ASK THE GOVERNMENT-Morning Edition Radio ZJB - Wednesday, October 10, 2001 Guest: MP, Chedmond Browne; Interviewer: Herman Sargeant

HS: Well good morning, welcome to the program, Ask The Government, and the guest for today’s show is Mr. Chedmond Browne.
We’ll be having an abbreviated edition this morning because Mr. Browne would be back this evening at 8 o’clock and then he’ll accept calls but for this particular edition of Ask The Government no calls will be accepted so you can tune in again tonight and do listen. Welcome to the program, Chedmond.
CB: Thank you very much Herman and good morning to the listeners of Radio Montserrat.
Let me first apologize for my lateness this morning but since the rain is coming-I don’t know how many of you deal with the earth-but I was in the earth.
And you should know at times when you start to dig in the earth and plant seeds and weed and so, time just slips away.
When I caught myself 9 o’clock was gone and they were calling me on Radio Montserrat but I was actually doing something constructive. But I apologize still for my late lateness.
HS: So you do a little bit of farming as well, a little home gardening?
CB: Yes, a lot of fruit trees and stuff.
HS: So what do you want to talk about this morning Chedmond?
CB: Well basically I’d like to get the people of Montserrat to understand how government functions, what has happened since the election and the roles that different members of government play.
Now, this all can’t be covered in the space of half an hour.
What I’m trying to get across is this: A government radio station is an information outlet and we should be able to utilize it as such.
Information should be the first priority.
And as much information as we can give to our listening public, our voting public, the better that public will be able to make assessments and really understand what is going on.
Now the varying members of government will bring different aspects of the same piece of information but the objective is for the people to listen and determine, well, who is telling you stuff that makes sense, who is telling you stuff that doesn’t make sense, who is saying something because they have a private agenda, who is saying something because they have a national agenda, who is saying something because they have an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with Montserrat.
The listening public must be able to figure out, based on what is being said, based on the knowledge of the personalities involved, just exactly where that person is coming from when they speak to them.
Therefore, they would be better able to make an assessment in the best interests of their individual growth and development and in our collective and national interests simply because they have a broader base of information being provided to them.
And this is what I believe is the key role of Radio Montserrat.
And this is why I believe one of my key roles as member of government, as an elected member of government is a continuing education process on how government functions as opposed to how we believe it actually functions and the dissemination of information based upon knowledge and information that I have acquired.
HS: So, you more or less are explaining or setting the groundwork for future programs to come.
CB: Exactly.
HS: Now, how the government functions: This morning let us look at the airport issue.
Explain to us as, a member of the government, what the process is because you’ve said that yourself that many people have said different things and to me, the people are confused by hearing different messages but coming from the same government. Address that issue for us.
CB: Yes, I agree with you 100% but as I said, the people should not be confused.
What the people have to be able to do is listen to the thrust of the conversation, listen to the person bringing the information and determine whether or not that person is telling you something in the best interest of the nation or in somebody else’s agenda or in their own personal agenda.
Once they can make that assessment, there will be no confusion.
They could simply say, ah, you know, in colloquial Montserratian, a one deh a chat chupidness; end of story because that is of no benefit to us.
You understand? Or they will say, well a one deh mek sense, or a one deh a shed little light on the situation. You understand? Or, a da one de he jumping back and forth.
Okay? You listen to the people who speak.
Now what has happened since election?
When the PLM Party went on platform, PLM Party stated specifically, on its political platform, that is would not-it stated categorically-that it would not accept an airport at Geralds.
That’s what they said on the political platform.
HS: You said, they, but you are a member of that team.
CB: Yes, when I say PLM I mean all of us because I was the chief spokesman of the PLM Party.
If anybody can take credit or debit for PLM’s success I have to be one of the people because I was the Chairman of Party, the main spokesman of the Party so I should know specifically.
I played a significant role in writing the Party’s Manifesto and I played an even more significant role on the platform because I spoke practically 9 or 10 times a night when each of the others only spoke once.
So any overall picture that was presented to the people of Montserrat was projected basically by me.
So when I’m saying that-at the platform level-I have to take full responsibility for a lot of the things that were said.
Now, I am saying that the PLM Party said specifically on its platform that it would not accept an airport at Geralds;
there were no contingencies added to that, point blank, they are not taking it.
Subsequent to that, a whole lot of stuff has come down since then.
Now, you will find immediately after election, the first person to go on the radio to broach the airport issue was not a member of government, was not a member of the opposition, was not a member of the society.
The first person to go on the radio to broach the issue was the governor.
The governor was the first person that came on the radio and said that there is confusion in government, that there’s split in the government’s position on the airport and we’d better hurry up and make a decision and he went on to say a whole lot of misconceptions and half truths.
The last person to speak on the issue of the airport again was the governor day before yesterday. And he went on the radio again yesterday and went on and on.
Half of the stuff he said was not true, the other half was just tied to a picture that he wants to draw and he’s there speaking as if it’s a done act.
The governor, yesterday, spoke in such a way as to make it appear that we have no intelligent people, whatsoever, in this country.
I, personally, as one of the people that came on this radio station, that has been in the media to state categorically that an airport at Geralds makes absolutely no sense and that there is no logic to that argument, felt very insulted yesterday or day before yesterday when I heard the governor talking about:
A lot of the arguments that I’ve heard from these people makes absolutely no sense to me.
There is no logic to their argument and there’s no sense to their argument.
Well, I am saying, a lot of things that he said on the radio day before yesterday, I say the same thing.
His stuff, there’s no logic to his argument and it makes absolute no sense to me.
HS: Anything specific you want to refer to? CB: Well, yes because I actually came in here and wrote out the whole thing.
I was so perturbed that I came and I wrote out the whole thing.
Now, here he’s saying that these people, they don’t have no sense because they’re asking for an airstrip that can carry big, long aircrafts and big, long aircrafts that can land large amounts of people. That is so far from the truth.
We have never asked for an airport that lands big, long aircraft or aircrafts that carry large amounts of people.
We have said specifically that it makes absolutely no sense to spend $40 million on a temporary airstrip that has no room or accessibility for future expansion and development.
And if you’re going to spend $40 million you don’t have to give us an airstrip that lands an airplane that carries 40 people but you put the airstrip in a place that 10 years from now when all this expansion that he was projecting comes about, you would have sensibly invested that $40 million in an area that you can, in fact, build an airport or extend the airport to the point where it becomes viable with the growth of your population.
That’s what we’re saying, so what he’s saying is totally untrue.
We’re not going out there asking the British government to finance a $300 million airport for us, which in that figure is totally bogus to start with.
What we are saying is if the British government has said categorically it will not spend more than this amount of money then spend that amount of money somewhere where it makes sense and if we only get a 9-seater airplane to land on it, in the first instance, we will more than happy and perfectly satisfied to take it because we are fully aware of the fact that with our own initiatives, we can go out there and turn that 9-seater airstrip into a 40-seater airstrip or a 100-seater airstrip, if and when we so desire and we have the capabilities.
But what they are doing right now is utter and thorough ignorance and to say that so many intelligent people in our society have come and presented such a case to the people of Montserrat and you come back now and say that basically we don’t have no sense. We don’t have no reasoning capacity. We can’t count, we can’t add and subtract.
The public at large called in here at length the other night when Dr. Lewis was on the radio to tell Dr. Lewis exactly the same thing.
So what he is saying is that the entire public of Montserrat don’t have no sense but DFID and the British government have sense.
HS: Well, listeners you’re listening to the program, Ask The Government. Unfortunately we are not taking calls in this edition but this evening you can call in so you can get your questions prepared for this evening. And our guest for this evening will be Mr. Chedmond Browne again.
He is in the studio right now and he is discussing the issue of the airport.
Now one of the things that the governor said, Chedmond, is that no one has presented any figures, reasonable figures for an alternative but yet everyone is talking about an alternative to Geralds.
CB: But that’s absolutely not true. No one has presented any reasonable figures for Geralds either.
What they did was initially - they have had at least five consultancies on airports-Initially they looked at many sites and they worked it down - the last report that Gibbs did, looked at three sites.
It looked at Thatch Valley; it looked at Old Quaw; and it looked at Geralds.
And when they did the costing factors, it wound up Thatch Valley was more expensive than Old Quaw; Old Quaw was more expensive than Geralds.
The British government because of the way they deal with their economics and their finances have determined that they want the least expensive option.
Having decided that they want the least expensive option, they threw out all the other studies and they focused all their attention on Geralds.
They then went about seeing how much pressure they could put on the past government of Mr. Brandt and Mr. Weekes and Mrs. Tuitt and who is the fourth member…
HS: Mr. Brunel Meade.
CB: …and Mr. Meade, they went about as much pressure as they could put on that past government to accept Geralds because the British government and DFID had determined that they were going to go with the cheapest, the least costly option of the three.
Having done that, no other studies could be done because who finances and does all the consultancies?
The government of Montserrat has not yet done a single consultancy.
Every consultancy comes from DFID.
So if they had wanted to do the specific costing and budgeting for the other areas they would have done one and got one of their friends and given them a half a million dollars to do it.
But they have already determined since Mr. Brandt’s administration that they were not going to put a single thing anywhere else but in Geralds and they were not going stop forcing and forcing and forcing the issue til they forced whatever government of the day was in position, to accept it;
that’s the bottom line, so he shouldn’t go about misconstruing the facts.
HS: Did the PLM government know this before it won the election?
CB: Did they know what?
HS: That the British government was bent on putting the airport at Geralds?
CB: Of course, they knew that. That is one of the reasons why we went on platform to say specifically that we were not going to accept it.
We were fully aware of that. As a matter of fact, Mr. Weekes, Mr. Rupert Weekes, the former Communication & Works Minister came on radio before the government collapsed, and said that the Brandt government administration had accepted the airport at Geralds.
I don’t know if you remember that, but I remember it clearly. He came on radio at least 6 weeks to 8 weeks before the government collapsed.
Prior to that he said they would not accept it and a couple of weeks later, he did a complete turn around and came back on radio and announced that they had accepted an airstrip down at Geralds.
So this thing has been going on long before us and the British government had determined and DFID had determined long before we came into office that they were not going to move off of their crease.
HS: Well, this adds to the confusion because the governor did say in his interview with myself that the decision was taken by this government.
CB: That’s the normal trick. It’s not a matter of decision.
They have something called a project concept note. Now, when you submit a project concept note that is an indicator that you have in fact agreed that something can happen in relationship to a particular project.
It does not indicate that you have accepted or have agreed for that project to happen.
You have indicated that you are willing to allow certain studies that will allow for the project to become possible, to happen.
Now, the government of Montserrat-let me correct that-neither the Chief Minister nor any of the ministers of government necessarily have to sign that project concept note.
What has been happening since Mr. Brandt’s administration and is continuing to happen in this present administration - and I’m saying these now because I am not a government minister;
I am saying things based on information that I have gathered that I’m not necessarily privy to-heads of departments. And permanent secretaries in collusion with DFID can in fact, have in fact signed numerous project concept notes for the government of Montserrat.
And I am suggesting to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that the project concept note for Geralds was not signed by any government minister in this administration.
HS: But how is that possible?
CB: It happens, whether it’s possible, I’m telling you it happens.
It happens because we don’t understand the dynamics of the government we have inherited; we don’t understand the system that we have inherited;
and our people assume that once they elect a government to office that government is fully in charge.
Well, I am telling you, it’s not so. DFID has more say so about the affairs of this country and DFID in collusion with the Permanent Secretaries and the Heads of Departments of this country have hijacked the government of this country and in effect, running this country.
That’s the reality and it needs to be exposed.
The people need to become aware of it and we need to start addressing the issue.
The government of this country, the elected government of this country, right now, is not running this country.
Development Unit, in and of itself, and the Head of Development Unit has more say so in the policy-making process of this country, right now, than all the government ministers put together.
And they could all come up here and challenge me. And they can all come here and say it is not so.
I am telling you, categorically, that it is the reality and this is why all of these things are happening and this is why all this mass confusion comes up.
When DFID and the governor and the British government can’t get their way with the elected government of the day, they bypass them, they take the permanent secretaries, the take the heads of departments, they carry them one side and they explain to them one set of constitutional authority that they have and they go ahead and they implement stuff regardless of whether the government ministers agree with it or not.
After the fact, the government ministers generally are coerced into accepting it.
A lot of them just won’t chat. Well, not going to stop chat.
I’m not no government minister.
I am an elected member of government and I am entitled to speak and I am saying, categorically, that a lot of the ignorance that is going on right now is going on simply because the government of the day and the permanent secretaries and the department heads do not work together.
The department heads, the permanent secretaries work with DFID; they work with the governor at the expense of the government of the day. And the government of the day is in a strange position of being caught between a rock and a hard place because it has to satisfy the needs of the people and it still has to satisfy the administrative agenda of DFID and the British government and then, in a lot of times, it gets itself trapped simply because they don’t have a spokesman who can come out here and articulate the situation for them.
HS: Okay, we are listening or you are listening to Ask The Government and our guest is Mr. Chedmond Browne, Member of Parliament, Pan-Africanist and some would say he is the social conscience of Montserrat, as well.
Now, Mr. Browne, can you really blame the civil servants? Isn’t that the way the system is set up?
CB: That’s the way the system is set up on one level.
But the reality is that those same civil servants are fully aware of the fact that it is their duty to adhere to and abide by the wishes of the elected government of the day.
What has happened since the volcano and governor Savage is that the British government, the FCO and DFID have hijacked the government, the administrative policies of government by convincing the senior civil servants especially that constitutionally, authoritatively, the elected government of the day has little or no say so or control over what they do.
So you can blame them because it’s not they way it was before.
No other previous government in this country has had to go through what Mr. Brandt went through or what this present government is going through.
Do you know every Monday morning the governor has a meeting with all the senior civil servants in this country?
That is absolutely not supposed to happen.
Why is he holding meetings every Monday morning with them?
He is, in fact, setting up the agenda for the week.
He is running the country through them.
No government minister attends those meetings.
The Chief Minister does not attend those meetings. The governor and those permanent secretaries and heads of departments sit down every Monday morning and thrash out the affairs of this country here, so who is running the country?
HS: But it is true to say that this meeting you are referring to is the volcano executive group.
CB: That’s what it was supposed to be; it’s no longer that.
And if they are saying that this thing is - if we are no longer in a state of emergency according to their own developmental things, why are they giving us a temporary airport?
If we are no longer in a state of emergency then why are they still holding emergency meetings?
They use a lot of things to cover up how they go about getting their own way.
We are getting a temporary airport. Have you been up at government headquarters?
They are building a fortress up there.
You’ve seen the steel and concrete they are putting in that police station up there?
Why are they giving us a temporary airport and building a police station that’s going to last a 1000 years?
It can’t make sense. They pursue what they want for their own interests and they force us to accept it.
Now, when the PLM Party went on platform, the PLM Party went on platform and said if you elect the majority of us, you will put us in a position of strength to negotiate for you.
It’s not happening like that and they better hurry up and find themselves and come back to that position and come out here and talk to the people and explain to the people what is happening so we won’t have this mass confusion that’s going on around here.
HS: Listeners, once again I am sorry. The telephone lines are ringing, Cheddie but we are not accepting calls until tonight.
CB: I’ll deal with it tonight. You know I would never back off of a question or anything like that but it’s because the program kind of got truncated.
But I’ll be there tonight again and we’ll deal with these issues and a whole lot of other issues that need to be aired that need to come to light.
HS: Going back to the airport issue, you said that the PLM government decided during the campaign and in fact told the people that it would not accept an airport at Geralds.
Yet it appears to the public that you are going along with an airport there.
CB: Let me explain again to the people again who the government is.
When you go on political platform you elect a political party.
When that political party is elected and it carries a majority only four members of that political party can become government ministers.
You get the Chief Minister, the Minister of Communications, the Minister of Education and the Minister of Agriculture. Those are the only four people that become a part of the executive council.
Now listen to this carefully. The attorney general is a member of the executive council; the financial secretary is a member of the executive council; the governor is a member of the executive council.
None of them are elected members of government. None of them went on no political platform but all three of them have more say so than five of the elected members of the government of this country.
When executive council meets the four government ministers and those three people that I mentioned go and sit in a room, in private, in secret, and make decisions and vote on those decisions and they come back out and tell you government made a decision.
What government? I am telling you 90% of the decisions made in this country are not made by the elected representative of this country.
They are made in secret in executive council. Now you look at it.
To get a majority you need at least four members to vote on a particular decision.
So if the governor, the attorney general and the financial secretary hold one position, (you understand me?) and even one member of the elected government holds the same position as them, whether or not it is good for the country or bad for the country, the decision is made by the majority.
The rest of them can’t come and say nothing.
HS: Can you repeat that?
CB: The rest of them cannot come out and say anything because they are sworn to secrecy laws.
HS: Can you repeat the process you just explained just now?
CB: You have seven members of the executive council.
For anything to pass through executive council, it must have a majority vote that means at least four members of the seven members must agree that such and such must happen.
Now, I’m saying three of the seven members have absolutely nothing to do with the electoral process.
If those three members-which generally hold the same head because the attorney general is hired by and paid by the British government, the financial secretary works for the governor, (supposedly he works for us but everything you tell him, he tells you, you have to ask DFID so he works for DFID and the British government)-the three of them have one head going in.
You go in there on any one particular issue and the other four members of government happen not to agree on that particular issue and they slide over on their side, you have a majority vote going through for a decision that is not necessarily in the best interest of this country.
That’s the reality. And this is what I have to deal with so when anybody come and tell you about government I told them point blank and I’m going to tell them again, don’t say government because I wasn’t involved in the decision.
The decision was never discussed with…. I am telling you that same issue there, at least five members of the elected government of the day had absolutely no input into that decision or…
HS: That is the airport decision?
CB: Yes or the majority of the decisions that are made in this country-no input whatsoever.
HS: Whey you say the government, you mean executive council?
CB: Executive council is the government. This is what I am trying to get you to understand.
The government is not the nine elected members of government.
The government is not the seven elected members of the PLM Party.
The government is the executive council.
The four ministers of government, the governor, the attorney general and the financial secretary - that is the government of this country.
Those are the people who make the bulk of the decisions in this country and it is inside that room. In secrecy, sworn and locked where they can’t come out and tell you who was for and who was against that the decisions for this country are made.
If the governor is more persuasive than all of them the governor is going to convince them that such and such and such. Who pays the piper calls the tune.
If the governor goes in there and says, look if you all don’t agree to this, no money for that and that and that and that.
The ministers are the ones getting beat over the head in there you know.
They are the ones that have to come back out and satisfy the public.
Now, if they are told: if you agree to this, I’ll let go a couple of million dollars on that, you understand?
They are getting beat up all over their head and they can’t come out and tell you nothing. They cannot come out and tell you because they have this idiotic law that says, everything that goes on inside executive council is sworn to secrecy.
I don’t know what the penalty is, you understand me.
But nothing short of death, you could put inside one them rooms and could tell me I can’t come out and tell you what went on.
It is utter and absolute ignorance. But this is the way the decisions of this country are made.
So let them don’t come and say nothing about government.
Every time they come and say anything about government made a decision, tell them let them tell the public who the government was that made the decision, who made up the group that made the decision?
And you will find out five out of the nine elected members of this country had absolutely nothing to do with that decision.
HS: So how do the elected members then balance that because remember they are sworn to secrecy?
How do they balance that against informing the public, the voters, the people who actually put them in power?
CB: Yes, well they have a major problem. That’s what I’m telling you, they have a major problem.
I don’t have no problem because if I was a member of executive council, neither the governor, the queen, the commissioner of police, not a soul could have tell me that I can’t come out here and babble about a set of ignorance that I heard go on inside there.
So it is their problem. If they want to go in there and swear to a silly stupid law that stops them from explaining, let them take the blows because all it’s going to get for them is negative feedback.
They are going to lose political popularity. The same set of people that put them in office is the same set of people who is going to hang them.
If they want to use that as an excuse to lose their political mandate that is up to them. It’s not going to happen to me.
HS: Well, Chedmond Browne. We are speaking to him and he is a member of parliament, elected member of parliament and we’ve been talking about the role of government or the functions of government since the election and we looked specifically at the airport and we also went into a few other things and you can hear more tonight. Chedmond?
CB: Yes, well tonight, I’ll be a little bit more calm and structured. This little short piece here was because it is short and I would have to babble out the half an hour.
But I will promise you tonight I won’t babble. I will sit cool, calm and collected and will have an interesting exchange between me as a member of government and my perceptions and the information that I’ve gathered knowing that I am not privy to all the information.
And we will see if we cannot, in fact, get our people to understand a little bit better why is it that nothing seems to function.
HS: Well, you’ve been listening to Ask The Government and this is the first edition.
The second edition is tonight at 8 so I hope that you can join us then and then we will accept your calls. Do join us. Thank you very much.

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