Let me say at the outset that I have great respect for the Hon Cora Richardson-Hodge as a person and a professional. In my interactions with her I have always found her to be an honourable and decent person.
I was listening to Radio Anguilla’s morning news two Fridays ago when I heard her making a speech. She claimed as one of her accomplishments during her term as Minister of Home Affairs that she brought us constitutional and electoral reform. That claim is so upsetting to me that I am forced to put pen to paper.
Anguilla has not had reform. We have had betrayal. Betrayal of the most hurtful form. As I reflected on her cynical boast, I became more and more distressed.
The constitutional and electoral reforms we want are set out in the 2006 Report on Constitutional and Electoral Reform (“the 2006 Report”) and the subsequent 2017 Report to Government (“the 2017 Report”). [The links are live if you have the electronic version of this paper]. We want to see an improvement in accountability, transparency, and integrity in public affairs. There were two principal public demands, increased democracy, and improved standards of public life. We got neither.
What we got was the AUF Administration’s boast that they gave our foreign grandchildren Anguillian status, created four new Island-wide seats in the House of Assembly, and the Chief Minister could now call himself Premier. They hoped these boasts would help them to get them re-elected in 2020.
So far as I am aware, there is no continuing discussion on constitutional and electoral reform for Anguilla. Neither the local Administration nor the FCO appear to have any interest in any of the real reform proposals that were so laboriously set out in the 2006 and 2017 Reports.
When a Report is presented to Government, there is no expectation that every proposal in it will be accepted without question. Government is free to select what parts of the Report they will accept. But we all expected that if they intended to make any alterations to the package of reforms proposed, they would come back to the people and explain what they want to do. They had an obligation to be transparent about the alterations, and to attempt to get our approval.
I listened from my hotel room in Antigua back in September 2019 to the Minister and her assistants explaining in the Teachers’ Resource Centre the provisions of the draft new amendment to the Constitution and the draft new Elections Act. The public meeting occurred on the very day the draft appeared for the first time on the government website. No one had a chance to read it. In case you are interested, I discuss the events here: Constitution – Government Proposals.
In this first and in the few subsequent town hall meetings, the government representatives made no effort to point out to the unaware members of the public what was being omitted. They offered no explanation at any time as to why the main reform proposals were not being carried forward. They pretended that what they were proposing was what the Reform Committees had recommended. That lie so often repeated was a hurtful part of the betrayal.
The British FCO joined with the Administration in enabling this betrayal. That was particularly painful. The FCO team visited Anguilla for discussions in November 2019. I was a reluctant member of the Anguilla team that negotiated with the FCO. They assured us that the remainder of the proposed reforms which we had agreed on would be in a draft new Constitution. They promised to send us a draft in December 2019. When December passed, I asked them directly. They offered no explanation for the delay. I assume the Administration has pleaded the Covid-19 excuse. I fail to see any relevance of Covid-19 to legislative reform. The FCO seems to be playing along with the delay. More betrayal.
It is not just the Administration’s failure to implement any meaningful kind of constitutional and electoral reform that hurts us. They have failed Anguilla in so many other ways. The Minister in the same speech boasted that she had brought us labour reform. She referred to the new Labour (Relations) Act of 2019. She warned the opposition parties, if they ever gained power, they must not touch this reform she was so proud of.
Listening to her speech, I felt myself getting more irritated. This new labour law brought no reform. There is no minimum wage regulation despite the promises. Labour protections have been weakened. This law is a betrayal of Anguillian workers.
There were a few failed start-up trades unions, but there is no real one in Anguilla to stand up for workers’ rights in the private sector. There is only the Labour Commissioner and the Minister of Labour. What these two offices did over the past twenty years was to remove all the workers’ protections that Ronald Webster introduced in his last term in office. I previously explained how Ministers and Labour Commissioners illegally permitted workers to be treated as gig workers in Ronald and Labour, published on my blog in December 2019.
Workers at some of the major hotels began, at first illegally, to be classified in their contracts as gig workers. A gig worker is an independent contractor, not an employee. None of the original workers’ protection applies to gig workers. Employees, but not independent contractors, are entitled to sick pay when they become ill. Compulsory workman’s insurance does not apply. Holiday with pay does not apply. Social security contributions from the employer are not technically payable, though since the new Act I have heard that Government has twisted the arms of employers to force them to make the contributions voluntarily.
The original Fair Labour Standards Act and Labour Department Act became disembowelled. Ministers and Labour Commissioners allowed employers to terminate their workers each year. The workers would then be taken on the following year and put on a new one-year contract as an independent contractor. Earlier administrations started the process. The Minister and this present Administration finished off the job. The new law now authorises employers to classify workers as independent contractors. More betrayal.
The Minister oversees immigration. Our immigration and work permit laws are supposedly intended to protect Anguillians from outside forces. But our laws have not protected us for decades now. Various Ministers of Immigration and Home Affairs have gutted the immigration laws of Anguilla. In this endeavour the Ministers were ably assisted by various Labour Commissioners.
Under various Administrations, foreign-owned stores have spread all over Anguilla. They have in time displaced our uncompetitive little local retail groceries, dry goods, and hardware stores. Our immigration laws were passed to protect us and our vulnerable little businesses. The law failed to do so in this case.
The foreign-owned hotels are in a different class. They represent hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign direct investment which has given jobs and advancement to Anguillians. Foreign-owned restaurants that raise the standard of cuisine are part of the attraction of Anguilla to tourists.
By contrast, dry-goods stores and groceries add nothing to our economy or culture. But, because they are slightly cheaper, unpatriotic Anguillians flood into them, abandoning the slightly more expensive local ones. Some of the older local groceries, dry goods stores, haberdasheries, and hardware stores are nearly empty of customers. It will not be long before they go bankrupt and close. This Administration has delivered the coup de grace to the local retail business.
And, now, just before elections, seems to come the final betrayal. In 2018 the British Government gave Anguilla £60 million, or EC$300 million, in reconstruction aid. The money was intended to put Anguillians to work rebuilding the schools, port facilities, and other public buildings devastated by Hurricane Irma towards the end of 2017.
Our men could have done with the work in 2018 and in 2019. They had bills to pay and families to feed. Did the children have to be put through the continuing discomfort of attending damaged school buildings in morning and afternoon shifts throughout 2018 and 2019 and going into the future? We saw the effect of the discomfort in the lowered grades achieved by our students over the last two years. Reconstruction should have commenced immediately after the plans were approved.
It would be a shame if the delay was so that the Administration can boast, “See, we have you at work now. If you want to see more work like this, you must vote for us. This is no time to switch horses.” If this was the reason for the delay, Anguillians are quite capable of seeing through the smoke screen.
