Anguillians share a unique version of the crabs in a barrel syndrome. They raise up their leaders only to drag them down.
Dr Ellis Lorenzo Webster is Anguilla’s current Premier. He won his seat in 2020 at his second attempt in national politics. One of Dr Webster’s characteristics is his humility. The man appears to have no vanity about him. He seems strangely lacking in any feelings of inadequacy. He has no chip on his shoulder. He does not need to prove his superiority, like some of his ethically and morally challenged opponents feel compelled to do every day. When he greets you, his smile is genuine. He puts his hands together, and gently bows no matter how apparently lowly the status of the person. He greets everyone the same way, high or low. Unlike his denigrators, he suffers from no inferiority complex.
Dr Webster was an island scholar, winning a government scholarship to study dentistry in the States. Later, he attended Yale University in the US, where he obtained a Master’s degree, graduating in 1991 as a medical doctor. While maintaining a busy and successful practice, he provided ear, nose and throat care for indigent patients in Florida where he had settled down. In the States he was well known for participating in mentoring programs for elementary and high school students. He led the society for minority physicians in Palm Beach County. He chaired surgical sections at different hospitals. He became involved in local, state, and national political campaigns in the USA. It was hardly surprising that after some 20 years away his eyes turned to the political situation in his home island of Anguilla.
Before Dr Webster returned to Anguilla to take up the mantle of leadership, the island was run by a series of political groups entirely lacking in integrity. Nepotism, cronyism, conflicts of interest, all ran rife decade after decade. The voters shuffled from party to party, desperately hoping for an improvement every five years. It never came.
Seven years ago, Dr Webster was unsuccessful in his political campaign to represent his village constituency of Island Harbour. But he had proven his integrity and committment. When he ran again two years ago, he was returned to the House of Assembly by a landslide. Since then, as leader of the political party with the most seats in the Assembly, he has taken up the mantle of Premier of the Island.
These past two years have seen him exhaust all of his political capital. He is now daily criticized on the private radio stations by loud mouths who are all his intellectual and moral inferiors. It is painful to listen. I won’t repeat any of the egregious and undeserved insults that are showered on him on a daily basis. I only note that he has not once deigned to respond in kind. Amazingly, he continues to be the same gentle, courteous, almost diffident, person. One never hears an unkind or insulting word from him.
Members of the political opposition are mainly silent. It is not the opposition party that does most of the attacking on his character, integrity, and intelligence. The most virulent attacks come from disappointed, previous members of his party. They each claim to have been turned down on some interest or the other of theirs that they unsuccessfully promoted. Hurt an Anguillian in his financial interests, and you have an enemy for life.
The political opposition do not have to be loud in their condemnation. They are politically astute enough to know they need only keep quiet and let the governing party tear themselves apart. Previous members of the party will do their work for them. Their strategy is in three years’ time to swoop in and snatch up the prize of political power. Their hope is that if they are successful, Dr Webster will then retreat to his medical practice in Palm Beach, leaving Anguilla to the scavengers.
