Caribbean News Now!

by Caribbean News Now contributor

PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos Islands -- Last month, three local businessmen, who were hoping to get a contract for ground services at the Providenciales airport, asked the interim government to intervene in an ongoing dispute with the Turks and Caicos Islands Airports Authority (TCIAA), accusing the TCIAA of corrupt and unfair administrative practices.

However, Governor Ric Todd declined to get involved, insisting that the parties should work it out between themselves.

The individuals in question, Shaun Malcolm, Joshua Harvey, and Lyndon Gardiner, then wrote to Lilian Misick, chair of the Consultative Forum -- a body established by the interim government -- alleging unfair practices and serious dishonesty by the TCIAA and requesting government intervention, pleading dire urgency.

Consultative Forum chair, Lillian Misick

According to Misick, she decided that the Consultative Forum should honour this request by providing a venue for the facts to be determined in the public’s interest and pursuant to principles of transparency and good governance.

“I also thought it was far better to resolve these issues administratively, if at all possible, instead of having the TCIAA end up as a defendant in court,” she said.

Misick accordingly sent invitations to all interested parties to appear at a hearing by the Forum set for last Friday.

However, within 24 hours, Misick received an email from acting governor Patrick Boyle and attorney general Huw Shepheard, saying that the government has no interest in protecting private individuals from their own business misjudgments and that the Consultative Forum has no authority to hold such a hearing.

According to Boyle and Shepheard, “Mr Malcolm and Mr Harvey are asking the government to protect them from the consequences of their own misjudgements,” and, further, that “the Forum has no power … to inquire into matters such as this”.

Misick responded that the purpose of this hearing was never to protect anyone from anything. Instead, she said, it was to further the public’s compelling interest in ensuring that the TCIAA is not acting ultra vires as alleged.

“I felt this hearing was the most prudent way to determine whether these very serious allegations have any basis in fact. Not to mention that it would have given members of the TCIAA an opportunity to dispel the aspersions that have already been cast on their integrity,” she explained.

Misick went on to recall that she is on record expressing national regret that the Consultative Forum (CF) did not have the authority to compel the parties implicated in the failure of the TCI Bank to give a public account for their actions (or their failure to act as might have been the case).

“I felt very strongly that holding a public hearing was the least this interim administration owed aggrieved depositors in particular and TC Islanders in general,” she said.

She added that, if an impartial body like the Forum’s Public Finance Committee was duly vested with the authority to exercise this kind of oversight, the endemic corruption and general administrative incompetence that led to the partial suspension of the TCI Constitution would never have taken root.

She said she will seek clarification from Governor Todd (and other British authorities) on when or if Forum committees in the TCI will ever be empowered to perform the same oversight functions that Parliamentary committees in the UK routinely perform.

“I am afraid there is no denying that preventing us from doing so yet again feeds into the growing perception that the British do not believe any TC Islander is competent to act in our national interest. This is untenable; it is unacceptable,” Misick concluded.

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