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By Carlos W. Simons QC

On Monday, 7 May, the Governor published his Quarterly Milestones Update. The Governor is aware that these Updates are highly anticipated for one principal reason: any indication they might give as to a date for elections.

Carlos W. Simons QC is a prominent attorney at law in the Turks and Caicos Islands and a candidate for leader of the Progressive National Party (PNP)

Like people anywhere who have been disenfranchised, the people of the TCI yearn for the return of their universally recognized right to elect and be governed by their own representatives. The British Government knows this as well: it is the same principle that they went to war for in Iraq, and continue to fight for and promote around the globe. Yet it is one they continue to deny in the TCI.

As for the 7 May Update, the words that caught most people’s attention were these:
“It is clear that while significant progress has been made in many areas, further work remains to be done before UK Ministers can judge significant enough progress to allow them to reinstate the Constitution, thus triggering fresh elections.”

Most people see this as a walk-back from the previously clear indication that elections will be held before the end of 2012. It appears to be part of a continuing pattern of borderline deceptions that include leading us to believe that HMG would bear the cost of SIPT!

It is a reckless and dangerous way to conduct the serious business of governance. As I travel around the Islands in my campaign for the leadership of the PNP, I sense a rising tide of frustration with the Interim Administration’s fixation on Milestones progress as opposed to the welfare and well-being of real people. The growing attraction of full independence is fed by this frustration as much as it is by the arrogance, insensitivity and double standards that have come to characterize the British mission here.

In my first address as Chairman of the Consultative Forum, I said that the best job the Forum could do for the people of the TCI is to work itself out of a job as quickly as possible. I resigned more than two years ago to undertake the far more important work that I am currently doing, and almost three years on the Forum is still firmly in place with no apparent end in sight.

So we are halfway through the year and suddenly doubt has been cast on the widely accepted belief, created and encouraged by the Governor and his bosses that elections will be held before the end of the year. Many people will find that disappointing and discouraging and the only way to repair the damage now is for the Governor to expressly confirm that elections will be held before the end of the year, to name the date and to make the Milestones fit that date. They are after all his milestones, not ours!

Having had the opportunity to gauge the mood of the people, I have come to the view that an early date for elections is the single most important item on our agenda of things to be settled with the British. If that continues to be denied I will, as Leader of the PNP, and after close consultation with my Party’s Executive and with their support, devise and pursue such strategies as may be necessary to restore this most basic of human rights to the people of the TCI.

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Lee Ingham:
It is refreshing to read a declaration such as this advanced by Mr. Simons!!! The British have vacillated and made ambiguous statements relative to the return to democratically elected, representative government in the TCI. Thus, it is about time that someone declares that if the people of the TCI are denied their basic, human right to vote for their representative government much longer, action will be taken to demand it.

I applaud the stance of Mr. Simons. However, it would seem to me that, of course he should seek the support of his Party to make the case, but if the leader of the other Party, Mr. Taylor and the PDM, would join Mr. Simons in this effort, it would be an even stronger case to make and more representative of the peole.

The interposition of the British on the issue of elections this year is one of the central isses that must be settled by the people of the TCI and the British and I hope that Mr. Simons will not have to follows through on this promise in that the British will do as he suggests. But, if the British fail to do as has been suggested by Mr. Simons, then he along with the people of the TCI should demand elections, this year, in no uncertain terms.

This ought to be the mood of the country right now and I think that Mr. Simons is correct when he says that the people of the TCI are now in election mode. The British will do well heed this advice and not allow their word, again, to be seen as a broken reed by the people of the TCI.