December 8 2015
Dear Editor:
Last week, for the third time in four straight issues of The Anguillian, Tyrone Hodge has used his weekly column to vehemently attack Victor Banks and the AUF Government, first blaming them for doing nothing the past seven months – and then accusing Chief Minister Banks of rushing bills through the Assembly with “unbelievable arrogance”. His whole article, as before, is laced with vitriol and ill-founded or distorted accusations.
The ECCB and Victor Banks have come up with the idea that the failed loans of CCB and NBA should be transferred to a company – set up for the purpose of dealing with these underwater loans – leaving the two banks to proceed in a fresh way. Thus, whereas local bank officials have been reluctant to foreclose on properties of their friends and relatives, the new bank will be proceeding in a commercially necessary way on those delinquent loans, and the net proceeds will go back to the two banks. Some borrowers, who up until now had avoided financial repercussions for their failures to pay, may oppose this arrangement but, for the rest of us, the banks, and the economy, it will be beneficial. Mr. Hodge opposes this solution for reasons only he knows.
The headline for Mr. Hodge article last week was “Democracy At Gunpoint” and attributes the presence of police, at the demonstration of a group which met at the Governor’s House, as representing “guns, attack dogs and tear gas” all attributable apparently to Victor Banks and the AUF. First of all, Hodge fails to understand that the police are under the direct control of the Governor – not the Anguilla Government. Further, it is clear that the police never used dogs or tear gas, or even removed their guns from the holsters but, by just being there, they fostered calm among the crowd of demonstrators, all to the good. So much for the “Gunpoint” headline.
Mr. Hodge also went back 400 years in his article to quote Oliver Cromwell as saying that Parliament in England should be dissolved, and equated that with what should happen with the present government here in Anguilla. Members of the Parliament back then were serving beyond the expiration of their terms in office, whereas the government here, composed of six members of the Assembly, was fairly elected last April to serve for five years. Does he really think that that historic event 400 years ago is applicable to what we have today in Anguilla – sufficient to oust the government after seven months? He also claimed that what is happening here over the past few months ”pales by comparison to Statehood and Robert Bradshaw”. In his zealous attacks, Mr. Hodge has dredged up historic events which are totally misplaced.
Tyrone Hodge’s animosity toward Victor Banks and the AUF is clear and unprecedented. He may get his jollies from what he has said, but what he has repeatedly presented in these three articles, on the democracy we have on the island, does not at all advance civil debate on the issues we face. He should use the privilege of having a weekly column to advance decent dialogue and not impede it.
The Concerned Citizen
