A startling revelation has been made by outgoing Governor, Alistair Harrison that on three occasions Chief Minister, Hubert Hughes, advised him against appointing Anguillians to senior positions in the Public Service.The Governor was at the time speaking in a Radio Anguilla interview with Keithstone Greaves on Wednesday, this week, July 3.
Mr Harrison gave as one example the appointment of the Commissioner of Police. “Back in 2010, the Chief Minister rather surprisingly advised me not to appoint an Anguillian to that post and I thought very carefully about it,” he recalled. “But we had an outstanding candidate in the then Deputy Commissioner – Rudy Proctor — who is obviously an Anguillian, and [who gave] an extremely strong performance at the interview board which included my Police Adviser who is based in Miami – an expert on these things. We had a lone applicant from off island but he was not an impressive candidate, so on that occasion I wasn’t to go with the Chief Minister.”
Asked whether the Chief Minister had given any reasons for his position on the matter, the Governor replied that it was not that the Chief Minister was against Rudy Proctor. “It was against any Anguillian,” he went on. “It is sadly surprising knowing the Chief Minister is keen that jobs should go to Anguillians.
“He also advised me not to appoint – he didn’t want an Anguillian as Deputy Governor. He wanted to revert to the system we used to have of having a British Deputy Governor. Again, I thought carefully about that advice which I found very surprising.”
Asked whether the Chief Minister had given him any reasons, the Governor said:“He gave me some reasons but these were confidential discussions with the Chief Minister so I don’t want to particularly reveal the details.” He repeated that he was “rather surprised knowing that the Chief Minister is keen that Anguillians should do those jobs that they are capable of doing.”
Governor Harrison further revealed: “Also, when Willy Bourne retired, I was appointing the Attorney General. Again, the Chief Minister advised me not to appoint an Anguillian Lawyer as Attorney General. On that occasion, I decided to take his advice partly because I had an extremely good candidate in the shape of James Wood who the Chief Minister was happy with back in 2011 when he was appointed; and partly because the Attorney General is not just an adviser to the Governor – he is the Legal Adviser to Ministers and the whole of Executive Council. And so it is quite an important relationship.”
The Governor stressed that: “The Chief Minister has on three occasions advised me against appointing Anguillians to senior positions.” He said however, that it might have been an indication that “the Chief Minister has no particular prejudice for, or against, Anguillians. He wants the person who he considers best in the job, as do I.”’
Meanwhile, the Governor defended his position in Executive Council (on March 7) when he disassociated himself from a decision to award a tourism promotion contract to the Britto Agency costing almost a million dollars over two years.
He said, among other matters, that he felt very unhappy about the way the decision had been taken. He stated that “anumber of people who should not have been involved in the process had become involved” and that “the qualifications of the agency did not seem to have been examined very carefully.”
He thought it was “an example of bad governance and that the motivation of some of the people involved seemed to have been very odd.” Asked who were the people he was referring to, he replied that they were “outside government, some on the fringes of government and some within the government.”
