Sad day

Turks & Caicos Constitution Suspended. Shaun Malcolm said it eloquently this morning:

Not one person, not one person who contacted me or with whom I spoke, was sad because of the decision in London. The Country was in a state of Joy. The only additional sentiment they expressed was now an anxiousness to move forward as quickly as possible.

The Governor's statement was decisive.

With immediate effect, Ministerial government and the House of Assembly are suspended meaning that Cabinet will no longer exist and the House of Assembly is dissolved and Members’ seats are vacated. The constitutional right to trial by jury is also suspended with immediate effect. In accordance with the Order in Council, this will be for a period of two years, subject to extension or abbreviation as necessary.

All the perverse efforts of Galmo Williams and Michael Misick to agitate the Turks and Caicos people to rise up in street protests and confront the British and to stop the suspension of the Constitution have failed. Their day of reckoning is approaching.

Suspect West Indian leaders such as Ewart Brown of Bermuda have thrown their hands in support of Misick. It is brotherly of Brown to have found the time to show this solidarity. I would have thought he was too busy defending his own corruption accusations. In the event, he wasted his time.

The Jamaican media has been up to the same mischief. They have been siding with the interests of such prominent Jamaicans as Butch Stewart, Delroy Howell, and David Smith. These have been shown to be intimately involved with Misick in numerous private and suspect financial dealings.

The touting of the issue of colonialism across our region is an exercise in cynicism. It amounts to an abuse of the people of the Turks and Caicos Islands one last time. The great majority of the Islanders have rejected the call to rise up. They realise that Williams and Misick’s sudden clamouring for independence is a desperate device to evade responsibility for what they have done.

The Constitution has been suspended, the House of Assembly dissolved, and Cabinet has been sent home. I say good riddance to bad rubbish.

It is a sad day for us in the West Indies when we look on and see the British Government suspending the Constitution of one of our fellow Overseas Territories. Are we the laughing stock of the rest of the world? Are they pointing their fingers at us and shaking their heads with dismay? Do they think that we are too immature and undisciplined to be able to govern ourselves? Well, they are wrong.

The people of the TCI have been severely let down. First, by their elected leaders, who used their high public office to line their own pockets. Second, by their local bureaucrats, who did nothing to reign in the wilder schemes of personal enrichment of their leaders. Third, by the opposition parliamentarians, who wished only that it could have been them feathering their own nests. Fourth, by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which ignored all the hints and pointers to the corruption that has been endemic in the TCI for decades. For the past 30 years we have all known that the TCI is the most corrupt of the British Overseas Territories. During all that time, the FCO denied that there was any sufficient evidence for it even to mount an investigation into official corruption.

The people of the TCI have been through this crisis before. The British suspended the government between 1984 and 1986 and sent the government home. Chief Minister Norman Saunders did not go home. He was in a gaol in Miami serving a sentence for attempting to smuggle a large package of cocaine through customs. The resulting rest period did not do the TC Islanders much good. Within ten years, they had once again elected a greedy bunch of politicians, including the now free Saunders, interested only in stuffing their mouths at the public trough.

The lesson is that merely suspending the local government and running the country directly from Westminster does not amount to reform. It is at most a step in the right direction. We learned that in 1984. What this suspension does is to provide the opportunity for the British to introduce the reforms that the local administration failed to put in place.

The present shut down of constitutional and democratic government, and the temporary imposition of higher supervision, will only have been worthwhile if the people of the TCI ensure it never happens again. We all know how that is to be done.

The question is, will the British help the TC Islanders to make it happen by putting the necessary safeguards into the law and the Constitution this time?

Or, will they be as thoughtless and as careless as they were the last time?

Related Posts:

28 December 2006: Corruption

9 August 2007: Public Accounts

9 February 2008: Self-government

24 May 2008: Open Mic

24 July 2008: Barbados

20 August 2008: Grenada