Editorial – October 26, 2012
Three weeks ago we published an Editorial about deception and suggested that there is too much of it all around in Montserrat, perpetrated from outside and within. We accused Her Majesty’s Government through the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DFID) as well as our own government.
This may sound like a repeat, but it is of concern because with deception there is hypocrisy and of course the subtlety that the ‘British’ is so well known for. That really is the master of deception. So it seems natural that they would not deny or defend the accusation. Last week we said that the behavior gives credence to the belief that particularly since 1995 everything that was done and authored by them was designed for Montserrat’s failure.
That is probably more easily said than it is to verify, but if there is any truth in the saying that they are the masters of deception (subtlety), then it is not worth the bother, since frustration will be the result. However, that should not leave us in the situation where we must try to beat them at their own game. That is bound to lead to failure and perhaps that we have already reached the end.
A big part of the problem is the ability of the DFID with the FCO’s support to say that the GoM (Government of Montserrat) is responsible to determine its own development. And GoM pretends that this is so, arguing that it sets its own budget. Then, we ask, why do we have budget talks, that gets the annoying statements from our Premier that we are made to feel or we behave like beggars. Thus we understand that former Secretary of State Mitchell, now fallen from grace, had no qualms about calling us chickens who do not want to leave their mother’s nest.
Why does Montserrat have to enter in Memorandum of Understandings, taken as Agreements, requiring the government to make deals, then called bargains. The recent DFID team admitted that to some extent the MOU document was in fact theirs. We believed that even if Montserrat penned it, that was on DFID’s terms.
HMG officials and particularly DFID officials have told the media that it is their responsibility to ensure that Government is kept on their toes in service to their people. But with a media terribly under sourced, a Government that knows only too well that a fully functional independent media, can make or break them, it is easy for them not to support it while they get their information to those already so down beaten that they accept it.
It’s on the website is the new catch phrase, when the truth is far too few really has the capacity or even the desire to go searching for the information. These officials know only too well that the Diaspora who may look at these websites, have little interest because there is little back here to interest them other than the gossip and a chance to say “good thing I am not there.” Or, “what am I going back there for?”
Then there are those who revel in the deception, because there will be those who benefit from it. They claim to know all that is going on and care little about the overall development and progress of the country, because they are okay. So too are those who refuse to acknowledge the truth about the foundation of what true democracy needs, deny the support for it lying at times and places convenient, deliberately discouraging any source of support to educate and inform the masses.
This creates a vicious circle and the deception goes round and round. Someone said recently that the behaviour of our officials is an inculcation of British practices and habits encouraged from the time Montserrat has come to rely solely on their support. Put this with the subtle strangle-hold they seem to have on our political leaders from time to time, the deception and the trickery is inevitable. What is certain is that really evolves to retrogression in the face of more deception.
