On the heels of the 47th Anniversary celebration of the Anguilla Revolution, we are here this week celebrating Whit Monday. Traditionally, Whit Monday passed quietly with some churches having beach picnics. In recent years the Welches and Island Harbour communities have added to the celebration by putting on “Welches Fest”. This is a festival that focuses on life in the early days in Anguilla. While most of us don’t mind celebrating our traditions, for a day, few of us want to go back permanently to live like that as some of those conditions were tough.
So I started my Whit Monday, going to “Welches Fest”, walking around, greeting people, looking on, reliving some of the traditions and, of course, consuming some of the food which was our staple diet back in the day. I later came home and spent some time listening to a number of talks on www.ted.com. One talk in particular grabbed my attention. It was a presentation given by Brian Stevenson entitled “We need to talk about an injustice”. Brian’s talk focused in on the criminal justice system in the United States and the plight of the poor and underprivileged.
It dawned on me that while our society, from a racial perspective, is homogeneous, we are facing the same types of issues here in Anguilla – a system where the poor and the underprivileged get trampled upon and abused by our own people. I am the great great grandson of a slave who worked on a plantation in Antigua. When we as a people were freed we celebrated the event. That is what the next upcoming festival is all about, the celebration of Emancipation on August Monday. I am moved to ask the following:
1. Are we satisfied with the strides we have made since our emancipation?
2. Why are we not further ahead today?
Following our emancipation from slavery in 1834 and up until 1980, we can claim that other people dictated how things were done. This of course was unfortunate. The Anguilla Revolution of 1967 changed that and from the 19th December 1980 we had most of the say about the way things are done here. We cannot be happy with where we are today as we are still struggling to have our basic needs met. While there is no denying that we have made significant strides, we need to benchmark our performance now against the best performers in the Caribbean who came out of the slavery experience as well. Anguillians have been known throughout the region, if not the world, to be a progressive people, an ambitious people and a resilient people. We once ruled the seas and the air of the region. We operated our own vessels and airplanes across the region. Is it a case of our divisiveness which has led to our lack of confidence to conquer the world as we started out to do in the past? Are we a broken people? Is it a case where we did not upgrade our skills? Is it that we did not consolidate our efforts and our capital? Whatever we may think, our plight today is due to a lack of visionary leadership.
I will not try to answer all of the questions I have raised, but rather just make some observations, from a layman’s perspective, as to some of the things, that I am concerned about with respect to where we are. We are determined to work as a team of dedicated patriotic Anguillians, and dedicated residents of Anguilla, to confront most of these issues as the people of Anguilla deserve better. Our children must be made to feel hopeful about their future, while living right here in Anguilla. Only a few people have been feeling hopeful about their future in Anguilla, while the many have been feeling increasingly hopeless. This results in a mass exodus each year of some of the most brilliant young minds to other islands and countries to study and eventually live. What a drain on the resources of this tiny island. How can we truly develop with this brain drain happening?
What has been the real plan for our island by the Anguilla United Front (AUF) and the Anguilla United Movement (AUM) over the years? The AUM claimed that they had a secret plan leading up to the last election. We are still waiting to see them roll it out. For the past 14 – 15 years all we have been getting are more and more taxes and fewer and fewer benefits. It is extortion to impose taxes on a people when those tax dollars are not used for the purpose of improving the lives of the majority of those same people. It is criminal to engage in extortion and it is unethical to burden your own people this way. I here urge our leaders to look at every taxpayer dollar before it is spent and make sure that the taxpayers are the beneficiaries of that expenditure.
It is commendable that jobs were retained during the economic challenges facing Anguilla due to bad fiscal management and challenges in the global economy. There are many areas where taxpayers money could have been better spent. Every time government spends money it needs to put a face on each tax dollar. That tax money is coming from an old lady or old man with no income and who is living on a very small saving she/he has in the bank. She/he has to “cut and contrive” to survive. She/he tries every possible way to cut back on her/his cost of living in order to make ends meet. That tax money is coming from a single mother with two small children, without little or no child support from the children’s father and is working three days a week at a rate of U.S.$5.00 per hour. This young family is struggling to survive. That tax money is coming from a young unemployed university graduate with a huge school loan to pay back. This young college graduate is frustrated and disillusioned about his or her future in Anguilla. A plan is urgently needed to take this island out of the mess that it is currently in. Better must be done.
To ensure that we are getting value for money, zero-based budgeting should have been used over the years. Zero-based budgeting requires you to start with a blank sheet of paper. Identify the needs then justify the most efficient way to satisfy those needs. The sum total of all those efficiently justified needs constitutes the budget. This approach forces the government to justify money budgeted thus making sure that citizens benefit from “their” tax dollars. It is tough and counterproductive in our environment where there is no real economy for government to be demanding higher and higher taxes. It is even worse when those tax dollars are not being used to expand the economy directly or indirectly that would lead to an improvement in the lives of the inhabitants of Anguilla. It is important to ensure economic expansion takes place before taxation. When economic expansion does not happen before taxes are increased it results in financial hardship for taxpayers.
In recent years we have seen budgets increased from a low of $63 million in 1999 to a high of $243 million in 2009 (this excludes the laughable $98 million capital revenue for that same year for a total of $341 million). During the same period the average wages and salaries of taxpayers moved by a relatively small percentage if they moved at all. In 2010, with the coming to power of the AUM government, there was a significant increase in a number of taxes which have crippled both taxpayers and the economy. This same AUM government ran on a platform in the 2010 general election that “you cannot tax a dead economy”. Now we are all near death with the high taxes. Yes, the AUF left the island in a very bad position with a huge recurrent budget, an empty treasury and lots of debt which has necessitated some serious action on the part of the AUM government. Taxes went up considerably for the average citizen, while wages went down for civil servants. Civil servants were hit the hardest as they were subjected to salary cuts and tax hikes.
There are some taxes the current AUM government has either increased or introduced since taking office in 2010 (all in E.C. $):
$4.00 tax on every gallon of gasoline
7% tax on electricity bills
10% tax on telecommunications bills
6% stabilization tax
150% increase in property tax
6% tax for customs administration
In addition to these taxes, a number of other charges were introduced at the ports by the Port Authority to include:
U.S. $3.00 security fee for all passengers leaving Anguilla
E.C. $20.00 overnight parking in Blowing Point
E.C. $5.00 security fee for every parcel coming in at the port
High “wharfage” fees at port
The quest for self-determination in 1967 was predicated on the people of Anguilla wanting a better life. Some of the things for which we were willing to die for, during the Anguilla Revolution, are some of the very same things we don’t have in place 47 years later. I am speaking of things like reliable running water, reliable and affordable electricity, caring leadership, the “happiness” that we pursued etc. As a nation we have been derailed. We need to refocus and bring back the Anguilla dream, the Anguilla vision and the spirit of the Revolution. We need leadership that sees the needs of the people of Anguilla as a top priority. The DOVE Party wants and deserves your support. Anguilla under the leadership of the DOVE Party will deliver a bright future for its people. Come 2015 general election, vote in the member of the DOVE Party in your constituency.
Thank you.
May God bless us all and may God bless Anguilla.
