The Host and Co-host of the Parliamentary Opposition ‘Just the Facts’ radio programme have opined that Elected Representatives are not like ordinary persons on the street.
The Honourable Opposition Leader in the House of Assembly, Mrs. Cora Richardson-Hodge, said during the weekly radio programme on Monday 5th June, 2023, that Elected Representatives should not act like ordinary citizens on the street, but behave in a way that is expected of them.
Mrs. Richardson-Hodge, who is the host of the radio programme, was responding at the time to a statement made by her Co-host, the Honourable Representative for West End, Mr. Cardigan Connor, as they both discussed a recent issue involving a Minister in the ruling Anguilla Progressive Movement (APM) Government.
On May 23rd the Honourable Minister of Innovation, Sustainability and the Environment, Mrs. Quincia Gumbs-Marie, was involved in an altercation with a citizen at a popular restaurant in South Hill. During the altercation the Minister was recorded on video making threats mingled with words of profanity.
Mr. Connor, an avid sports enthusiast, had drawn an analogy between an elected representative’s role and that of a professional sportsman.
“I like to compare sports to life,” he said, “because there is some parallel. If a professional sportsman has a contract for five years and is paid 200 million dollars, it comes with conditions: your performance and your behaviour. Most of us who play sports for fun can go out there and behave in any manner. We can have a laugh or whatever. But it is different when people are paying your wages. They expect you to behave at a certain standard, while they expect you to perform. If you don’t perform, there is a boss that says: ‘sorry we need to move on and get someone else to fill your place’.”
“The public in Anguilla is our employer,” he said. “That is why we are called civil (public) servants. And it is not that we ‘bow and scrape’ to our people. We are human like everyone else, but we are expected to behave in a certain way. And if we don’t behave in the way that is expected of us, just like the pro-athlete, we could lose our job.”
In response, Mrs. Richardson-Hodge said: “You are absolutely right. One of the things that I said at the Anguilla Day Parade ceremony on the Park is that we, as elected representatives, are simply care-takers. We are simply persons who are here for this point in time and our job is to make Anguilla better. That has to be our goal.”
“We did not put ourselves in our positions. Each one of us who are elected would have gone out to the public and asked them to give us a chance to represent them. We would have told them that we consider ourselves as the right people for the job,” she said. “So when we take on these positions, we have to understand that we are not like the ordinary person on the street…”
