Dear Fellow Anguillians,
Article one of the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a crucial document that outlines the fundamental rights of all peoples, provides that “all peoples have the right to self-determination.” By virtue of that right, they are free to pursue their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.
However, in Anguilla, our Premier has been acting like he’s running to be an elected monarch. He has acted in ways not commensurate with his office, failing to look out for his constituents while making reckless decisions over and over. He has bullied those with whom he disagrees and used the courts to stifle free speech. How can we voice our displeasure with any sitting government if we are singled out for retribution for doing so?
That said, the ruling party recently announced its platform, and lo and behold, two weeks later, the Premier calls a snap election. The only other Chief Minister to so was the Honorable Ronald Webster. It did not turn out well for Mr. Webster, and if the past is prologue, I suspect it will not turn out well for this Webster.
It is the job of a government, any government, to do for the people what they can only do together. Not things like handouts for older people, the so-called senior shield and subsidized payments for electricity. That’s nothing more than welfare, lulling the citizenry into a false sense of security with their own money – after taxing. Away their pride. Was that the change that couldn’t wait?
This government promised change, and one must ask if the change that they brought benefits Anguillians. Let’s ask this government what has it done for District One, the district forgotten by its own representative, the Premier? What was the purpose of dumping steel and leaving it to rust on the Island Harbor Pond fill – for show.? Maybe we need to remind the Premier from whence he came, and Island Harbor is still a part of Anguilla and as such deserves the same treatment as the Valley and every other place. I could go on and on.
It's a shame when one goes to the Princess Alexandria Hospital with a broken needle lodged in one’s finger and there is no doctor on call and to add insult to injury, when one is finally called, they refuse to come out, telling the patient to come back in the morning. The patient then calls a private doctor who comes out and treats him. When the minister of health is a physician, why are our healthcare facilities in such disarray?
My fellow Anguillians, there is a lot on the line this February 26th. Do we take the road less travelled, or the one with potholes that dot the journey? In Lewis Carol’s “Alice in Wonderland”, Alice has a conversation with the Cheshire Cat, who tells her, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” With that said, where are we going?
Well, let’s take a look with the current administration. We have the main one, the penchant for not being honest with the people they purport to care about, who voted for them on a promise they broke on Day one. Next there is their disregard for many, forced to seek education and employment offshore, calling us Tourist Voters. A lack of compassion comes next. While it may look like a lot is being done for the people, it’s nothing more than handouts and enriching contractors especially in the last months and weeks of this administration. Did anyone ask, why is this happening and “why now?”
Once again, my fellow Anguillians, ask the question, why did our Premier call snap elections a couple of weeks after running out their platform or whatever you choose to call it. We have seen this play before. Will the results have unintended consequences?
For far too long now, we’ve listened to the promises of wanna-be politicians who don’t have a clue of what it takes to run a district, much less an entire island. After all the hard work of my dad Walter Hodge, Peter Adams, Ronald Webster, Bob Rogers, Wallace Rey, Jeremiah Gumbs, Atlin Harrigan, my brother, Cardigan Hodge, Kenneth Harrigan and a host of others, too many to mention, we find ourselves gravelling for what is rightfully ours, the right to freely pursue our economic, social and cultural development, without fear or favor.
Colville Petty summarized our problem many years ago. He wrote “Seven Seals”, where he methodically delineated Anguilla’s issues.
Petty’s “Seven Seals” foreshadowed the problems we currently face. Unfettered tourism, social decay, materialism, parentless homes, children raising themselves (back then with television – and today, their phones and social media). Petty saw children exposed to all sorts of vice, pornography, guns, gangs, violence, drugs and promiscuity. He saw unsupervised children who ought to be asleep, running the streets, smoking, drinking, using foul language, and the like.
He called out the church leaders for their silence and hypocrisy, who opposed same-sex marriage but looked the other way while Anguilla’s youth floundered and too many mothers suffered abuse.
My fellow Anguillians, once again, we face a myriad of problems, problems which, like a rotting sore, left to fester. The Bible tells us in Galatians 6:7 that “whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” Years of neglect have come full circle.
Petty’s “Seven Seals” is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it. Our problems are now tenfold. Instead of moving forward, we have gone backward while taxing the vulnerable into poverty. Life in Anguilla is unsustainable. Our young people are leaving the island because they don’t see a future in the land of their birth. And for those who stay, their parents are forced into neglect from multiple jobs – just to feed them. To our government and especially the leaders, I say shame.
So, the question is this: Do we like it so? Do we want this authoritarian government we now have? Do we see that they lack compassion and would rather go dine alone at our expense than interact with the people? Are we satisfied with this government focused on its own gratification without a care for us?
My fellow Anguillians, in 5 days, we can all have a say about the direction we want your beloved Anguilla to go. We can vote for more of the same vengeful and menacing treatment that starts at the top, more intrusive and extortionate laws like GST and price controls, plans to destroy our culture and serenity with dangerous jet skis, casinos, cockfights and crowds from cruise ships, while making clandestine deals that will now cost us more than the banking resolution in just the nest 3 years.
Or, we can vote for those who genuinely care about the People of Anguilla. Let us vote for those who will protect the People from the worst challenges of GST, protect ANGELEC from being sold to foreigners, take back our sovereignty from the Central Bank, protect our right to vote in the first place. So, I say to those who would maintain the status quo, who think that we like it so, in the words of the Mighty Sparrow, take your steel beams and go.
’Til next time, may God bless Anguilla.
Tyrone Hodge
