The last time, we at least had our lands. This time we’ll be a landless people with no where to go, and we have only ourselves to blame. We have an education system that does not teach our children from whence they came. We fail to teach them the 21st century skills which are needed to compete on the global stage. Our people are not yet ready for we have not taught them. We have failed and we always look to someone else to do the heavy lifting. And until we decide to suck it up, and get rid of the pettiness that threatens to destroy us all, we will be destroyed.
Let us reach back to the spirit of ’67 and with every last breath that we can muster and stand up for our rights. So till next time, may God bless us and may He bless Anguilla.
