Caribbean & Central America - November 2016 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The 2012 general election that returned the Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI) to home rule after three years of direct rule from London was marked by ineptitude. The second election since the restoration of home rule has got off to an equally inauspicious start. The original date of 5 December, notified by Premier Rufus Ewing of the ruling Progressive National Party (PNP), has had to be pushed back to 15 December on the instructions of the governor, John Freeman, who said that the original date would “not give officials sufficient time to prepare for the election, as envisaged by section 26 of the Elections Ordinance”. Local media said that the confusion arose over the calculation for the number of working days required between the dissolution of the House of Assembly and election day.

Sharlene Cartwright-Robinson, leader of the opposition People’s Democratic Movement (PDM), accused Ewing of “gross incompetence”. She said: “Rufus Ewing is the first leader in our country’s history to ever get an election date wrong! Only a few months ago during my Budget Address, I told this country that the Rufus Ewing-led government has been marred with incompetence. It appears that once again Rufus Ewing and his government have shown this country that he and his colleagues are not capable or fit to govern.”

This seems to be a fair criticism, at least with regard to the election-date gaffe. Less valid, however, has been the criticism the government has had to take from former premier Michael Misick.

Misick was chief minister of TCI from 2003-2006 and the country’s first premier from 2006-2009 until allegations of corruption against him and his government led the UK to impose direct rule for three years. He fled to Brazil, where he sought political asylum, but he was arrested in December 2012 and extradited back to the TCI in October 2013. Misick is implicated in the allegedly corrupt sale of Crown land, and his opponents cite his lavish lifestyle after his election in 2003 and his flight to Brazil in 2009 as prima facie evidence of his guilt.

Misick, even though he is currently on trial in the TCI, originally sought to stand in the election as one of the PNP’s “at large” candidates (the Assembly has 10 constituency members, five “at large” members, and four who are appointed – two to represent the governor and one each for the two main parties). Misick’s attempt to stand for the PNP was blocked by the party and so he has decided to stand as an independent “at large” candidate. And as he is no longer in the PNP camp, he has tried to make political capital out of the election delay. He said: “The announcements from the offices of the premier and the governor fail to describe any emergency which might justify the delay of a general election…They are on a path to holding an ultra vires general election.”

Despite this fallout between Misick and the PNP, the Misick family remains deeply embedded within the party. PNP candidates for the upcoming election include Michael Misick’s niece, Deputy Premier Akierra Misick; his nephew, Immigration Minister DonHue Gardiner; and his brother, Finance Minister Washington Misick. One of those seeking nomination as an “at large” candidate for the PNP is Samuel Been, who has extracted himself from the Misick prosecution by entering a plea bargain and surrendering valuable real estate. His ex-wife, Lillian Boyce, is on trial with Misick.

Given such a strong continuing Misick-family connection, it is perhaps not surprising that the UK has failed to warm to the Ewing government, or the Ewing government to it. The two sides got off to a bad start with Ewing’s February 2013 address to a Caribbean Community (Caricom) summit calling for independence for the TCI and describing the constitution imposed by the UK just before the return to home rule as a means of continuing direct rule.

The premier’s complaint did have some spurious validity in that the two seats in the House of Assembly reserved for appointees of the governor could alter the balance of political power. The 2012 election was won by the PNP by eight seats to seven. The PNP and the opposition PDM then gained one more seat each from the four reserved for appointees, taking the balance to nine-eight, but the ultimate balance was held by the two appointees representing the governor. Nevertheless, it was the UK government that had to back down over its proposal to introduce Value Added Tax (VAT) to the TCI.

The-then UK foreign secretary, William Hague, responded to Ewing’s Caricom speech in a furious letter in which he described the speech as “substantially misrepresent[ing] both the past and the present situation to both the people of the TCI and to the leaders of the Caribbean”. Hague reminded Ewing that the previous PNP government, led by Michael Misick, had “left behind a chaotic situation including – through incompetence, abuse of power, and corruption – rapidly deteriorating public finances”.

Hague equally reminded Ewing (and Caribbean leaders) that the 2008-2009 Commission of Inquiry in the TCI had concluded that there was “a high probability of systemic corruption among ministers, members of the legislature and public officials in the then TCI government”.

The TCI’s future governance is now back in the hands of the electorate, that is some 7,300 people. A curiosity of the 2012 election, along with at least three legal challenges to its conduct and outcome, was the fact that the PDM attracted more votes than the PNP (3,164 against 2,833) but lost by seven seats to eight. Nevertheless, in terms of seats won, this was much better for the PDM than the 13-2 drubbing it suffered in the 2007 general election. At the April 2003 election, the PDM won by 7-6 in a 13-seat contest but then saw the result reversed as it lost two seats in by-elections just four months later.

The PDM under Sharlene Cartwright-Robison is standing on a platform of supporting the “Four Nos”, which are: “No Income Tax, No Capital Gains Tax, No Property Tax, and No Exchange Controls”. Other pledges include one to create a physical link “from Providenciales to South Caicos by building bridges across our beautiful waters”. This, claims the PDM, “will ultimately light the path to future prosperity”.

The PDM has also put forward a 12-point crime plan at a time when crime and illegal immigration has rocketed up the political agenda, in part due to the mass jailbreak in Haiti on 22 October. After the Haiti jailbreak, Cartwright-Robinson called for additional help from the UK, saying: “Our people are already uneasy with the current state of increased lawlessness and we need to calm the fears of our residents by assuring added help.”

Oswald Skippings, who led the PDM into the 2012 election but failed to get elected to the Assembly and has now broken away to form the Progressive Democratic Alliance (PDA), chimed in by warning: “Government has so far failed to be proactive in its actions and especially considering the level of crime that is now taking place, the amount of illegal immigrants that were already here, and the supposed hundreds that have arrived in the past few days who are most likely from among the recent escapees from the Haiti jail, who are heavily armed and dangerous.”

Skippings added: “We need serious action and we need it fast, because the situation is out of hand and in spite of the escalating crime wave, neither the local government nor the British government is taking it seriously…”