On 30th June, Minister Dee-Ann Kentish-Rogers resigned her position in Executive Council (ExCo) and crossed over to the other side of the Assembly. Then, on 4th July, she re-joined ExCo. She subsequently explained in the House of Assembly that she had a serious meeting with the Premier who agreed to meet all her conditions for returning to her ministerial post. The Premier having now met her concerns, she said, she was convinced that ExCo was where she could serve her people best. This apparent flip-flop caused great consternation among the chattering classes.
The incident also spurred a weird malapropism that has filled the radio waves in recent weeks. Her critics accuse her of failing to be convicted. They want to say that, if she is convinced about something, she should act on her convictions. Instead, they say she is not sufficiently convicted. Commentator after commentator repeated the strange expression that she has failed to be convicted. She was not convicted of anything. When you are convicted, you go to jail. You are convinced about something, and then you act on your convictions. You aren’t convicted of it.
Let us look at how events developed. At a public meeting in Rey Hill on 29th June, surreptitiously broadcast nation-wide on radio without her permission, Minister Kentish-Rogers was implored by family and friends to immediately resign from ExCo. The following day, on 30th June, she resigned from the governing party and from government. Later that day she explained in the Assembly, where she spoke from the opposition benches, that the prevailing message from her constituents was that they viewed her not resigning earlier as a betrayal. She resigned, she said, because she was displeased with the manner in which the Premier handled the imposition of the tax.
Though she had just resigned her ministry, she nevertheless voted in favour of the GST Amendment Bill then before the Assembly. Her explanation for her vote from the Opposition benches in favour of the government’s Bill was clearheaded. No one paid attention to her explanation that the proposed amendments were designed to lighten the GST burden on the people of Anguilla. So, she approved of the Amendment Bill. When you think about it, it is inconceivable that the opposition could have voted against the Amendment Bill. If they genuinely had any concern for the interests of the people, they would have voted in favour of lightening the load.
Her vote in favour of the GST Amendment Bill caused great consternation throughout the island. Radio talk show hosts and commentators took the irrational view that her leaving government over the imposition of GST, and her subsequent vote in favour of the Amendment Bill, were inconsistent. She was repeatedly accused of going against the wishes of her constituents that she should permanently resign.
Then, on 4th July she appeared in the Assembly, this time seated back on the government benches. That same day, she released an audio-visual message explaining that she left ExCo because the path that was taken to implement the GST was not sensitive enough to the concerns of the public. She had now decided to re-join the government based on the Premier’s promise to her to be more inclusive and her desire to ensure the people’s voice was given primacy in the decision-making process and that other means of economic development were pursued and explored.
Judging by their public statements, neither Minister Hodge nor Minister Kentish-Rogers resigned from government because of GST per se. They both explained they resigned because they did not approve of the way the Premier handled the introduction of GST, not because of the principle of introducing GST. Even some of the radio commentators declare to this day they are not opposed to GST. They merely say this is not the right time to impose any new tax.
The public uproar in my view was a self-inflicted wound. Government simply did not make enough of an effort to explain to the people why they were obliged to implement the GST they had been elected to get rid of. It was the lack of any public relations effort to soften the blow that is to blame for the current disaffection in the community. There is a long list of exemptions and zero-rated items in the supermarkets that they could have publicised. Personally, I have no idea what the list is. I have never seen such a list. Government has taken no step to explain or publicise it.
Maybe the increased list of exemptions was posted on Facebook. I don’t do Facebook. I am exposed to news items on the radio, articles in the newspaper, posters in the Post Office, leaflets in my post office box, WhatsApp voice notes and texts, public meetings broadcast on radio, lectures at the Teachers’ Resource Centre, podcasts, and webinars. Not one of these media was used to publicise the exemptions. Yes, it is exhausting, but that is what the government’s public relations department is for.
One or two of those media alone would not do the job. For such a controversial topic as imposing a 13% goods and services tax against wide-spread opposition, every method of communication called out to be used. The rule should have been, say what you are going to tell them, then say it, then say what you have just told them – repeatedly, on one medium after the other.
They could have repeatedly hammered home to the public that if they did not implement the GST Act passed by the Assembly several months earlier, the previously agreed Caribbean Development Bank loan (which was conditional on us implementing GST), and which we desperately needed, would have been cancelled. Continued British government financing (which had been negotiated and agreed in principle by the previous administration) of our recurrent and capital expenses would have come to an end. Government would have collapsed. They could have explained and detailed the efforts they were making to cut the cost of our top-heavy administration. They could have explained in detail and repeated what the consequences of their abandoning the agreement over GST would be. They did nothing of the sort but kept silent.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I hold no brief for GST. I have not studied the Act. I have not even read it. I am not in favour of it. Nor am I opposed to it. I am now retired and have stopped earning fees as a lawyer. I have no need to familiarise myself with the intricacies of taxation. I think, as previously explained in earlier articles, that the tax is a waste of time and effort and will do little to boost government’s revenue.
It is everyone’s duty to take every legal action to minimise your own tax burden. You are not obliged to provide the Comptroller of Inland Revenue with a bigger shovel to dig deeper into your little savings pile or your earnings. There are many ways to minimise or avoid the tax.
Now that inflation is a growing problem, we must all do our bit to reduce our expenditure. I no longer buy good quality wines. They are too expensive. I buy rum instead and dilute it with lemonade made with my home-grown sour oranges. I have put my dogs on a diet. Instead of a full scoop of kibble, they must make do with half a scoop. I patronise small businesses that do not impose GST. If I am asked if I want a receipt for anything purchased with cash, I smile and decline. What the shopkeepers do about recording those sales is their business, not mine. Those little bits of paper clutter up my environment anyway.
I wish Ms Kentish-Rogers only the best in her Ministry of Education. I know she has sacrificed everything for the good of her community. Not many persons know that she has given up her government-supplied vehicle for use by the refuge for abused women and girls. She is the only Minister I know of to be using her own transport. She has incurred the wrath of her immediate family in her effort to complete her programme for education. So much for the charge that she has no care for the welfare of her people and is motivated by a selfish need to preserve her salary income.
I know that she is driven to distraction by the crisis in our education plant. The new High School was supposed to be handed over to government by the contractor in May. I hear it is still incomplete. All work on it has stopped. She is speaking about appealing to the public for volunteers to try to get it ready for the coming school term in September. No doubt, if only she can get the school opened, she will be satisfied and can rest for a while. But she is not going to abandon her teachers and their students now, no matter how much pressure her family and friends put on her to join Kyle in solitary splendour on the opposition bench.
The Premier does not need advice from me. But my free advice to him is to remember to keep his promise to her, whatever it was.
