Everyone knows that small island people fast. No matter what time of day or night you do something, no matter how well you disguised yourself, looking over each shoulder and creeping stealthily through the night to do whatever, do not be fooled, somebody was looking. Somebody saw something.

We may not always interpret what we see with accuracy and sometimes just a tiny wisp of smoke is turned into a forest fire by the time the rumour mongerers get through with it. In Anguilla, I find that we tend to be even faster (or should that be more fast) than the rest. Perhaps it is because we are smaller. Perhaps this is what remains from the days when we looked out for our neighbour and watched all the children in the village as a means of securing community welfare. Nowadays it looks like we’re just minding people’s business for the sake of what juicy titbits may be available for the rumour mill. We have become so adept at minding people’s business that I am quite worried about whether we really understand the importance of minding our own. However, if we begin to pay more serious attention to the newest proposal under consideration for St. Maarten’s future right now, perhaps in minding our neighbour’s business we can begin to understand why we should mind our own. In fact, at this point in time, we can be forgiven if we interpret our neighbour’s business as being our own, especially in terms of the strong bonds that have always existed between the people of our respective islands. It is a strange sounding concept, this “ultra-peripheral status”. I am not sure that I am getting it exactly right but my understanding is that consideration is being given to the integration of the territories that are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands Antilles, into the European Union. What makes the wording of the concept so strange to my English-speaking ears is the implication that these territories will not just be on the periphery but extremely (ultra) so. A real contradiction if you ask me. What is worse than my admittedly limited understanding is the real fear and concern raised by this consideration right when our own administering power is taking pains to get us to accept that there will be no reciprocity. You will understand therefore why Anguilla needs to be paying far more serious attention to developments within the European Union because this is our business. The Anguilla Independence Movement (AIM) has been alerting us all along, drawing our attention one or two years ago to the same European Green Paper that the Honourable Claudel Romney asked about in the public meeting with the UN Committee of 24. I was very unhappy that no one responded to the concerns raised by Mr. Romney, especially since the UK law that is intended to reassure us about the reciprocity matter, can be amended under pressure from Europe at whatever time best suits their interest.
It is now time for us to recognise that we must clearly define our own agenda and it must not take another century for us to have an independence agenda. I think we can have an independence agenda in this decade but we must insist on equality in our current partnership with the UK if we share a common understanding of what self-determination means. We have to recognise that AIM, though still a fledging group, must not be thought of as Hubert boy Haydn and them but as the roots of a Movement that we should seek to identify with en mass across party political lines. In other words, vote for whichever party you want but see AIM as an educational resource that has had us rightly focusing on the dictates of Europe as they can and do affect the dictates of the UK. Similarly, it is time for us to take stock of the same Constitutional Review process that we seem to have rejected and at this point question whether we are helping or hurting ourselves by this rejection. David Carty, the Committee’s Chairman, is not someone that I would call a personal friend but I love him dearly as a capable man of tremendous resource and one of our national treasures. Put politics aside and if David is arrogant enough to think that he is bigger than the process, we can correct him by taking hold of the process for it is bigger than any single one of us. I hope I am not talking out of turn and I am sure the Committee will address us on its plans shortly but I urge you, fellow-Anguillians, to recognise that the work of this Committee, even if we have to reshape it, is a piece of our business that is of critical importance. We must mind it. Finally Anguillians, we must not just rely on what we hear on the radio. We must read. We must read and we must read widely. We must read the fine print. We must read the 1999 White Paper if we have not yet done so, looking at what is written and at what is not. Then we must be bold and resolute in our speaking up because if we do not speak, it is either that we are giving consent or that we are dead. My own dead grandmothers often sparred verbally and delighted in mystifying their young grandchildren with Anguilla talk and gibberish/“gibridge”. It used to amuse us that as she got older, my maternal grandmother who liked to use the expression MYOB as repartee, sometimes confused the letters so that she ended up saying MOYB. I hope that we as a nation do not become more confused either about our current status or about that right to self-determination. If you have not yet figured it out. MYOB stands for Mind Your Own Business.

Ijahnya Christian

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