Former Minister of Social Development, Mr Edison Baird, now an independent candidate in the Road North Constituency, for the 2014 general election, launched his re-election campaign on Saturday, June 21.
Baird, who holds university degrees in Political Science and Economics, was fired from his ministerial post by Chief Minister, Hubert Hughes, a year ago. He said he would be teaming up with opposition groups to form the next Government of Anguilla. He is vying for the sixth time to be the elected representative in Road North, where he has served for some twenty years.
He was supported at his public meeting on the basketball court in North Hill by Ms Patricia Hodge who introduced him; Mr Rommel Hughes, a long-time friend and former CEO of the Water Corporation; and Mr Yanchie Richardson of the Mayor Show on Kool FM 103.3.
“This election is not a contest between Edison Baird and [the Anguilla United] Front,” Mr Baird told his listeners. “The Front and I had our problems and the voters resolved it in 2010. I have no problems with the Front and I believe the Front has no problems with me. This election is a contest between the forces of good on the one hand, and the forces of evil on the other hand. And the forces of evil are the forces of… ‘that gang’ that constitutes the Anguilla United Movement.
“We in the opposition – Edison Baird, the Front and all the patriotic forces of the opposition – must come together as one and remove the [present] Government of Anguilla,” he stressed.
Mr Baird, who charged that he was undermined while in Government, said he was being accused of not having done anything in the Road North Constituency by his rival, Mr Patrick Hanley, the AUM candidate. He took the opportunity to list a number of projects and programmes in which he was personally involved. “I have done more in the Road North Constituency than any other representative in the political history of Anguilla since the introduction of ministerial government in 1976,” he claimed. “I don’t say it to denigrate the past representatives…I say it because it is an objective truth.”
Baird further said: “Fellow Anguillians, I want to come to the position that I believe to be true: that Anguilla is in a political and economic mess; that Anguilla is worse off today than when it was under the Front in 2010. And that is coming from a man who played the leading role in putting the Front in the opposition. Look at the economic mess that Anguilla is in. The banks are taking your houses; the banks are taking your land; the banks are taking your cars; and the reason why they are taking all of these things from you, is not that you don’t want to pay. Anguillians are hard-working people.
“It is because under the Hubert Hughes Government, a number of jobs are being lost. Therefore the people cannot pay their loans. The Government is taxing the people to death. You have the [Stabilisation] Levy, the four dollars tax on gasoline – and this is the same Hubert Hughes who said you cannot tax a dead economy. He not only taxed the dead economy, he prepared it for burial.
“But, just as Lazarus was raised from the dead, we, Edison Baird, the Front and the patriotic members of all the opposition, I feel we can put a Government together that can breathe life into the economy of Anguilla and raise it again. Just how Christ raised Lazarus, we will raise the economy of Anguilla.”
Among other matters of concern to the people of Anguilla, Mr Baird referred to the Cap Juluca issue which he discussed at some length. He pledged that when he, and the other opposition groups, formed the new Government of Anguilla, they would solve the Cap Juluca issue.
