Last week, Anguilla saw a new low in this make or break election season. Now I don’t know if it’s the desperation of certain campaigns which have caused certain candidates to behave in the manner in which they have, but it was sad and downright embarrassing to listen to some of the garbage that cluttered the airwaves. Lost in all of this was the reason for being out there. No one with the exception of one or two candidates has made a concerted effort to say exactly what it is that he or she would actually do if elected. Everyone is so caught up in wondering what this or that candidate will do if elected, that they’ve neglected to put forward what it is that they will do for this wonderful place we call Anguilla. Anguilla, you deserve better than this.
Now I know that we’ve had some doosies of campaigns in the past, as was referenced by Colville Petty in a piece called Lead us Heavenly Father, which first appeared in print back in 1999, but what I heard this last week were campaigns that hit rock bottom as was evidenced by the garbage that they spewed over the airwaves. That they had no plan as to where they would take Anguilla in the next five years tells me that they have no plan. Folks, that ploy worked last time, but you have to look at what the alternative was. This time, we’re starting from scratch and it is up to us to rebuild a new Anguilla now, not sometime in the future. We have waited for far too long and the time to do this is now.
This election, which I like to call a bellwether election, is a do or die one for us. We can’t afford to let the same ne’er-do-well politicians, who have run this country for the last twenty or thirty years, continue on the same path. We consistently hear people pontificating on the radio over what would have happened if this administration hadn’t come into power. Well I don’t hear them talking about the things that were done that didn’t turn out so well. I am not going to get into pointing the finger at anyone, but facts are facts and I think it’s disingenuous to cherry pick the things that one wants to talk about and leave the other things out.
The time has come for each and everyone of us to reflect on what our responsibilities are as citizens of our great country. What we do with our vote is our business, and our business alone, but before we cast those votes, let us think about country for once and not about self. Let us ask the question, am I really using my vote to move Anguilla forward, or am I using my vote because I don’t like candidate x? Well that’s your prerogative, but stop and think for a moment – what we do now will affect us for the next five years and perhaps beyond that. We can’t afford to have someone get reelected because he needs another term so that he can qualify for a pension. If that is the only reason to get reelected then that person or persons should have gone into another more honorable profession. It is amazing when you hear all this nonsense.
When are we going to accept President Kennedy’s challenge and “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?” Anguillians, what are we doing for our country? We know what we’re doing for ourselves. We see what has happened and continues to happen. We see that our local merchants are fast becoming a thing of the past. We see who are prospering. We see our local establishments with nary a customer and, just across the way, businesses owned by foreign entities doing very well, thank you.
How did this all come about? Did our people have anything to do with this? In Hollywood, during an ugly period in America’s history, many writers were blacklisted because they were accused of being communists, a bad word during the fifties. Lots of lives were ruined. Very successful writers had to write under assumed names because that was the only way they could support their families. Here’s how it worked: someone would write a script, usually the blacklisted writer, and another lesser known writer would take credit for it, a front man, or front, for a fee of course. I say that to say this. When we cast blame for what is happening, we ought to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we’re the ones who allowed this to happen.
Is it fair then to see our local merchants being phased out of business because they can’t compete with the juggernaut that is the Chinese government? It is well documented that the Chinese Government subsidizes its citizens abroad. Is it fair then that our local businesses have to compete in our country against that unfair advantage? Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. When we go out and front for someone else, for a few lousy bucks, is that helping country, or self? Thirty pieces of silver, was it worth it?
Folks, Anguilla is crying, for those whom she expected to look after her have basically turned their backs, and are more interested in what she can do for them. Anguilla – our land of liberty, the land for which we fought, when no one else stood with us, when everyone else wanted to teach this upstart a lesson, the land that basically said, bring it on, the land which said in the words of the late Atlin Harrigan, we’d rather die than live under the yoke of one Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw – will never surrender to anyone. What has happened to us? We are becoming guests in our own homeland despite the fact that we are still property owners. We are fast becoming less influential in our own homeland. Who is to blame for this turn of events? The political backbenchers who haven’t a clue what the devil they’re doing, or our British protectors? I’ve got news for us – we’re all are complicit for we’ve sat back and did nothing.
So as we come to the dawn of another election, will we do the right thing, or will we let the festering sore that is divisiveness break open and expose the open wound that will not and cannot heal? I believe that by this time, everyone has made up his or her mind for whom he or she is going to vote. If I were travelling on a ship, I would like to know that I have a captain and a competent crew who will respond to any emergency that may arise and do so with the confidence and knowhow commensurate with the job. So then, what are we going to do? Are we going to vote out of spite, or are we going to be true to our own convictions and vote for the most qualified person to take us forward?
Last week, in Island Harbour, I was present to see history in the making. Here we are forty-eight years later, and it took a group of private citizens to finally recognize the eighteen brave souls that travelled to St. Kitts on that fateful night (9th June), their bravery which finally changed the trajectory of our revolution. What it did, was made the Colonel concentrate on the defense of his country, and thereby having to reallocate his massive arsenal to protect the home front. Like I said, it took this long to recognize these folks and though most of them have left us, it gives their families great pride in seeing and knowing that they’ve been finally given the recognition which they so earnestly deserved. It also sets in motion a long and overdue coming together of a community to show that when we all work together we can achieve great things.
Yes, my unworthy and ungrateful children, I have done my best to provide for you all. I have fought valiantly dating back to the early 1600s when an indifferent mother sent me to live with relatives who treated me like a distant relative, less than human. I have survived hard times the likes of which no other relative has seen. I’ve survived drought, disease and even the four horsemen of the apocalypse. After my first set of relatives disparaged me, they said I was fit for nothing but goats, that I housed lawless renegades. I was then sent to live with a tyrant of a big brother who threatened to put bones in my rice and pepper in my soup – can you imagine that? Who says things like that to family? It was not until I rebelled that I was finally liberated by another gentler and kinder big brother.
Now, like the Israelites, we’ve been given this other Eden and what have we done with it? We’ve turned on each other. We set brother against brother, sister against sister, sister-in-law against brother-in-law and so on. While we fight each other outsiders, with the help of our opportunistic brothers and sisters, are slowly getting a foothold in our native land. Is that what we fought for in 1967? Ironically, we seem to forget what ’67 was all about. James Baldwin, the American Laureate, said: “Know from whence you came, and if you know from whence you came, the possibilities for going forward are endless.” Sadly, a lot of us seem to forget from whence we came. February 7th was the day that we declared our independence. A brief and ever so powerful statement was read by my own father, the late Walter Hodge. It said, and I quote: “We stand before the Queen in the greatest of humility, with the desire in our hearts to be faithful subjects to her.” The late Donald E. Westlake recounts, in his book Under an English Heaven, that my father went on to recount the wrongs done to Anguilla by St. Kitts and ended on a high note of nobility, poetry and confusion. My father concluded: “We pledge our lives and hearts to create a true democratic government, however small. If, for financial want, we must suffer, then let us suffer in silence.” It appears that we took my father’s words literally for, in Dr. Martin Luther King’s eloquent words: “We remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” How much longer will we stay silent?
We thought the battle was won, but not so, for we would come face to face with a foe unlike any that we’d ever encountered. We’d faced drought, disease, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but this time the enemy would be one that we’d not seen before. We have met the enemy and it is us. We have come up against our own and, sadly, they’re worse than all of our earlier encountered foes. We have turned from a loving and caring people to one that is self-centered and uncaring. We have turned from an Anguilla that used to look out for each other, to one who’d just as soon push you off a cliff and not think about it.
We have a chance, with this upcoming election, to set this country on the right course, but it will have to have all hands on deck. Remember, D.O. Cuttridge, in his fairy tales, admonished the captain to: “examine the horns, there’s a traitor on board.” We have come a long way and as we sit or stand on the sidelines, and watch those hard fought for gains slowly disappear, one is forced to ask the question: “Does Anyone Really Care?”
I read Ms. Kay Ferguson’s column in The Anguillian, and I must commend her as someone who is a guest on our shores, who sees what is happening and knows that it is wrong. I was at that function that she refers to, and while she won’t call him out, I will. It was none other than our esteemed Parliamentary Secretary and the person to whom he made a most derogatory statement was Pam Webster, the independent candidate from District one.
We have benefitted immensely from the Civil Rights Movement in the USA, and it behooves me that we have taken a non-active part in fighting for our rights here. We have taken for granted what others have died for – the right to vote. We have a chance to assert our constitutional right this next election day, and as I’ve said many times, don’t let anyone dissuade you from voting your conscience. You vote for the person whom you feel is best equipped to take not just your District, but all of Anguilla forward.
Make my father,Walter Hodge, Atlin, Cardie, John Webster, Bevan Hodge, Ronald Webster, and all the brave souls who put country above self to get us to this place, proud. So despite the roadblocks erected in our way, we will prevail with our memorial ocean walk, where we can properly celebrate all of the heroes.
I want to thank Kenneth Harrigan, the former representative for District One for his hard work and dedication to starting the Ocean Front walk to honor our heroes, not just the ones from Island Harbour, but all of them. Again, I want to thank Pam Webster, and all the others, who took the initiative to start the ocean walk and commemorate the brave 18 who took the fight to Robert Bradshaw. As Moonbeam says: “The Revolution Ain’t Done,” and let us not ever forget it. So until next time, may God continue to bless us all and may God bless Anguilla.
