No doubt you recall that the British governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), HE Gordon Wetherell, suspended the House of Assembly, indefinitely, a few weeks ago. And perhaps you recall that, in a commentary published here just hours before the Governor announced his decision, I dismissed the political drama unfolding in our beloved country as an embarrassing farce.
But if any of you doubted the wisdom of the Governor’s decision, or the fairness of my commentary, I trust the public spat that erupted within the ruling Progressive National Party (PNP) this week has erased all doubts.
Nevertheless, I suspect there is much confusion about the political implications of these latest developments. And I fear that much of what is published about them in coming days will only add to this confusion.
Therefore, I hope this commentary not only clarifies this confusion but also demonstrates that all of this drama is (still) tantamount to the captain and his mates rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
Here, in a nutshell, is the latest:
In what appears to have been a clumsily arranged address on Tuesday night, Premier Hon. Dr. Michael Misick informed the nation that he had effectively whipped all disaffected Cabinet ministers and backbenchers back in line, and that there would be no further calls for, or even talk of, his resignation. To continue the shipwreck analogy, he insisted that they had all agreed to “stay the course”.
He then delineated a litany of austerity measures and political reforms that he intends to impose upon everyone except himself to revive the TCI economy and ensure good governance. At no point, however, did he betray the slightest hint that he knew full well the majority of his Cabinet ministers still wanted nothing to do with him.
Accordingly, this forced the Premier’s disaffected ministers, led by Deputy Premier Hon. Floyd Hall and Health Minister Hon. Dr. Lillian Boyce, to punctuate his farcical performance by issuing a press release yesterday, in which they claimed to be “shocked, shocked” that the Premier would tell such bold-faced lies about them and the state of their party.
Then, in a manner that seemed almost as unhinged from reality as the Premier’s address, they delineated the litany of egregious misdeeds and misconduct that compelled them a few weeks ago to call on the Premier to resign, insisting that they remain unshaken in their resolve to see him gone. At no point, however, did they betray any pangs of conscience for having aided and abetted (and perhaps profited for years from) the acts they now find so repugnant.
In fact, to reiterate the lament I expressed in the commentary referenced above, it shall stand as a historic failure of nerve that, despite knowing years ago that the Premier was running our ship of state aground, these Cabinet ministers did absolutely nothing to avert the shipwreck from which we are now begging the British to rescue us.
This brings me to the real cause of this drama: the ongoing Commission of Inquiry into government corruption and serious dishonesty.
After all, no matter how indignant their voice or how firm their resolve, none of these ministers can deny that, but for this Commission that has them all floating in legal jeopardy, they would still be sitting in the Premier’s kitchen Cabinet helping him cook up more crooked schemes to seal our demise. Whatever the case, nothing they do or say now will affect the ongoing work of the Commission.
This is why all of the machinations we’re witnessing within the PNP today smack of rats abandoning a sinking ship. And it hardly matters whether they jump or the Premier pushes them overboard – as he did Minister Boyce on Wednesday.
Finally, it reflects a delusion worthy of the Premier’s own mind that these disaffected ministers believe their rationalizations and belated finding of no confidence in him will cause the British to have confidence in them (to guide our ship of state) – as their press release clearly indicates. But I hope to disabuse them of this belief by ending this commentary as I did the last one on the political farce unfolding in the TCI:
[T]he only thing for all of them to do now is to cooperate fully with the Commission and await their fate. As for the rest of us, please be patient and let our British overseers do their job!
NOTE: Given that Hall, Boyce and other disaffected ministers are scheduled to appear before the Commission within the next two weeks, I admonish them to be as forthright in testifying about their own “failures” as they will undoubtedly be in citing the Premier’s. Because, no matter how self-incriminating, such confessions will be good not only for their soul but also for their liberty.
Related Article:
Political farce in the TCI
Case for an Interim Government in the TCI
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