Opposition members call on Government of Anguilla to resign:This is not the first, nor will it be the last, time that opposition members, scenting blood, call on the government to resign.The matter came up recently in Trinidad on Caribbean Talk.This post resonated with me. Krishna Narinedath, in response to a previous post objecting to the demand that government resign, wrote:
"It is unrealistic not to mention unfair, for anyone to call for the resignation of anyone or for anyone to step aside to facilitate the career prospects of anyone. In democratic war, whoever wants leadership must go to the people and get their support and so derive legitimacy."
Well, finally, people are coming to our position on this issue. Like I have been saying - don't be naive and stupid to ask for someone to resign or walk away so you will then get the support of the people.... that is not how it is in politics. You want to be leader? You want to win? Then go to the people. If you win over the support of the people then you are leader.
But don't be a whiner and loser and ask people to leave so you and your party will get the so-called 'base', like vultures feeding off the people. Realism sets in, of course, when you go out there and meet the people and try to get their support. The math is PNM vs divided Opposition will result in PNM victory; PNM v united Opposition will result in PNM loss. If you can't win single-handedly against the PNM then you have to get together. When you come to the table do so with humility and realism; be realistic of what you have and your strength - no free lunch. These are the basic concepts in T&T politics.
Krishna S Narinedath
Replace ‘PNM’ with ‘Anguilla United Front’, and ‘T&T’ with ‘Anguilla’, and your have our situation exactly.
The scent of politics is in the air.The sharp, acrid smell of the cordite of criticism is now facing the outdated black powder of the threatened lawsuits of tired old men.
I picked up a "new" craft last week: embroidery.I am in love!Embroidery combines my 2 loves of drawing and sewing. I don't know why I didn't start before!I haven't worked any commercial patterns yet. I have been hand-sketching my own patterns based on images found on Google (my printer is dead). This is fun for me, not only because I get to practice my drawing skills, but because all of my
Am I being too sensitive?It was a very small thing.In London or New York it would be laughably unremarkable.In Anguilla it is evidence that the Last Days are upon us.On page 23 of The Anguillian Newspaper for September 4th there was this small ad.Normally I would have missed it.But, it was strategically located in the dead centre of the small-ad page.The language was, for Anguilla, coquettish in the extreme.So suggestive, I had to go back to read it a second time before I was sure of what I was seeing.
Normally, I would suggest an undercover operation.But, then, the entire male contingent of the Royal Anguilla Police Force would become their best customers!
I want to suggest that one of you disinterested gentlemen call for an appointment.You in the back, stop jumping up and down with both hands in the air!
Seriously, so this is what Anguilla has come to.In their early days of their administration, the boast was that no work permits would be given to overseas workers to do any job that could be filled by a local.Now, in the closing days of the United Front government we have even outsourced ‘massages’ to Oriental masseurs?
There are questions that must be answered.
Are no beautiful young Anguillian ladies qualified for the position?
Do these young ladies have work permits?
Were they approved by our Christian Minister of Labour?
Accountability.I have obtained a copy of the Airport Project financial report presented earlier this week by the Hon Victor Banks, Minister of Finance, to Members of the House of Assembly at the request of the Hon Edison Baird. I read it and had an immediate allergic reaction. I realise I could comment on it in temperate language. Intemperate language, I find, is the best antihystamine.
We will all remember that Mr Baird had complained approximately one year ago in the House of Assembly that there were rumours that some proprietors of land taken by government for the airport extension project had received many more times the value of compensation that other equally deserving proprietors had received.He demanded a list of the value of the compensation paid to each proprietor so that he could determine if there was any truth to that rumour.The Minister of Finance denied that anyone had been singled out for special compensation.He promised to produce a complete accounting, listing the amount of value in land, money or whatever, that each proprietor received so that everyone could see how transparent and accountable this government was.
The document that Mr Banks has now produced is 8 pages long.He said at the time he distributed it that it was incomplete. Some information had not yet been received. Some transactions are incomplete. But, you would expect that, for those transactions that are complete, all the information is in the report. You would be wrong.
I have scanned the document into my computer. I can let anybody who wants to receive a copy of the complete document have it by email, if you send me a request.
I publish below a cropped version of page 1 only.The six columns show the name of the proprietor, the property taken by government, a description of any property given in exchange by government, and the total acreage/payout to the proprietor.I have cropped two columns of irrelevant information.
The first thing you notice when you read the entire document is that it omits the most expensive piece of property acquired.I cannot find DameBerniceLake’s family land mentioned on the list of names at all.There is no reason why that acquisition should have been omitted from the accounting on the Airport Project.It was an intrinsic part of the airport extension project.I do not know the value of the land acquired but it was several acres.At a guess it is probably worth as much as all the land and property listed. It may not yet have been paid for, but it has to be paid for in due course, and government must have had it valued and knows what it expects to pay.
In other words, the accounting that Mr Banks has produced may not cover one half of the property acquired.That is woefully inadequate.He gave no reason for his omission to give any amount of compensation already paid to the Lake family, and any estimate of what the government expects to pay in all for the property.
The second thing you notice is that in the sixth column, ‘Acreage/payout’, only the area of land and any money paid in cash is listed.There is no estimate of the value of the property given by the proprietor, or the value of the property given by government. There must have been some attempt by the Land Valuation Department to value the individual properties being acquired.Mr Baird was entitled to know that any particular property being acquired was valued at a particular amount.Similarly, there must have been a value put to the land that was being offered in exchange.
Then there are the replacement homes.In some cases, in addition to an exchange of land together with a cash amount, there was a replacement home built by government.A perusal of the document reveals that a total of eighteen (18) replacement homes were part of the compensation packages paid to proprietors.That must have been a significant cost. There is no attempt to account for this money paid by government to construct the replacement homes.
If, say, in exchange for a house on a quarter of an acre of land altogether worth $500,000.00, government gave the proprietor (i) a half an acre of land worth, say, $100,000.00, (ii) cash of $20,000.00, and (iii) a replacement house that cost $480,000.00 to build, then, if the list contains only the first two items, it will have accounted for only 20% of the total amount of compensation actually paid.And, we will not know how close to or far away from the value of the property taken was the total amount of compensation paid. This is information that government already has. It has already taken one year to produce this account.
There is no reason I can discern why the Ministry of Finance cannot instantly put its hands on the figures for the cost of building each replacement home.Don’t tell me that no account was kept of it, house by house.They had to know that they had agreed to build for a particular proprietor a three-bedroom house costing, say, $500,000.
There would have been agreements with the proprietors. There would have been tenders and contracts with the building contractors.There would have been Ministry of Infrastructure supervisors ensuring that what was contracted was built.There would have been Ministry of Finance officers keeping a check on cost overruns and other financial information.
We will recall that, in relation to the proposed 500 ft extension to the east of the airport, PS Larry Franklin assured us just a scant few days ago that:
4. There are already procurement guidelines for the Government of Anguilla. There will be project oversight by the permanent secretaries in Finance, Economic Development and Infrastructure. There is a functioning Internal Audit Department and I expect the Internal Audit Department to audit the project both during and after the execution stages. I also expect the external auditors to audit the project.
5. [Your comments on procurement as a source of graft] maybe true and I appreciate your concerns on this matter. However, there are policies, standards and procedures in place. The project has to conform to those policies, standards and procedures. The Department of Infrastructure has managed significant roads projects before including the Rev. CL Carty Road, the Jeremiah Gumbs Road, and the road around IslandHarbour. There have been no major accountability issues with the management of the construction of those roads.
It is my opinion that the Minister has short-changed Mr Baird in supplying such inadequate, incomplete and misleading information to him.He was required by the rules of parliamentary procedure not to give an incomplete and misleading answer to a request for such vital information.
To summarise, the minimum information that Mr Baird was entitled to receive was (i) the value of the property acquired from each proprietor; and (ii) the value of the total compensation paid to or estimated to be due to each proprietor. Even accepting that some of the transactions are not yet complete, and the final figures not known, the vast majority of transactions are complete, yet the figures for these is not given.
This document does not begin to demonstrate that government is prepared to publish and reveal the true amounts paid or due to be paid to all the proprietors.Whatever the alleged policies, standards and procedures alluded to by Mr Franklin are, they are clearly ineffective to permit an audit of the airport project.I would hate to think what waste and worse there has been on other projects managed by the Department of Infrastructure in such a lax way as this one obviously was.
If this is the best government could do, then, in my opinion the document is evidence that our government departments lack the capacity to manage and supervise any major public works project satisfactorily or at all.
God help us all when the additional airport extension is built later this year!
Governor Writes Speaker Agreeing to House of Assembly Debate on Motion to Borrow.The Speaker read out a letter from the Governor indicating that he did not object to the debate on the motions to borrow some $60 million, but that it was still up to London whether they agreed.The debate today went ahead.No constitutional crisis there, and the speeches went ahead along predictable lines.
It would appear that what some persons have been saying all along may be right.The British have no objection to Anguilla borrowing money to get us over the present financial crisis.Nor do they have any objection to Cayman Islands increasing its borrowing.They only object to us going to London completely unprepared to explain how we are going to pay back any borrowing.Especially, when we are giving away large chunks of existing revenue.
The big crisis the Chief Minister and Minister of Finance told us to expect at the press conference on Tuesday appears to be a non-issue.This is what the Chief said then, among other things:
If when we go to the House of Assembly on Friday to borrow the EC$49 million... we have asked the Governor to send this to London immediately. If London comes back and say no... that is when the showdown will come. I told the Governor if they (British government) says no to it tell them to come for their country... because how are we going to pay civil servants at the end of October, where are we going to get money from?" Fleming said.
The government leader said if there is no approval by the British government, once his administration can find an institution that will give us the money "we borrow the money, let them do what they want to do, they can arrest us, no problem."
It was all apparently a smoke screen to cover up our incompetence in having gone to London last month completely unprepared, resulting in an embarrassing British refusal to permit us to increase our borrowing.What I draw from the debate in the House of Assembly today is that the planned borrowing is necessary to get us through the year.It is not likely the British would have disagreed with that conclusion.It was just that, when we made the application to change the borrowing guidelines, we had no convincing explanation how we intended to pay off any additional borrowing.
All the posturing by our Ministers was just for show.Hopefully, they have spent the time preparing to make a proper presentation.Expect to hear about new travel plans in the next couple of weeks at the latest.If I am wrong and, despite all the last-minute preparation and improved presentation, our application to borrow more is refused, at least we will get to blame the evil British for all the consequences.
Both the Chief Minister and the Minister of Finance complained that the Opposition made no substantial suggestions during the debate for correcting the present deficit in income over expenditure.With humility, these are some personal suggestions for increasing Anguilla’s revenue in this time of financial crisis:
- Collect property tax from all the 1,000’s of householders who refuse to pay it;
- Disconnect the 100's - or maybe 1,000's - of illegal water connections;
- Hire an animal control officer, enforce dog licenses;
- Ticket every driver with no car-seat for child;
double for child in front seat;
triple for child standing on front seat;
and four times for kid sitting on driver’s lap steering the car!
- On the spot fines for speeding – or car gets towed;
ditto littering (if no car, impound something else);
ditto untethered goats and other farm animals;
- Enact and enforce seatbelt laws;
ditto use of cellphones while driving;
- Enforce noise and environmental pollution fines;
- Legalise marijuana use [preferred by all Anguillian youths above the age of 13], and tax it like cigarettes.
Maybe now, after having had a further month to prepare ourselves properly, and including the above suggestions, we will go back to London with a more professional presentation.
Once we have such a clearly thought out plan to repay any borrowing, I do not expect any objections from London.
One last immortal thought:
"It's like a blocked toilet. You have to flush all the shit out to get it working properly again." --Gary Lightbourne, Michael Misick's former bodyguard
Viceroy’s Soft Opening in August?I suppose we were all left wondering what happened to the much bruited ‘soft opening’ that was supposed to take place in August. That month came and went.No soft or any other kind of opening. I checked their reservations, and they claim to have rooms available from 19 September, but none before that.
Is that a sign of hope, or is it not? What happened to all the guests that booked for August? Have they been relocated, or have they been told to come back later?
Now Kirk Cassels writing for Travel Agent Central reports that the opening is postponed to December.
Someone has come up with an idea for solving the country’s financial crisis. Why not let government organize a “Guess the date Viceroy is opening” lottery.The winner gets half of the takings, and government keeps the other half?Seems like a winner to me.
The Ministers propose to take a motion to authorize additional borrowing to the House of Assembly, regardless of the British Government’s disapproval.We have looked previously at the British Government’s refusal to permit the United Front government to increase Anguilla’s borrowing in the absence of any hope or plan to repay the debt. Now, the Minister says he is going to take a proposal to the House to authorize some $40 million, whether the British government sanctions it or not.
Can he do that?
Section 55 of the Anguilla Constitution 1982 sets out the limitations to the powers of the Anguilla House of Assembly. It states that “Except on the recommendation of the Governor” the Assembly shall not proceed upon any Bill, or any motion, or any petition, which in the opinion of the person presiding makes provision for increasing any charge on the revenues or other funds of Anguilla.The person presiding is the Hon David Carty, the Speaker of the House. He has long served as chairman or other high party official of the ruling United Front and its predecessor ANA party.
Once the Governor informs the Speaker that he objects to the motion or resolution or proposal to increase Anguilla’s borrowing, it would be the constitutional duty of the Speaker to prevent the government ministers from debating the matter.
The first big question then, is whether the Governor will make any objection known to the Speaker in advance?
The next big question is, will the Speaker permit the Ministers to introduce such a motion in the face of its evident illegality?
In my view, any lender proceeding to advance funds to government in the face of the illegality of the borrowing will be at risk of a court ruling that the Assembly had no power to authorise the borrowing. A court would be likely to rule that the borrowing was illegal and was not an obligation binding on any future government. The lender would have to look elsewhere to recover their funds.
In the event of a law suit brought against them, the members of the House who acted illegally would be at risk of having their personal property and possessions seized in repayment of the illegal debt that they incurred.
If the Governor does not inform the Speaker that he has any objection then, in my view, the Speaker will be entitled to assume that the Ministers would not be bringing the motion unless they had the Governor’s permission, as required by section 55.
be the last, time that opposition members, scenting blood, call on the government to resign. The matter came up recently in 
