Member of Parliament Reuben Meade’s Press Conference Aired on Radio Montserrat, Monday, October 15, 2001 ZJB News October, 2001

Helena Durand, The Montserrat Reporter; Keithstone Greaves, BBC; Herman Sergeant, Radio Montserrat
H. Sergeant: (First part of tape missing) … leader of the opposition in Montserrat, Mr. Reuben T. Meade. Mr. Meade, welcome to Radio Montserrat after such a very long time.
R. Meade: Thank you very much. I’m always happy to be here discussing the people’s business.
H. Sergeant: We want to get your opinion on the airport issue.
So let us start with that right away.
What is your opinion on the current situation concerning the airport?
R. Meade: There’s a saying in Montserrat, “Wha gone bad a morning, carn come good a evening.”
And the whole discussion with respect to the airport started out very … .
When I demitted office in 1996 we had left on the table, approximately $100 million available for the realignment of W.H. Bramble.
Of this, a significant portion came from the European Union in the tune of about $ECU10 million plus about $ECU4-5 million from the National Indicative Program, which was targeted to the transportation sector.
Then the British government had promised a portion and the remainder would have come from the Caribbean Development Bank to the tune of about US$10 million as well.
When W.H. Bramble was lost, clearly we had to look for a new site. The British government came in; they did studies on, I think, three options:
Thatch Valley, Geralds and Blakes. For some strange reason, which is not apparent to me, the people of Montserrat figured, through pressure groups, that the Thatch Valley option was the best option.
The government apparently latched on to the Thatch Valley option and then subsequently came up with Old Quaw.
However the Blakes option, which would have provided sufficient space to handle an ATR-72 equivalent aircraft (that’s a 72-seater aircraft flying directly from Puerto Rico) was not even considered.
And the consultants indicated that $300 million is what Thatch Valley would have costed; Blakes would have costed $102 million; and Geralds $50 million.
The $50 million clearly would not have been adequate for the Geralds’ in terms of putting down a proper facility; it would have been closer to $100 million.
But the government of Montserrat did not see it fit to provide for itself its own document for negotiation because one cannot negotiate on the basis of saying that people want something or they feel they should have something.
It must be properly studied, properly documented so that when you go to the negotiating table, you have your position and you have their position.
But you must also have a fallback position so if we are negotiating for Thatch Valley, if that fell off the table, then we could have then negotiated for Blakes.
Since we did not negotiate properly, the British simply thrust upon us, the cheapest option, which was Geralds.
H. Sergeant: Do you think, or do you agree with the government for taking the option of having the airport at Geralds?
R. Meade: I’m not an aeronautical person. I pay to fly on an aircraft so I take my lead from the people who know but in the best interests of the people of Montserrat, we should have looked at another option.
Now the question is how do we provide the documentation because we have groups like the CRM.
Yes, they are technically trained people, some of them, on the grouping but they are not recognized by international institutions, in terms of providing documentation.
The government of Montserrat (and we are members of the Caribbean Development Bank) should have possibly called upon the Caribbean Development Bank for technical assistance to do an airport study for Montserrat and that would then have determined which site was more suitable for providing even a short-term solution.
Now when we think in terms of temporary, government headquarters is temporary, but I also say life is temporary and people live to over a 100 years.
So when we say a temporary airport at Geralds, how temporary is temporary? Had we gone for Blakes (and for some strange reason, the government of Montserrat totally ignored Blakes and I think they should explain why Blakes was ignored) we could possibly have had the airport at Blakes, even for the same $50 million which the British government was willing to spend to bring in at least a Twin Otter, in the first instance and later on deal with the expansion.
H. Sergeant: So you are not in favor of Geralds as the site for the airport?
R. Meade: I am not in favor of the explanations provided by the honorable Chief Minister in that it was thrust upon us.
It simply means that the British government had us in a corner because we did not develop our own negotiating strategy and they gave us the cheapest option.
K. Greaves: Keithstone Greaves for the BBC.
If you had to negotiate the airport options with the UK government, how would you have approached it?
R. Meade: If I was looking at it from a government which I would have lead, then I would, or even if I was called upon by the present government, I would immediately have called upon the Caribbean Development Bank who has the competence to do an airport study.
And I would have costed all of the options: Geralds, Blakes and Thatch Valley and then make a determination as to which one.
We want Thatch Valley but since Thatch Valley could not have been accommodated, then we would have had to examine the other option, which is Blakes, as our fallback position.
But I would not have taken Geralds as the fallback position.
H. Sergeant: Money seems to be the issue from what the Chief Minister is saying.
Someone asked him the question (maybe it was Keith at the press conference) if we couldn’t have gone to the Caribbean, somewhere else to have the funds to do the airport.
It may have been Helena who actually asked the question. And then I think his answer was nobody would have done that.
But you seem to think that the CDB would have been in a position to help.
R. Meade: The CDB provides technical assistance to member countries. We are full members of the Caribbean Development Bank and paid-up shareholders of the Caribbean Development Bank.
I don’t think (and I stand corrected) that the government of Montserrat has attended a meeting of the Caribbean Development Bank in the six months since it came into office and that is significant.
My position is let us look at preparing our own document to negotiate with because if I am negotiating with you, you are going to give me your negotiating position and it has been documented what the British position has been but there is nowhere that we can see a Montserrat government position.
The government of Montserrat has not done its homework and you cannot negotiate simply on the basis of feel and hearsay.
K. Greaves: Then what is your view why perhaps there seemed to have been this strained relationship with the Caribbean Development Bank given all the expertise that they have and the competences that they have in airport development, port building and so on?
What could have, in your view, could have been the cause for this apparent (let me use that word) apparent strain in not approaching the CDB in such a crucial national matter as the development of an airport?
R. Meade: Since we demitted office, the regional institutions no longer play a significant and leading role in the happenings of Montserrat.
The Caribbean Development Bank, for example, has not been called upon to do anything of substance in Montserrat since 1996.
The Caribbean Community Secretariat has also not been sufficiently involved in the whole process.
And what has been happening here since 1997 is that we have put all our eggs in one basket, so to speak, in that everything must be done by the British.
We want a document done the British have got to do it.
So in effect, the government of Montserrat is being lead by the British position. And the government of Montserrat scarcely ever has a position of its own.
H. Durand: Okay, so in that case are you saying, if you had a choice (Helena Durand, Montserrat Reporter) if you were given to take a decision on this, what would you have done?
R. Meade: I would have first done the studies, provided documentation, which would have been government of Montserrat documentation which would not have been prepared by the British government.
And in negotiating, I would then present my documents to argue against their documents to come up with the best solution for Montserrat.
K. Greaves: Now the government of Montserrat has accepted the proposal as put forward by the British government on the airport at Geralds. Is this in your view a signed and sealed deal? Can the people of Montserrat who are opposed to this particular site at Geralds, given the fact that no wind studies or even a simulation flight as was suggested or reported by one of the aviation experts dealing with the region, how would you then tackle this particular issue?
R. Meade: That’s the issue in relation to?
K. Greaves: In relation to the fact that the government of Montserrat and the British government have now agreed.
Do you see any chance of the people working through their elected representatives bringing pressure to bear on the British government to reverse this decision?
R. Meade: That is possible but we must recognize that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to get the British government to agree to Thatch Valley, so we need to get Thatch Valley out of our minds and out of our thinking for the time being.
But we cannot then go and tell the British government we don’t want an airport at Geralds simply because people say they don’t want an airport at Geralds.
The question is if you don’t have an airport, how do we get in and out of Montserrat? Will the British government continue to pay for the ferry; will the British government continue to pay for the helicopter based on our own protests and different actions?
Now, the leadership has to come from the government of Montserrat and my feeling (although it’s pretty late in the game) the government of Montserrat needs to put in place an official team to deal with the airport matter.
And if it’s a matter of saying to the British government, could you hold on this project for three months, which will give us time to do certain studies and so forth so that we can come back to you.
But I think the horse has bolted and we are now trying to close the gate. The deal has been signed and agreed to by the official representatives of the people of Montserrat.
Now, you can’t say that they are not the official representatives of the people of Montserrat. That party got 7 of the 9 seats, which means that they are overwhelmingly being supported by the people of Montserrat to make decisions on their behalf.
H. Durand: I stand corrected, Mr. Meade, but why is it now that we are hearing (well, I think, at least from my point of view) you on that matter?
R. Meade: The people of Montserrat made a choice to have a grouping of persons run the government and with an overwhelming majority.
There is a grouping called the CRM that has been working, apparently on behalf of the people, talking about airport options.
It is therefore important for us to recognize that yes, sometimes the opposition gets up and talks and people say, oh, that’s Reuben Meade again.
I have been having discussions with the Chief Minister with respect to including the other members of the opposition within his grouping, not as members of government or anything but in terms of providing some use for the technical competence which is available by both Mrs. Cassell-Sealy and myself in terms of being able to handle certain matters which clearly the government doesn’t have the competence to deal with.
But apparently and it’s one of the things which happens in these small democracies, we do not use the resources which are available.
Now is the time in Montserrat when we are in a rebuilding process that we should use the local resources as far as possible.
Now, Mr. Chedmond Browne, for example, has said publicly on Radio Montserrat that during the election campaign he was one of the forerunners in terms of discussing policy and so forth but he is not being consulted with respect to the day-to-day operations and policy of government, which clearly means that government is not using the resources available to itself for getting things done.
H. Durand: Be that as it may, as it ? seen, you are the opposition and the fact is if there are things happening in the interests of Montserratians, I think you have the stand so why have you waited do long?
R. Meade: I have simply decided, let me wait out and see where the government of Montserrat was going to take us.
The decision and discussions were being taken by the Chief Minister and his team with the British government and there really was no room for public discussion and debate. I was not going to come out and beat up on the British for giving us something.
They gave us something because we were not in a position to ask for anything better.
And when I say we were not in a position, we deliberately put ourselves in a position where we did not want to ask for anything else so the British government gave us what they wanted to give us without us arguing for something else and arguing in a structured manner, because you don’t argue with the British government or any international institution without first doing your homework.
K. Greaves: Mr. Meade, how do you respond to this take it or you get nothing approach as outlined by the honorable Chief Minister in his talks with the British government?
You being a former Chief Minister, how would you have responded had that sort of approach been taken?
R. Meade: There’s never a take-it-or-leave-it situation and it is for us as a people in Montserrat to say, we’re taking it or we’re not taking it and the leadership has to come from the government of Montserrat.
Now I go back to the point I was making before.
If you do not have a negotiated position then you end up with a take-it-or-leave-it situation because you don’t have a fallback position which you are willing to put on the negotiating table.
H. Sergeant: Mr. Meade, you mentioned the CRM on one or two occasions.
Do you agree with their positions or what do you think about their positions on Geralds heliport, well Geralds airport as it would be that it would offer no long term development for Montserrat really due the shortness of the runway (500 meters)? And they also have concerns about safety, about the ability of a fully-loaded Twin Otter to actually land there and the question about the development of Montserrat, long-term development, how can we base that on a temporary airstrip that can only accommodate very small aircraft?
R. Meade: The CRM is a very useful group. It has made some very important points and has taken a very important position.
But if was for the government of Montserrat to take on board the views of the CRM, bring them in as part of the whole discussion and then get a proper document prepared, coming out of their concerns, to take forward as part of the negotiating position.
So the CRM has provided a stepping, a jumping off point for the government of Montserrat but the government of Montserrat has apparently not taken the CRM into its fold and taken them sufficiently seriously.
H. Sergeant: Well the governor himself has spoken on this issue and he’s saying that everyone is talking about a larger airport at Thatch Valley but no one is talking about where the money is going to come from and nobody is saying how much it’s going cost. Isn’t that a fair comment to make?
R. Meade: No, you see which is why the British government is beating us at a game, which they play best.
They came in; they did a study; they said Geralds was going to cost $50 million, Thatch Valley was going to cost $300+ million; Blakes was going to cost $102 million.
We in Montserrat got caught up with Thatch Valley, the most expensive option. Clearly no funding agency is going to finance a 300 million airport.
At a 100 million, W.H. Bramble with 30 odd thousand tourists coming to Montserrat annually was just barely viable.
I disagree with the governor in terms of thinking in terms of the four or 5000 population. We don’t build an airport for 5 years or 10 years, we build an airport for 20, 30 years and it is time that we stop thinking in 5-year tranches.
We need to start thinking what is Montserrat going to be like 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now and plan for that. So we need to just bring all of these things together.
The other thing is the Chief Minister indicated (and I think he is the one who should know) he talked about a 22-seater aircraft for Geralds based on the last press conference.
I am not aware of any aircraft that will be able to land 22 seats with passengers on the strip at Geralds.
If we are bringing in a 9-seater, it does no good for us, it’s better we had no airstrip.
If we can’t bring in a minimum of a Twin Otter with 19 passengers, then we’re also up a creek, which again is again is why I’m saying (and even the consultants who came here) wondered why Blakes fell off the table as one of the options. And that’s the people from the civil aviation authority.
K. Greaves: Now Mr. Meade the CRM has indicated that yes, the Thatch Valley, while that is the preferred option that that maybe somewhere down the road.
However, they have put forward the proposal to deal with Old Quaw, the other option but hardly (both the Chief Minister in his recent news conference and now you to a lesser extent) have not addressed the Old Quaw site.
What are thoughts on this particular site as put forward by the CRM as a sort of middle ground between Geralds and Thatch as a middle ground-the Old Quaw proposal as a middle ground between the other two?
R. Meade: I come back to the fundamentals. You are asking for Old Quaw, how much is it going to cost? Do we know?
Has anyone done a study to determine what will happen at Old Quaw and how much will it cost?
The British government in their negotiating position has three options and they have chosen one. The government of Montserrat has not yet said, we can do this for a particular price; we can do Old Quaw for 100 million or what have you. All they are saying, this is another option;
it’s cheaper than Thatch Valley, let us go there. They should have also done their homework with respect to making a presentation.
K. Greaves: In fairness to the CRM, I’ve heard from some members of their grouping that the Old Quaw proposal, based on some rough numbers, would cost an additional $11 million dollars.
I am basing that off the Geralds option of $40 million. It would cost a further 11 million so it would be something like 50-51 million. That is the rough figure I’m hearing.
R. Meade: When you are negotiating with British government or international agencies, you cannot go to a negotiating table with rough numbers.
And I come back to the point I was making. Let the government of Montserrat look at the various options, get a proper study done and then present it to the British government. We can’t say, why not Old Quaw because we think it’s going to cost an additional 11 million; it’s going to cost $61 million.
Let the government of Montserrat do its own study and bring in technically competent people (I’m not saying that the CRM are not technically competent) but they are not recognized by the authorities whom you are negotiating with and the British government will always claim, these are your guys, they will give you figures which they think but we disagree with their figures.
So you go to another international institution who is recognized by the British government and then you can say to the British, the Caribbean Development Bank has done the study; are you questioning the professional integrity of an institution such as CDB?
But we have nothing with which to negotiate with the British government. We have not put ourselves in a position to be able to negotiate properly.
H. Durand: Mr. Meade, as the leader of the opposition, what authority do you have or do you have any at all to do some negotiations and investigations to present a paper to the government so you could work together on something like this?
Have you done any studies that you can say, well look, I know that is the decision you have taken but I have found this out, let us work with that?
R. Meade: One of the things which you would find happening here is that within our constitution, there is no leader of the opposition…
H. Durand: There isn’t?
R. Meade: … so I am at the same level as Mr. Browne, Mr. Hogan, Mrs. Cassell-Sealy.
We are all at the same level; our pay is the same. Now how can I go to the Caribbean Development Bank, for example, and tell the president I am here representing Montserrat and I need your support.
They would use a term that Mr. Brandt likes to use: I have no “locus standi.” So therefore, they would say, well who are you?
Yes, we know we can talk to you off the record but it is for the government of Montserrat to say, we’re sending an emissary to you, could you then work with him, or work with her or work with that particular grouping?
H. Durand: Okay, well that brings me to the same point because I remember when the Chief Minister took his oath, there was a calling together of opposition and the government to work together so I don’t see why that could not have been achieved.
The Chief Minister could have spoken to you or you two could have spoken together and then somebody could have gone.
R. Meade: Well, one of the things which you must recognize is we can go and we can say all we want.
Until I am getting the call from the Chief Minister or someone within his grouping or his office to say, Mr. Meade we would like to have you come and work with us-
H. Durand: I know, but can’t you initiate it?
R. Meade I have written to the honorable David Brandt when he was Chief Minister indicating that I am willing to come in work with the government of Montserrat to provide whatever technical support.
I, for at least a year, since I demitted office, offered to work free of cost in my field of expertise (that’s not construction but as an economist) for the government of Montserrat, doing work during the evenings, during the night.
The subject matter which they gave to me was an insult where they are asking me to design a project document for new factory shells which all you need is a junior economist picking up the previous document from the first set of factory shells and just reworking the numbers.
Now, I was invited along with Mrs. Cassell-Sealy to the discussions on the CPP. When the Chief Minister and his group went to the UK I made a comment that it was a total waste of time for the government to be going to the UK when there was, in effect, no government in office and that apparently has created a lot of disdain to the extent that I was not even spoken to by those same individuals for months.
I cannot as member of the opposition, simply because I wish to work along with the government ignore things which they are doing which are not in the best interest of Montserrat.
K. Greaves: Now, Mr. Meade given the critical importance of this major national issue of the airport, would you be prepared to (putting away the politics, and you know the party politics and so on) would you be prepared to take it on your own to initiate some of the steps as Helena alluded to and sit with the government to look more closely at this particular airport option that’s before us?
R. Meade: I am willing at any particular point in time (and all it takes is a telephone call) to be able to sit and work along with the government of Montserrat, not only on the airport issue but any other issue as it relates to the people of Montserrat and the development of Montserrat.
As I’ve indicated to people, I could have been long gone and there are people and friends of mine in the region who are asking me, what do I have buried in Montserrat?
Why are you not leaving? Why don’t you come back to some of these institutions and make more money?
My position is I will be here with the people of Montserrat and I will be here through thick and thin to ensure that this country will have representation and that development can take place in Montserrat.
H. Sergeant: Mr. Meade, to follow up on a question asked by Helena, you mentioned earlier about putting together a team to deal with this matter.
What exactly is this team supposed to achieve and who should be on this team?
R. Meade: Putting together the team is a matter for government but let’s take for example, the four ministers of government who are currently in office, may be good in their own various fields, but I suspect the brightest and best of the lot (Dr. Lewis is very competent in various areas and he’s been trying to get a lot of things done) but someone like Claude Hogan is put on the back burner.
Someone like Chedmond Browne, as much as we think that he is going very far left, he has some good skills which are not being utilized by the government of Montserrat.
Now it is simply a matter for the Chief Minister to pick up the phone and say, look let’s talk and let’s develop a team, bring his people on board, drop the politics and say, what competence do we need to move this thing forward, whether it’s the airport or any other thing, any other subject matter and then put together the various teams.
We had indicated, very early in the piece, why not let someone like Mrs. Roselyn Cassell-Sealy, for example, take over the portfolio of tourism person.
I’m not going to say Tourism Minister but the one responsible for tourism and tourism development or small business development where she has very good competences.
The feedback which we got, unofficially, no, you can’t work with those people.
We can’t be going in there begging. What we have decided to do until government wishes to speak with us is to continue working in other areas however we can for the greater development of Montserrat.
H. Durand: Okay apart from this press conference here, how do you tell the people of Montserrat who have supported you, and even now, are looking forward to where we go now, I mean, have you been communicating with them, apart from this?
R. Meade: Any government coming into office needs time to get its policies and programs in place.
It’s now about the sixth month of the government in office. Traditionally, a government is given a 100 days.
I’ve decided to keep very quiet and allow the government to bring forward, develop its policies, bring them forward and present them. The time has now reached, after six months, for me now to make public discussion and pronouncement on a various set of matters.
Now, if you were to follow my political career in opposition, every sitting of parliament, I had questions for the government.
So far, I have not raised one question to the government because as I said, I wanted to give them time to fit in and also allow them to gel and also to give them the assurance that the opposition was there willing and able to support them.
We have not been called upon; we have not been consulted. They seem to be going nowhere very quickly and it is time that we started looking at putting some of these issues to the public and see whether or not it would cause a change of thinking by the government.
H. Sergeant: An issue in which you apparently were consulted on was the make-up the setting up of the constitutional commission. Now what is your take on the members or the makeup of that commission?
R. Meade: Well the government has selected two members, the governor has selected two and as opposition, we selected one.
It was basically a toss-up between a male and a female member, both of whom are union related and in the final analysis, we went for the person whom we selected.
There are questions as to whether or not there should not have been more females.
Yes, I think there should have been more females but unless I can divide our one representative into male and female, we selected one.
The government, 50% of the executive, is female. I would have thought the government would have selected one male and one female as part of their grouping.
And, in fact, the governor also had a choice of two individuals and could have, based on the structure of parliament, also selected a male and a female but it’s a matter which they’ve got to deal with.
But since we are dealing with constitution, we are reviewing a constitution which has been broken.
For example, the constitution does not speak to a deputy governor but it is my understanding and when I read The Gazette I notice that we have a deputy governor.
Now, it’s not something which as opposition, I’m going to make a lot of noise about but the government of Montserrat must not allow things like this to happen and then say their hands are tied because we allow things to slide and once they continue sliding then we end up in difficulties.
If we are going to have a deputy governor in Montserrat, as was discussed back in 1995 with our government, our position is, do not change the constitution just to put in a deputy governor, let us do a total change in the constitution.
And in the event that a deputy governor was to be appointed, it must be written into the constitution that the deputy governor must be a Montserratian. We cannot have a governor and a deputy governor, both of whom are British.
So the constitution must speak to at least the deputy governor being a Montserratian.
H. Sergeant: Now that we are talking about reviewing the constitution, I know that there are moves within the Overseas Territories in the Caribbean to have more say in selecting governors.
Do you think that is feasible seeing that the British government is the one who is actually paying for this governor to be here, how can we have more say in selecting who we want as governor?
R. Meade: Again, it’s a matter of negotiation.
In the days of Lavity Stout and myself, there was quite a bit of discussion with respect to consultation with respect to selection of the governor and we were moving gradually towards that agreement where there would at least be some form of consultation and we could have objected to a particular governor.
And as I indicated, we were also looking at moving at what I consider a training period by having a deputy governor who would have been local.
H. Sergeant: Another issue if these guys have no more questions on this matter is the issue of British citizenship.
I am not sure if I have heard your comments on this before but most people would probably welcome this although there are some things that they don’t even know about, matters that are yet to be dealt with:
access to education, health, benefits of Montserratians in England-would they be cut? Would they have to line up behind the thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in the UK looking for housing and so forth? So there a lot of issues concerning this but it appears as if there are also benefits for Montserratians for taking up British citizenship. What is your take on this?
R. Meade: Well, for years we’ve been arguing (and I think the current Chief Minister also argued years ago) that we were considered second-class citizens because if you look at a Montserrat passport, it looks for all intents and purposes, the same as a British passport; it also marks British on it.
All that’s happening is a change, in my mind, not only just of nomenclature, on other words, changing from being an Overseas Territories citizen but being British.
There are significant benefits to be derived and I think we need to assess those benefits. But the question is what is the disadvantage of accepting the passport? And there are no significant disadvantages so the benefits clearly outweigh the advantages.
One of my concerns is our own relationship within CARICOM and for example, West Indies cricket and the likes but some people may argue that we really do not benefit too much from West Indies cricket because we can just barely make it to the Leeward Islands team.
So it might be better for Montserratians to consider county cricket where they can possibly make it onto the British team.
And it might even be easier for us to make it to the British team than to the West Indies team.
In straight talk, the benefits of the passport significantly outweigh the disadvantages without us necessarily going into all the benefits and advantages.
H. Sergeant: But how can British citizenship affect our relationship with CARICOM?
R. Meade: Well, if we are now British citizens we need to indicate to CARICOM what our position is because Britain is not a member of CARICOM and Montserrat will now be an extension of Britain in an official sense.
H. Sergeant: I’d also like to know what you think the benefits of having British citizenship-what the benefits are and what do you think about the clause where it is nonreciprocal where British persons would not have the same rights coming to Montserrat as we have going to England?
R. Meade: That is something which is almost automatic and it has been argued over the years that given the small size of the territories that it’s difficult for you to-because if you allow a reciprocal relationship, it means that anyone from France or Germany or wherever in Europe, any member of the European Union country can then come into Montserrat and you can very well now find your public service even more loaded with people who don’t look like us or speak like us.
And it will then change the structure and tenor of Montserrat, as we know it. So the nonreciprocal nature is one of the key points which we must hold out and argue strongly for.
H. Sergeant: I know you haven’t mentioned any benefits which you think would be great for us but I think one of those is the fact that we can go anywhere in the EU whatsoever, work and maybe education and so forth. Is that enough to give up our own nationality for?
R. Meade: When you talk about nationality, I almost laughed there because we really don’t have a nationality; we’re British.
We are not Montserratians; we’re British. Now, it is for us as a people to determine, I am Montserratian, for example, the man from Wales would not consider himself British because he knows where he is from, he knows who he is.
It is for us as a people to determine our own identity and let give you a couple of examples. Just before the volcanic activity, we decided we needed to have our national emblems, our national symbols and national song.
We went to the extent of having a competition where the entire public was involved and a national song was selected.
The palace gave us the authority to use our own national song. We went to the extent of asking for national awards.
They agreed with the national awards except we could not have used the term, order, so we could not have Order of the Crappo, for example.
So we were changing the designation from order to something else because orders are generally for independent countries and we weren’t.
The airport in Montserrat was renamed and I think the historians have go to take a re-look at it because the airport at W.H. Bramble was named, officially, on the 1st of August 1995.
And it is official when all of the international organizations, all of the governments and the airlines and so forth, were officially notified of the name change and that was done for the 1st of August 1995.
So I find rather strange that even Sir Howard is still making the error by indicating a different date when the then government had a formal ceremony and a plaque which they put there indicated when they had the formal ceremony as though that was the time of the name change.
We can all remember at the time of the formal ceremony, even some of the letters on W.H. Bramble were falling off because the airport had already been named.
K. Greaves: Mr. Meade, if we may just change ?
a bit here and look at the state of the-I would like you to look at the state of our economy and especially given the events of September 11th in the United States and what has happened since then, what are the implications for us as a tiny Caribbean island, almost 100% on our financing from the British government and being pushed-our local administration is being pushed very hard to develop as much of our internal financing as possible vis-à-vis to offset or even alleviate some of the recent increases in things like electricity, water (which will be going up pretty soon from what I understand)?
R. Meade: I don’t think that as a government and as a people we focus sufficient attention on the September 11th bombing of the New York City structures.
Americans are now running exceedingly scared to travel. Most of the tourists in the region are Americans.
Europeans are also scared because Europe has been drawn into the whole argument and into the so-called war against Afghanistan so therefore, they see themselves as possible targets.
They are not likely to be coming to the Caribbean in large numbers because they do not trust the security within the region.
The implications would be not only on tourism and we’re already feeling the impact of tourism in the region where hotels are offering two for the price of one, where you pay for one night, you get two nights, you get the second night free.
I think Arrow would do very well in that business. The banana industry is suffering and will continue to suffer.
But our nationals who are overseas are no longer in a position to send the large sums of transfers, dollars, back to Montserrat to support their families here because some of them are unemployed and some of them are also running scared and they are buying all sorts of things to get rid of the anthrax problem.
We need to take a national position with respect to the development of Montserrat. Montserrat is a small country and it’s really not that difficult to develop.
It’s going to take time but the process must start. We have been talking about trying to rebuild our tourism industry.
At least for the next 12 months, that’s going to be shattered.
If you were to check the hotel and guesthouse numbers since September 11th, you’re now moving into the tourist season, you’re not getting people coming in other than official business people.
Your cruise ship people are not likely to see Montserrat as a destination because they are also cutting off from traveling by cruise ships as well.
We can very well see prices and price movements changing but significantly, because of the anthrax, you might find that even food coming out of the United States becomes very suspicious.
So it’s a very wide-ranging impact and we have not even put together a local grouping, officially, on the part of government to start discussing the implications and deal with contingency planning with respect to the economic implications.
K. Greaves: So what do we do and what about the whole idea, as I think Mrs. Cassell-Sealy raised some time ago of internal or Caribbean tourism, looking internally to the Caribbean as a savior given that the Americans and the Europeans won’t be traveling as much or if at all to the Caribbean region?
R. Meade: Caribbean tourism is something that has been spoken about for years but the question is if the tourism industry in these different territories are being affected, offshore banking is being affected-the whole offshore system is being affected-therefore the means whereby we generate income within the region is being stabilized so even Caribbean people will not have that amount of surplus income, disposable income, to deal with in terms of traveling.
So yes, it’s a nice thing to talk about other Caribbean people traveling but they are also putting away for the apparent hard times which are likely to hit them.
K. Greaves: So what do we do? R. Meade: We have got-as I said, to put together a task force within Montserrat, drawing also on some of our regional partners: the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the OECS Economic Affairs Secretariat, the Caribbean Development Bank-put together our own task force, forget about - well, not forget about-allow the CARICOM initiative to go ahead but we have to focus internally and develop our own systems and contingency planning.
For example, I know for a fact that there is a possibility of some manufacturing activity having an interest in Montserrat because the principal behind that company called me and I asked him the simple question, why are you calling me and not calling government?
He figures, when I call those guys I may not be getting any movement.
But government now has to got to fall into place and say, okay, yes this might be a very good option, let’s fall and take that. That will create maybe 50-75 permanent jobs.
It’s a high-energy user so it would be using electricity so your MONLEC would get additional revenue and so forth.
And it’s like putting down a piece of honey; once you put down one drop of honey, ants will come towards it.
Once you get a substantial investment in Montserrat other people will start looking at Montserrat as a viable option for investment again because they would be saying, but if this person is doing that he must be seeing something that we are not seeing and others are likely to come.
Once you have the first successful one, it’s easier for you to negotiate with others.
H. Durand: Having said that, our efforts, I think, to promote Montserrat and invite potential investors, how much of that has to go through Britain since it seems like everything we do has to go there?
R. Meade: You see, this Britain thing is something that we have latched upon since 1997. When I was in office as Chief Minister, if something happened in Montserrat it was Reuben Meade.
From the time I demitted office, everything happened, we start saying the British, the British, the British.
H. Durand: Why is that?
R. Meade: You must try and find out from the public and I don’t’ wish to get into a debate on that.
But we must not be waiting hand and knees on the British and saying, our hands are tied. Our hands are not tied.
It is simply that we are not willing to take the hard decisions. If something goes wrong, the buck has got to stop someplace and the buck must not stop with the British, the buck must stop with the Chief Minister because he is the chief executive officer in Montserrat.
And it is for him, therefore, to be able to put to bear sufficient pressure on the British to cause certain things to happen and also if you can’t get the British to assist you, I can tell you for a fact that there are other institutions within the region who can assist, maybe not of the same magnitude but in terms of some of your technical assistance, they can provide you with technical support because as I indicated our only study done on the airport has been done, funded by the British for the British government.
And, as the governor said, it’s a government of Montserrat decision; it’s not a British decision. And if it’s a government of Montserrat decision, we have got to develop our own documents, we have got to develop our own strategies and our own approaches and then take that to the British.
They will not necessarily agree with us 100% but if we got 50%, we’re doing tremendously better than we’re doing now because everything that happens in Montserrat, the decision is taken by the British, whether it’s DFID here in Montserrat or the Architectural Section in Montserrat or what have you.
H. Sergeant: Well, one last question.
H. Durand: Well, as you said, everything that happens here, the decision is taken by the British.
Just recently at the press conference, that very question was put to the Chief Minister and he said that it is not so.
When the executive council meets, they then meet with the legislative council and then the decision is taken, so how can you say that?
R. Meade: Name for me one major project that has taken place in Montserrat that requires legislative council approval.
The legislative council is for passing laws in Montserrat and we take some nonsense laws to the legislative council and I’m saying some real nonsense laws, which are of no significant importance to the people of Montserrat.
Why, for example, we are taking a firearms act to pass a law-okay yes, we had the bombings and so forth-name the last person who has been shot in Montserrat or has been injured using a gun?
If you get into a fight in Montserrat, the first thing a man does, is dip for a bottle, break the bottle and cut you. So we end up dealing with matters of non-importance.
The executive council makes decisions and when they go the exec… -- Sorry. The executive council makes decisions in council. The governor does not have a vote, okay, it’s not a voting situation but the governor really does not have a vote, he chairs. So therefore government can determine what they require.
They also-when they come to the legislative council-come with one voice because they have already discussed the matter; they should have hammered out all the difficulties.
And what we’re finding happening now is that members of government are coming to the legislative council and arguing against their own bill when the opposition picks up on a particular point.
And then they allow the bill to go through with modifications that don’t make sense even when the opposition is saying, could you hold that bill off and take it back to the executive council for further discussion and debate because the attorney general, for example, when I watched him in legislative council on Friday, I swore he was going to get a heart attack because there are changes which were made which were fundamental which were being discussed and drafted by non-legal people and approved into law.
So we have got to be very careful in terms of what we’re talking about the legislative. Chedmond Browne is totally correct. The legislature is basically there to ensure that the executive behaves itself properly and so forth and we can argue and because it is carried live, then the public gets involved.
But really we have very little authority in terms of the day-to-day runnings of government. That’s done by the executive.
H. Sergeant: Thank you very much. You were listening to a press conference by the leader of the opposition, Mr. Reuben Meade. Thanks as well to Keithstone Greaves and to Helena Durand. On behalf of ZJB News, I am Herman Sergeant.

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