The Premier, his Deputy and the Governor were in London this week to attend the Joint Ministerial Council with members of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office.
That meeting is important and it holds a prominent place on the Territory’s UK/BVI collaborative agenda. There is usually a lot to discuss and potentially much to gain.
The BVI contingent was large and the price tag for that gathering must have been staggering. However, if they were representing the interests of the people, it is an acceptable expenditure whatever the number.
But it is difficult to believe that our interests would be robustly defended abroad when, frequently, that is not the case at home.
We wonder if the Premier told the British to their faces that he intends to take his people into independence. Are his spirited sermons on the subject only reserved for the UN and CARICOM?
Is his government willing to have a referendum or is his view and those of his fan club the only views that matter?
We ponder if he mentioned the difficulty the community has to receive government services although government has a work force of over 3K souls that consumes more than one third of the annual budget in wages.
We would be disappointed if he did not say that Senior Public Servants, including the DG, FS and the PS in the Premier’s Office, are all working blind.
They do not know the policy direction of the government. They no longer receive Cabinet minutes so they neither have guidance themselves nor can they guide their Department Heads or anyone.
We expect he would have reminded them that crime is off the charts and that since they are the ones responsible for the Territory’s internal security, they are failing miserably.
We hope he confirmed that his business community and civil society are looking on with consternation at the decadence in the BVI.
We wish he might have admitted that even when the government makes facilities available for the development of the Territory, like Hotel Aid, it is made so onerous and so much begging is involved that it amounts to harassment of the business community.
We suggest he might have argued that he made a mistake in rejecting the loan guarantee and that the people of the Territory have been set back some 6 years by that decision and that he would like to see the offer reappear on the table.
We trust he concluded that it was a disservice to the taxpayers of the BVI to have assented to the ‘Greedy Bill’ for it is a shameful rape of the Treasury. And notwithstanding that the avaricious portions of the Bill were repealed, those who enacted it cannot be disenfranchised so the heist holds for them.
We dreamt he championed the compensation review and job classification exercise for the civil service with the resolve that it will be paid as speedily as the spoils of the Greedy Bill.
We do not believe he would have discussed that he does nothing without the consent of the de facto head of the Executive, his AG; That his fishermen have been disenfranchised since May 2023 and no one has told them when or if they will return to work.
They may have to go to court to be granted the right to participate in his blue economy. If not, God help them for their government won’t!
He certainly would not have noted the mismanagement of close to $5M for a counter argument to the COI which report appears to still be outstanding.
He didn’t have to tell them of his plans to recognize former Premier Hon. R. T. O’Neal who agreed to the lease purchase of BVI House in London. That honour was well deserved.
And we hoped his Deputy would have been bullish in agreeing to a publicly accessible register rather than a public register of beneficial ownership.
What he discussed may be drip fed to the media over a period of weeks. The Fridays club only hopes that he remembered two words when he sat at the table;
Carpe diem! (Seize the day!)
Happy Friday!