Transparency

There is an interesting editorial on TCI Journal about our right to information.  It is so applicable to us that I invite you to read it, changing the names Turks and Caicos to Anguilla and Mark Capes to Stanley Reid wherever they occur.  This is what they wrote:

        One of the most remarkable and awe-inspiring things we have come to note here at the Journal is the depth of passion present and the significant size of the normally quiet population that yearns to make the Turks and Caicos a better place. 

        As more and more of our citizens and residents engage in thinking through the various issues confronting our society, we are certain that the inevitable triumph of sanity over insanity is assured. 

        However, the civil service and the interim administration must engage the public in a better way if we are to quicken the pace of positive progress. 

        At the moment, seeking information from statutory bodies or government agencies is a hit and miss proposition.  “Trust Us” is often the refrain from entrenched management.  Getting information beyond shallow press releases is most difficult.  MONTHS pass sometimes and tremendous physical and emotional energy must be consistently expended in order to access information that should be readily and easily available.  When facts are so hard to access, is it any wonder that rumours and propaganda have such free reign in the TCI? 

        A freedom of information policy is a must and should be mandated by the interim government and not left to individual managers, board members, ministries or statutory bodies.

        This task we put at the feet of Mark Capes, the current CEO of the TCI.  In a positive spirit of co-operation, we challenge him to work with the public and shepherd through the bureaucracy a first iteration of a freedom of information policy that has real meaning and not one that is simply aspirational. 

        It would be tragic if the interim government should happen to underestimate the value of having an informed public that possess facts and that can readily put to bed the rumours and propaganda spread by those that constantly seek to destabilize daily life in the TCI. 

       Reassigning one person in each ministry and each statutory body to provide the public with requested information would be an invaluable aspect and a key step in the restructuring and the “re-sizing” of the civil service, and would be nothing less than a life-saving breath of fresh ocean air for civil society here in the TCI. 

       An abstract right to information is totally meaningless if not exercisable.

Respectfully,

Editors@TCIJournal.com

Montserrat 13

There are some other obvious gaps and deficiencies in the new draft Constitution proposed for Montserrat.  It is to be regretted that no thought has been given in this draft Constitution to providing for a Freedom of Information Act. Without such a law, no one in Montserrat would have the right to obtain information that should be available to the public.  Secret government, which is an enabler of corruption and bad government, is in this way encouraged.

It is to be regretted that an opportunity was not taken to entrench the Tenders Board in the Constitution.  The greater part of the budget is spent on developing infrastructure, repairs and maintenance. Procurement of goods and services offers attractive opportunities for those who would corrupt the process and illegally enrich themselves.  The Tenders Board ought to have the independence and security of tenure of its members protected by the Constitution and by appropriate laws and regulations, backed up by appropriate training for members of the Board.

Amendment of the Constitution.  Section 114 of the draft provides that only the Premier, in very limited circumstances, may request an amendment of the Constitution.  The FCO reserves unlimited right itself to amend the Constitution without any reference to the people or government of Montserrat.  This is clearly highly undesirable.  The Cayman Islands recently completed their constitutional negotiations and accepted a new Constitution.  In the case of the Cayman Islands, the FCO accepted that it would never again amend their Constitution without first putting it to a referendum of the people.  No person can suggest that there is a good reason why some lower standard of democracy should be enjoyed by Montserratians.

A Constitution is the supreme law of any people, subject, in the case of a British Overseas Territory, to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.  A Constitution that is imposed on a people by a foreign power lacks validity and respect. 

In my view, it is the duty of every patriotic Montserratian to insist in the strongest possible terms for a right to comment on and criticise any terms in this draft Constitution that appear unacceptable to them. 

Montserratians have a right to demand that the draft Constitution be put to them for their approval either by a referendum or by some other mechanism calculated to demonstrate their real approval and acceptance of the new Constitution.  Only after this has been done would it be proper for the Governor to pass the draft to the Privy Council for enactment by an Order in Council. 

The British Government has frequently promised that it expects no less than evidence that the people of an Overseas Territory have expressed their support for any amendment to a Constitution. 

There is no reason why Montserrat should be given a second-class Constitution.

Fresh Air

Publicising the work of the Executive Council:  The historical lack of transparency in the government of Anguilla is not so much a constitutional flaw, but a public relations disaster.  There is no organized and systematic disclosure to the public by any government press officer of the work of government, particularly of the Executive Council.   

        Sporadically, the Governor discloses some development that is of interest to him.  Very occasionally, the Chief Minister drops a hint or remark about the workings of government.  All the rest of the workings of the government of Anguilla is left to the rumour mill.  Only when there is a crisis or an emergency in government is any effort made to give out information.  That information is usually biased in the direction desired by the person delivering it.

We will all remember the recent history of government press conferences.  Chief Minister Hubert Hughes started them during his administration in about the year 1988.  None had existed previously.  They came to an end with the advent of Chief Minister Osborne Fleming’s administration in the year 1990.  No doubt Mr Fleming felt that such press conferences had become discredited because of the abrasive and destructive way in which they had been conducted. 

Mr Fleming resumed holding Chief Minister’s press conferences in about the year 2007.  It did not take long, however, for Mr Fleming’s press conferences to descend into pure politicking.  The weekly Chief Minister’s press conferences provided some public entertainment until the end of the administration in early 2010.  While they were not as abusive and destructive as they had been under the previous administration, they were widely recognized as being purely political.  No useful information on the workings of government or the decisions of Executive Council was ever released at these press conferences.  Now that he has taken over the administration, Chief Minister Hubert Hughes has resumed giving his weekly press conference in his own inimitable style.

These press conferences are not what are needed in Anguilla.  Besides providing entertainment, they serve a political purpose.  But the people are entitled to be informed about the workings of their government.  We need to have a regular weekly release of information on the major decisions of the Executive Council and on the steps the administration is taking to implement government policy.  It is high time for us to begin insisting that Ministers must expose the workings of their Ministries and Departments to the people. 

Frequently, Ministers go for years without reporting to the House of Assembly on the workings of their Ministries and Departments.  If no member of the Legislature complains, who can blame the Minister for keeping quiet about what he and his Ministries are doing? 

All of us in Anguilla remember the low opinion we held of what was then perceived as a secretive, remote and probably abusive police force up until 2007.  That was the year that Police Commissioner Keithley Benjamin introduced the weekly police press conference.  The result of this opening up to the press and public has been nothing less than an astounding turn-around in the public’s attitude to the regular requests of the police for cooperation from the public.  It is incomprehensible to me that this refreshing transparency has not been transferred to the work of the Executive Council. 

We should insist that the Executive Council meetings are opened up to the public whenever possible.  Is it only the “white” Overseas Territories of the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar that have the self-confidence to hold a press-conference immediately after every cabinet meeting to inform the public and publicise what decisions have been made in the public interest?

To summarise then, the solution to the perceived lack of integrity, accountability and transparency in our small-island territories of the West Indies is largely due to deficiencies in our Westminster Model Constitutions.  These Constitutions typically provide for the forms of government, but do nothing to establish mechanisms that ensure checks and balances on abuse of power.  The solution is to insert into our Constitutions, whenever we get the chance, the proven mechanisms that have been developed in other parts of the world that will ensure that best practices are followed.

Related Posts:

Policing

Secrecy

Annoyed

Executive Council

Hush-hush

Other committees and commissions:  The 1982 Constitution of Anguilla contains provisions that offend against transparency.  In particular it provides for the arbitrary and one-man execution of some of the processes that in a democratic country should be handled by independent local institutions. 

Let us take the absence of a Mercy Committee as an example.  At present section 76 gives the Secretary of State acting through the Governor the sole power to grant a pardon, either free or subject to conditions, to a convicted person.  Anguilla is not unique in this respect.  In most of our territories, the Governor has the Constitutional power to function without any local Mercy Committee to advise him on what to do.  Whenever the prerogative of mercy is exercised in the fashion prescribed by the Constitution, legitimate doubts will arise as to its propriety.  The question will be asked, what does a foreign politician or diplomat know about who in our prisons should have his sentence shortened or commuted?  The suspicion will be that he has relied on the advice of some unknown advisers lurking in the darkness around him.  The result is that no sensible Governor is likely ever take the risk of exercising the power, even in the clearest of situations.  It is either that or be prepared to face personal doubts and attacks over his motives if he ever does exercise it.  This is a most unsatisfactory state of affairs. 

The absence of a Boundaries Commission to ensure transparency in the placing of electoral boundaries to the various political constituencies is another vexed issue.  In some of our islands there has been no Boundaries Commission appointed for centuries.  As demographics have shifted, some of our electoral districts have become a small fraction of the size of others.  Good government demands that our people have more or less equal representation in the House. 

Related posts:

Mercy Committee

Electoral Boundaries

FOI

Freedom of Information Acts:  Over the past several posts we have been considering the ways that our governments can demonstrate transparency.  An essential tool in this endeavour is the Freedom of Information Act. 

Among the smaller territories of the West Indies, Cayman Islands alone have put in place a law that enables any citizen to demand copies of almost any government document that would previously have remained secret.  Every citizen is entitled to know what documents relating to him and his affairs government is collecting and filing. 

There is no surer mechanism for guaranteeing transparency than a Freedom of Information Act and the various regulations that make it work.  It is long overdue in Anguilla.  Here, it is nearly impossible to obtain any information on the programmes or activities of any department of Anguilla.  Most government activity in Anguilla is a state secret. 

It is long overdue that we bring that abortion of a system of government to an end.

Related Posts:

No Authorisation

FOI

Airport News

FOI Act

Guest Editorial 5     

Wikileaks

A correspondent has sent me the following interesting story on Wikileaks, Julian Assange, IMMI and The TCI Journal:

A real free press for the first time in history

July 12th, 2010 Posted by Joel Gunter

Julian Assange, editor of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, has criticised mainstream media for not making proper use of “primary resources” and claimed that the site has created “a real free press (…) for the first time in history”.

Speaking at the Centre for Investigative Journalism Summer School at City University London on Friday, Assange accused the media of failing to consult important evidence in its reporting of a 2007 US Air Force strike that killed two Reuters news service employees and several Iraqi civilians

Julian Assange

The attack became infamous after a video of the event was leaked through Wikileaks, entitled Collateral Murder. The footage was recorded by one of two Apache helicopters involved in the attack.

Showing an alleged copy of the US Military’s 2007 rules of engagement hosted on Wikileaks, Assange said: “We had the raw ingredients you needed to decide right there. Why didn’t they use them?

“No one can be bothered to look up the term ‘positive identification’ to see what it actually is.”

Assange argues that it is clear from the document that the Apache pilot broke the rules of engagement. He said journalism needed to work towards making more primary source material such as this available online, arguing that this was the standard process for scientific investigations and that it should be the same for journalism.

You can’t publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results, that should be the standard in journalism.

You can’t do it in newspapers because there isn’t enough space, but now with the internet there is.

Last week, Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking the video along with tens of thousands of classified State Department cables, was charged by the U.S. Army with mishandling and transferring classified information. Assange will not attempt to enter the US for fear he might be subject to a subpoena.

Citing another of the site’s leaks, concerning Carribean tax haven the Turks and Caicos islands, Assange praised the anti-corruption reporting of online-only, local news outlet the Turks and Caicos Journal, which he said was hounded out of several countries after law firms threatened its internet service providers (ISPs).

Warning of a new “privatised censorship”, he said that the Journal’s Googlemail account had been subpoened under US law and that Google agreed to surrender details of the news outlet’s account, at which point Wikileaks stepped in to provide a defence attorney.

He heavily criticised the search engine company for its behaviour in the TCI Journal case, and challenged the actions of ISPs in India, Japan and the US for allegedly agreeing to cut the Journal’s internet access rather than risk incurring legal costs. According to Assange, Googlemail is a completely insecure way of storing information. He claimed that the Guardian had recently transferred all of its internal email over to the Google service.

Alongside the TCI Journal there was praise reserved for Time magazine for publishing an extensive investigation into the Church of Scientology and defending its investigation at a cost of millions dollars, but with potential costs so high, Assange asked, “what are the incentives for publishers?” Wikileaks were themselves threatened with legal action by the Church after publishing secret documents relating to its “Operating Thetan Level” practices. The whistleblowing site responded by saying “in response to the attempted suppression, Wikileaks will release several thousand additional pages of Scientology material next week.”

Asked about Wikileaks’ funding, he said the site has so far raised $1 million dollars in donations but revealed it had had an application for a $650,000 grant rejected by the 2009 Knight News Foundation, despite being “the highest-rated applicant out of 3,000″, and heavily implied it was a politically-motivated decision.

Earlier this year, Wikileaks put forward a proposal in conjunction with Icelandic MPs to create a safe-haven for publishers – and their servers – in the country. Last month the proposal, known as the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI), was passed by parliament and will change Icelandic law, aiming to increase the protection afforded journalists, sources and leakers.

Related posts:

IMMI 

Tragedies

Information

My first request under the British Freedom of Information Act:

To: Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Subject: Freedom of Information request - Borrowing guidelines for the Anguilla Government

Dear Foreign and Commonwealth Office,

I should be grateful to know if you are aware that the Anguilla government has been borrowing upwards of EC$10 million a month from the local Social Security Fund to pay public service salaries since February 2010. The Fund holds approximately EC$160 million, and stands to be depleted in less than one and a half years.

I should also be grateful to know if such borrowing has been approved as being within the borrowing guidelines.

Finally, I should be grateful to receive a copy of any letter from the FCO to the Anguilla government approving such borrowing.

Yours faithfully,

Don Mitchell CBE QC

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/borrowing_guidelines_for_the_ang

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

29 June 2010

Dear Mr Mitchell

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request. It has been assigned a unique reference number (above) and has been passed to the relevant section within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to deal with. They will be in touch with you should your request need clarification.

We received your request on 29 June 2010 and will aim to respond within 20 working days.

Yours sincerely

Katy Shaw

Information Rights Team

Information Management Group

Fevered?

Even if it is legal for the Social Security Board to lend to government why are they keeping quiet about it?  There may well be some arguable justification for the Social Security Board

having loaned contributors’ funds to government.  It could be said that if the loans had not been made government would not have been able to meet the end-of-month salaries to the thousands of public servants on the payroll.  The public service might have struck. Bank loans might have gone into default by the thousand The government might have collapsed as the island descended into chaos and panic spread through the island. However, neither the government not the Social Security Board have deigned up to this date to make a single announcement about the rumoured use of the Social Security Fund in making allegedly unsecured advances to government, far less giving any explanation.  The result is that the concerned citizen can only feverishly speculate.

Would the island have suffered long-term damage to the people, economy and image if it had been allowed, in effect, to declare bankruptcy while preserving the Social Security Fund for the benefit of the contributors?  Was the choice that faced government a simple black and white one of either using up the funds in keeping the public servants employed, or preserving the funds and laying off large numbers of public servants? 

Other questions spring to mind in this fevered circumstance of lack of solid information.  Is there a planned end to this lending?  Is there a top limit, a written-in-concrete line of credit, so to say?  What happens when the limit is reached and there are no further funds to borrow?  Is there a long-term plan to end and to repay this borrowing, or is it just a stop-gap measure until the money is used up or a plan can be hatched?  Is the loan a short-term bridging loan until the proceeds of the promised Caribbean Development Bank loan is received?  Not a word of clarification has been tossed in the public's direction by either the Board or the government.

Why is it all so hush-hush?  Why is this ongoing lending not a matter of full and frank public disclosure and discussion?  Why is the Minister of Finance not going on radio and giving us a measured reassurance?  Why is the argument in favour of the loans not written up and published in the newspapers and in the Official Gazette?  Why has the Social Security Board been silent in the face of all the speculation?  Is it for shame, or is there some other cause for secrecy?

In my view it is fundamentally wrong for the public service, in effect, to plunder the Social Security Fund while failing to have the courage to cut costs where costs need to be cut. 

The failure of the government to have its press officer publish, for use of the press, details of government’s decision to borrow from the Fund, immediately this decision was taken in the Executive Council, amounts to a fundamental breach of the government’s election promise of transparency. 

The failure of the Social Security Board to publish for public information its decision to advance monies from the Fund to government has created a lack of confidence in the new Board that will take a lot of unnecessary effort to cure. 

No justification for the concealment and lack of transparency put forward at this late date can make up for the loss of confidence that has occurred.

In desperation, I have gone to the British government’s Freedom of Information Act website.

Administration

Scotty asked a good question.  Am I so comfortable with the new administration in Anguilla that I have converted this blog into a constitutional tutorial?  That deserves an answer.  Well, here goes my attempt to be clear on what I am doing with this blog.

Yes, the new administration does deserve a short period to become familiar with the issues and to develop policy in relation to them without being sniped at by me from the sidelines.  The election campaign was quite passionate.  Temperatures became very high.  Things must be allowed to cool down.  The new government has not been in place for two full months.  There is no healthy purpose in digging at minor scratches and bumps when the body politic needs to heal.  I am sure I shall feel quite differently in a year or two.

Then, I am not aware of anything terribly wrong that the new Hubert Hughes administration is doing that needs to be highlighted.  I am not aware of any scandals or maladministration that need to be exposed to the light of day. 

If anything, my very minor complaint has to do with the lack of information coming out of the administration.  Hubert has not done what we have all been asking and introducing more transparency into the system.  He has allowed himself to go along with the traditional British system of secrecy in Anguilla’s administration.  What do I mean by this?

One, he should insist that the press be invited to Executive Council meetings.  Except for matters of national security, which will be dealt with in private, the public ought to be informed weekly by the mainstream press what matters have been discussed and what decisions have been reached by our cabinet.

Two, if the Governor does not permit this, he should go on national radio and TV every week and give a summary report to the public on what matters were discussed and what decisions were reached.  If the Governor tries to stop him, let him point out that in other British Overseas Territories this is a routine matter.  There is nothing wrong with it in principle or in practice.  On the contrary, it is very bad for his reputation and that of his government if he continues to let everything done by his administration remain shrouded in secrecy and subject to baseless rumour.

Three, the most important reform that we need in Anguilla, as a matter of urgency, is constitutional reform that will entrench measures designed to ensure transparency, accountability and integrity in government in the future.  We all know what these measures are, as I have dealt with them extensively before.  They range from the enlargement of the House of Assembly to improve debate and to enlarge the catchment area for appointing ministers, to the ombudsman, to the integrity commissioner, to the public service, teachers and police commissions, to the tenders board, to the freedom of information Act, and the many others.  These reforms all need to be embedded in the Constitution and given real teeth, not cosmetic ones.  Most of them cannot be achieved by common statute, far less by administrative reform.

In light of this last, I think it is worth harping on about weaknesses in the Constitution for the next year or two if necessary.

Of course, if there are any real errors in administration that need exposing please let me know about them so that I can write my views on them.

Blockade

Larry Franklin is highly to be commended.  Yesterday, the island was agog with excitement.  The press were at Blowing Point from early in the morning.  Live broadcasts revealed that the early-morning ferries taking passengers to Marigot had been turned back at the port and refused to land.  No one knew what the cause was, or how long it would last.  Mention was made of Anguilla having arrested a French fisherman for illegal fishing.  Was this an official retaliation by the French authorities?  When would it come to an end?  Was war between Anguilla and French St Martin imminent?  Did we have to wait for Britain to declare it on our behalf, or could we do it for ourselves?  We waited all day for news with baited breaths.

Then, at 10:21 pm the same day, Larry Franklin, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Infrastructure, which has responsibility for the ports, posted a press release on the Anguilla News website.  This revealed that there had been an unofficial blockade arranged by the French fishermen of Marigot.  These had been under the mistaken impression that they were free to fish in Anguilla’s waters without the necessary licence.  One had been arrested and charged, prompting the retaliation.  Anguilla’s government ministers and their staff had immediately ventured to St Martin to meet with their French counterparts.  The misunderstanding had been resolved before midday, and the ports re-opened.  Persons have begun posting copies of the press release on other websites and forums, no doubt to ensure it had the widest possible readership.

What is remarkable, is the prompt, clear, factual, and non-political wording of the press release from Mr Franklin.  It is a model for all civil servants and politicians to follow in the future.  You may read it by clicking on the link above.

I love it

I am sorry if this blog seems to have gone quiet.  I have not thought it through.  There could be two reasons.  One, there is absolutely nothing I am upset about right now.  Two, there are so many people now publishing controversial views on political and social issues that the original motivation for this blog has been subsumed.  I suppose there is a third.  I am completely written out, so that even if I was mad at some incident, like learning that Keithley has had the lack of good sense to apply for the vacant post of Magistrate, I would not have the words to write about it.  For the past couple of weeks, I have been kept busy revising law lectures, writing magazine articles, and researching and writing scripts for the upcoming TV programmes on “The Law and You” on channel 3 TV.  Six scripts written so far, all on elections law.  So, you may need to look elsewhere for up-to-date comments on wrong-doing in Anguilla until I can find more time.

Have you become friends yet with Anguillian Transparency?  If not I highly recommend it.  There is some good writing there. 

The most exciting forum right now is probably AXA Politics.  On that site you can always find passionate writing about Anguilla’s future, and the upcoming general elections. 

The public political meetings that are going on nearly every day in one part of the island or another, sometimes as many as three different ones each night, are the only live theatre in Anguilla.  Not everybody wants to be seen in public at one or the other of these political meetings.  Not to worry, they are all broadcast live on radio, with live streaming so that Anguillians in the USA or the UK can keep up-to-date.

The radio talk-shows are obligatory listening for those concerned about Anguilla.  They are all accessible over the internet.  The ones I know about are:

1. On Kool FM:  Yanchie Richardson’s The Mayor’s Show on Saturday mornings, Elkin Richardson’s To the Point on Monday evenings, and John Benjamin’s classic Talk your Mind on Wednesdays evenings.

2. On Klass FM:  Haydn Hughes’ call in show on Thursday evenings.

3. On Radio Anguilla:  Pastor Phillip Gumbs’ Social Solutions on Saturday mornings.

            Faced with all that commendable competition, it seems almost pointless for me to add my two cents worth.

I am making enquiries about Keithley’s alleged application to join the Magistracy straight from his seat behind the Commissioner of Police’s desk.  I am still waiting for a response from the Hon Deputy Governor.  One way or the other I shall let you know what I find out.

Censorship

“Is there some law on the books in Anguilla that precludes freedom of the press?  I was told once that all "news" in Anguilla had to be pre-approved by the government.  Is this really true?” 

These questions were posted as a comment on this blog recently.  I thought the questions deserved a little more attention.

The answer is, No, there is no law in Anguilla precluding freedom of the press.  There is no requirement for news to be pre-approved by the government.  What we have is self-censorship.  Effective censorship does not require a law.

The truth is not easy to come by anywhere.  Gold must be mined, it is not normal to find it lying about.  Nuggets of news require investigative journalists to dig them out of the dirt.  There are no investigative journalists employed by any newspaper in Anguilla.  The reason for this lack is obvious.  The island population is tiny, about 15,000, and the newspaper circulation is accordingly limited.  There is no money available for a newspaper to pay a journalist.  The editor/owners try their best, but their time is consumed in trying to raise revenue by selling advertising space to keep their newspapers alive.  Since the population is too small to permit a newspaper to survive on sales alone, the owners depend on government and other advertising.  Anything controversial published is likely to affect sales.  It is suicidal for a newspaper to publish anything controversial.  Investigative journalism is discouraged for these reasons.

The radio stations are small, one-man shows.  Typically they provide entertainment and permit publication only of inoffensive public announcements.  They depend on advertising to make an income.  They cannot afford an investigative journalist for all the above reasons.  The radio talk-show hosts are an exception.  The call-in programmes hosted by John Benjamin, Elkin Richardson, Yanche Richardson, Haydn Hughes, and others, have brought a breath of fresh air to what was previously a stink of stale air.

From an administrative point of view, what the public does not know cannot hurt.  The more they know, the more uncomfortable and difficult-to-answer questions they will ask.  So, when a tricky question is asked, it is always preferable to deny knowledge, promise information in a future that never arrives, or simply to conceal information from the public.  The traditional Westminster system of suppressing adverse news prevails.  It has always been so in Anguilla since the British took over the administration.

To give you an idea of how it works, take the case of the Indian doctor who was in Anguilla about 20 years ago doing research on alcoholism.  I cannot remember his name or the exact date, but all of us of a certain age will remember the incident.  The doctor did research for his thesis on the rate of consumption of alcohol in Anguilla.  The figures for alcohol consumption that he arrived at were staggering.  The administration in power at the time was concerned that if his figures were true, it would have meant that Anguilla had one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption in the West Indies.  He was quickly stopped from doing his research and told to leave Anguilla immediately.  His research came to an end.  Nothing was ever published.

Think of what that incident reveals.  Think of the consequences of this type of behaviour.  If the doctor’s research had been published, and his conclusions were faulty, it would have been possible for other researchers to demonstrate his error.  For example, Anguilla might have been importing 1,000 cases of scotch whiskey, but smuggling 900 of them into Grenada on our trading vessels that were so numerous at the time.  If that was the circumstance, our alcohol consumption would have been ten percent of what the import figures would have suggested.  Forget for a moment the other implications.

On the other hand, if his figures were true, I submit that it is likely that we would not have the present alcoholism epidemic that we presently have in Anguilla.  The evidence of the epidemic is mainly anecdotal.  It is widely assumed that large numbers of working men go to work in the mornings with a flask of rum in their pockets to keep them going throughout the day.  Large numbers of working men in Anguilla have rum at breakfast time.  Numbers of the children of alcoholic parents in Anguilla arrive at school drunk.  So I am told by those who should know.  If the Indian doctor’s research was true, and if it had been allowed to be published, government would long ago have begun an education drive to combat the problem of alcohol abuse if the facts had been disclosed when they were discovered.  We would be well on the way to curing the problem.  Covering up the problem only allows it to fester under the covers.  That is the result of the deportation of the doctor and the hiding of the information that he was providing.

Government cover-up is supported and encouraged by short-sighted citizens who believe that publishing the truth when it hurts is offensive.  People who talk about such societal problems are described as traitors to Anguilla.  They are condemned as being unpatriotic or worse.  We all remember the recent incident when the young American school teacher told her home-town newspaper that one the strange characteristics of Anguillian society was that there was no café on the island, as there is a religious sect that is quite prominent in society that promotes the myth that drinking coffee is an evil to be shunned by all except pagans and heretics.  On the other hand, she said, there are more rum shops and other commercial outlets selling alcohol from early in the morning to late at night, something that North Americans find troubling.  She was telling the truth.  We all see the construction trucks stopping early in the morning at the working men’s restaurants and rum shops all over the island for the men to stock up on beer and rum.  Or, do we turn our eyes and refuse to see?  The truth of her story did not stop a witch hunt from the usual hypocritical suspects when word of her interview leaked back to Anguilla.  She was hounded into making a public apology.  The principal of her school was obliged by public pressure to make another apology on behalf of the school.  I was embarrassed for them all.  But, I understand the need for hypocrisy.  The school was and still is dependent on public support for its survival.

This form of self-censorship is all-pervasive.  It is as destructive and as dangerous as any that could be imposed by a law.  There is no need for a law to enforce censorship in Anguilla.

Clearly, one solution is to have a Freedom of Information Act, together with the education and the institutions that make such a law work.  With such a law any citizen who is interested in a particular issue will be empowered to demand the information.  Every citizen will be made into a potential investigative journalist.  Sunshine and fresh air will prevail.