Former Chairman of the now disbanded Anguilla Constitutional Reform Commission, Don Mitchell, says he is relieved by the immediate solving by Government of what he refers to as the recent “constitutional crisis” and that Chief Minister, the Hon. Osbourne Fleming, is a statesman for quickly defusing the situation.

Mr. Don Mitchell

The retired OECS Judge was referring to the decision by the Government to ask the Secretary of State to amend the Constitution to facilitate the introduction and passage of legislation to provide for the establishment of a Police Service and a Police Commission. The action, discovered by Mr. Mitchell and widely publicised, caused much concern among the public in that the people were not consulted and that the amendments were being made ahead of dealing with the wider constitutional recommendations submitted by the Commission in August last year.

The embattled Government defended itself saying the planned amendments were “consequential” and “urgent” and complained that it was “extremely unhappy with the way it was portrayed” by Mr. Mitchell and members of the public on the broadcast media. Three days later the Government announced that it had reversed its decision and, after constitutional and legal advice, had undertaken to deal with the matter administratively instead.

Mitchell told The Anguillian this week that the Government’s change of mind must not be seen as something to laugh at in derision, but should be applauded for not allowing the matter to drag on.

He explained his side of the story: “The Constitutional and Electoral Reform Commission had made recommendations about how the Police Service Commission should be constituted, how it should be professional and comprise people of integrity and respect in the community who can give the Governor good advice,” he said. “The British had encouraged us to put in our report different recommendations for democratising Government and transferring power from the Governor to local institutions. One of the recommendations was that the Police Service Commission must have binding power. When it makes a recommendation to the Governor, it is not for him to be able to say no…The Governor must be obliged to take that advice. It is not just consultation.

Hon. Osbourne Fleming

“So when we heard that the British Government was being asked by the Anguilla Government to amend the Constitution to put in a Police Service Commission and nobody in the Government was showing us what they were doing, we became very concerned. I began to talk about it as well as many people and it became quite a controversial issue. We all know that a constitution is a fundamental document, a contract or agreement made by the people about how they agree to be governed. The Government can’t go and change it just like that. A contract can only be changed by discussion between the two parties.”

Told that the Government said its proposed amendments were “innocuous”, “consequential” and “urgent”, Mr. Mitchell replied: “That is not an adequate explanation nor is it even an apology. The Government of Anguilla owed the Anguillian public both an explanation and an apology…If we allow the British or the Anguilla Government to change one comma in our Constitution without telling or discussing it with us, we don’t know what they will do tomorrow. It is a matter of principle to tell us in advance. It is not for us to find out afterwards. They should have known it was a mistake and apologise to us. Secondly, the Government set up an expensive Commission, spending over a hundred thousand dollars of public money to make recommendations about that same Police Service Commission. They had a right to tell us whether they were accepting the recommendation about the Commission or whether they were rejecting it and setting up some kind of other Commission with less powers or more powers…

“To this date the Anguilla Government has still not published and circulated in a Gazette, newspaper, on its website or in any other public media a draft of what they were proposing. We only know their explanation…We don’t know if they were following the recommendations in our report or if they were doing something different. I suspect they were doing something different.”

Told that the Government quickly back down, Mr. Mitchell commented: “I really felt proud about Osbourne, Victor and the other Ministers of Government. I thought that their sensitivity and the quickness with which they recognised the public concern, and the quickness with which they reacted positively to it, showed that we do have a democratic Government in Anguilla. That is how Government is supposed to behave in a democratic society. I was impressed and proud about them. I thought it was wonderful. They are to be congratulated. They could have played wrong and strong and if they had done that, they would have been behaving like many West Indian Governments, but they didn’t. They showed their democratic credentials by reacting to public concerns in a positive way and explaining to us what they had in mind. That was wonderful, I thought.

“It makes our Chief Minister obviously a statesman of credit that we ought to feel proud about in Anguilla.”

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