W. Cabey: Good day listeners and welcome to our news feature for today. Today we are speaking to the new Chairman of the Select Committee on the Constitution, Member of Parliament, Chedmond Browne. Good day to you Mr. Browne.
C. Browne: Good day to you and good day to all our radio listeners.
W. Cabey: Now, Mr. Browne, the Select Committee on the Constitution. We don’t want folks to be confused. First we had the Constitutional Review Committee. This Committee is the Select Committee on the Constitution. What’s the difference between both Committees?
C. Browne: The difference is that the Constitutional Review Team was put together by the British Government and the Government of Montserrat to bring recommendations to the British Government on a way forward for constitutional change.
The Select Committee was put together by the Legislative Council of Montserrat to review the information provided by the Constitutional Review Team and then to put together additional recommendations to what was put together by the Constitutional Review Team.
So our mandate is to put together additional recommendations—some recommendations that we found were lacking or improvements, so to speak.
What the Select Committee came up with in its initial presentation to the Legislative Council was that the establishment of the fact that the draft put together by the Constitutional Review Team was just the beginning of a process. The Select Committee is now continuing that process.
W. Cabey: You have a new member on the Committee, MP, Dr. Lowell Lewis. This came about because of the resignation of MP, Reuben T. Meade. We were hearing too that you were going to resign and then recanted your resignation, and now you are back and now you are Chairman. What happened there?
C. Browne: For me, it was a tactical resignation. We have to understand how Council functions. We were selected by the Legislative Council. For us to offer a resignation, that resignation must be agreed to by the Legislative Council.
So if I were to say to the Council that I resign, the Council would have to agree to that resignation. So they would have ask me more than once, so to speak.
They couldn’t just accept that resignation at the first sitting without first requesting. So, for me it was tactics.
Tactics being that we needed to magnify the importance of this Constitutional Review, the whole Constitutional idea and the whole Constitutional Reform. I don’t think we pay enough attention to it and I personally don’t think we understand how important it is.
So for me, it was a tactical move in order to magnify the situation, so to speak, and see if more people would just start to pay attention to what is actually happening.
W. Cabey: Where are we now anyway?
C. Browne: It’s a long story but what has happened is what the British Government actually hoped for, they didn’t get, from any of the Territories, including Montserrat.
There is a lot of, not really understanding the dynamics of what is going on here. The remaining Colonies are just that, they are still Colonies.
There is a U.N. Mandate on Decolonisation that the British Government agreed to. And based on that mandate, there are certain things that must take place, there are certain information that should be disseminated to the people of the Colonies, and there are certain actions and activities that should indicate that the Colonies are moving out of Colonialism into some state of internal self-government and eventually full self-government.
These things have not happened in the remaining Colonies. So this whole constitutional reform is basically a sideline approach by the British Government to bypass all of the colonial mandates on decolonisation and convince the United Nations that the remaining Colonies do, in fact, want to and intend to remain attached to the British Empire.
So because of that, they instituted the reform but what has happened is that none of the Colonies have in fact put together draft constitutional reform suggestions that indicate that they willing to stay attached to the British Government. So they seem to have lost interest, in a way.
W. Cabey: What went wrong though, specifically, that caused the resignation of Mr. Meade and his replacement by Dr. Lewis? C. Browne: I can’t speak for Mr. Meade. What my perception was at the time (because I asked the Chief Minister—if you all remember—in the last Legislative Council sitting of the House, what actually took place in England? And he said, basically, there was little or no discussion on the Constitution.
But if you recall, the Governor went on Radio Montserrat after that meeting when he came back and make certain statement with regard to the British Government’s position on Constitutional Reform.
If you recall, that was the only information available to us. Based on what the Governor said, it was indicative that the British Government was not going to entertain any form of Constitutional reform that addressed the powers of the Governor.
The Chief Minister never brought back that type of information. But at the time, the only information we had available to us was what the Governor said. And based on what the Governor was saying, it was indicative that the British Government was no longer serious about Constitutional reform and based on that—I mean I can’t speak for Mr. Meade, I’m only drawing certain assumptions. Mr. Meade drew this to the attention of the House and then he offered his resignation. I used the same tactic but my tactic was more to magnify the situation.
W. Cabey: But if they are not going to discuss certain things, where are we going?
C. Browne: But they haven’t said that. The Governor said that. But when I asked the Chief Minister, in the House, for some documented position he said there was none because the situation is still wide open.
It is basically up to us, and that is one of the reasons why I too continue. Because at the end of day, we must have some documented position of what it is we actually believe should be in our Constitution, whether they accept it or not. And having left it up to us now the ball is actually in our court.
We must put something together and have something on paper that we can present and say, this is our position.
These are the things that we think are in the best interest of the people of Montserrat in terms of government and good government. So these are the things that we have documented. And allow them now to react because basically, it is apparent that they have lost interest.
And my assumption is that interest has been lost because neither Montserrat nor any of the other Colonies actually presented them with a draft Constitutional Reform that would have allowed them to say that we have indicated that we want to remain their Colonies forever.
W. Cabey: But where are we in terms of singing from the same hymn sheet as Colonies or as Dependent Territories?
C. Browne: Well, we don’t communicate a whole lot with each other. What I know, I know because I gather a lot of information and I speak to a lot of Activists in the other Colonies plus I follow, very closely, what goes on at the United Nations, in terms of Colonial Review so I’m able to gather a lot information and put it together in terms of where we are.
We’re basically all saying the same thing. We want the next stage. There are three stages, given in the United Nations Mandate on Decolonisation.
You can move from Colonialism to full internal self-government, which is called Associated Statehood or Independence. And then you can also have that par,t which is Integration.
If you agree to integrate with your Administering power, you are in fact, expressing a right to self-determination. Now, this is where Britain hoped we would have gone but we haven’t gone there and neither have any of the other Colonies.
All the Colonies that went to the U.N. Meeting in Anguilla last year, all came up with the same issue. They, in fact, want a further expression of self-determination that moves in the direction of Statehood, Associated Statehood, free association with Britain, which is the middle step between Colonialism and Independence.
Britain is balking on that position; they don’t want that. They are insisting that we either stay a Colony or take full independence right away even though the United Nation’s Mandate grants a middle step, which we have never been allowed to access.
Basically, every Colony came up with that statement or that position. We would like now to be on the middle ground, a Free Associated State, neither Independent, neither a Colony, which is moving in the direction of Independence.
W. Cabey: But aren’t we moving the other way now further into the British system now we have the new British passport?
C. Browne: We’re not actually moving the other way. Britain offered us certain carrots, the passport being one of them, free access to England being another, and free trips based on the volcano.
They have offered us certain carrots which we take. Oppressed people, powerless people, poor people generally don’t turn down free gifts. That’s the reality, that’s a social reality that we should we all become aware of.
The British Government is aware of social dynamics. It is a social reality that they might attempt to transform into a political reality, which is not actually so.
Having taken it—many people have taken it—it hasn’t changed their mentality or their thinking. It is just another tool. Most people took it because it was a tool that would allow them freer access of travel and easier access to the developed world.
But if the British Government would like to tie it politically to something else that is their issue but it isn’t actually the reality. We haven’t moved any closer in terms of those things.
What has happened to us is that we—Montserrat especially—is back in grant-in-aid and that grant-in-aid has tied us more closely to the British system and full internal Government by the Governor, which is his constitutional right.
He exercises it fully now simply because they have a huge economic hold over us. The other Colonies are not in the same position.
Most of them are basically out of budgetary aid so therefore they have a freer hand in their decision-making process than we do.
But the British Government might want to paint a picture of something else but the status that we have now is the same status we’ve had since the sixties.
W. Cabey: What about the declining aid framework, as you mentioned, that we are in grant-in-aid—how will this affect us then?
C. Browne: The declining aid framework is designed basically to put pressure on us. The more the British Government declines the aid package, the more pressure it can put on an existing Government of the day to adhere to certain rules, principles and directions that it would like see happen and this is basically what happens.
A lot of times when you see us making certain decisions, we are basically being coerced into it even though the powerbrokers at the very top of the structure will never admit that they were coerced, it is clear coercion by British Government officials to force us to do certain things that would allow them to satisfy an agenda that generally is not in our best interests.
W. Cabey: What are the most critical issues though for Montserrat?
C.Browne: Right now, in terms of Constitution? For us, the most critical issue is the powers of the Governor, the ability of the Governor to have almost total absolute authority to govern despite the fact that we have elected officials who are elected to govern.
W. Cabey: But you know this is a contentious one?
C. Browne: Yes but the abilities of the Governor to intercede in the internal affairs of the country. If we elect a Government then that Government should have some form of authority.
Elected Governments in this country have little or no authority. We are elected, we sit in office but we are basically (as I’ve said before) we’re basically fronts.
We just sit in the front office. We basically have little or no political authority to make decisions and to me, this is the major thrust of any new Constitutional reform.
It is a basic human right—it’s written in the Human Rights document at the United Nations—that it is the right of any people to be governed by the people they elect.
We are basically not governed by the people we elect. We are governed by a Governor who is selected by the British Government and sent to Montserrat.
W. Cabey: But so many time, Mr. Browne, we hear either from the Governor or from the Chief Minister that they consulted and of course, you have the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, and in some cases, they say Governor-in-Council. Is this really happening? Is there consultation or are we just being fooled?
C. Browne: There is consultation but there’s also an unwritten law. Consultation is just that.
Even if you and I consult, I am not bound by your consultation and there are certain areas that come under the Governor’s constitutional authority that whether he consults with the elected officials of this country or not, his decision is final.
So it is not consultation that we are looking at. What we need to be looking at is the same Governor-in Council where the Governor is bound by the majority of what is said in Council.
If there are seven Council Members and the Governor is only one Member of that Council, then the Governor must be bound by the majority when a decision is made in Council.
W. Cabey: But that’s not the case now?
C. Browne: Well, I can’t say that. I’ve never sat in Executive Council so I can’t exactly give you… Executive Council is secret. What goes in Executive Council happens in secret. We know this. So I cannot go on and tell you what goes on in Executive Council.
I can only speak about what I see happening, actions.
W. Cabey: You see, there are some things that we don’t understand as laypersons: collective responsibility and all of this. How does all of this play into it?
C. Browne: We are drifting away from Constitution and we’re drifting into how Executive Council functions. There is some kind of written law inside of Executive Council that speaks to Collective Responsibility which means that if you and I are in Executive Council and an issue comes up in Council and I happen to disagree with the issue (very, very much disagree with the issue) but the majority inside of Executive Council agree with the issue, I am bound by Collective Responsibility to go along with the issue, not only go along it but I cannot come then outside of Executive Council and publicly state that I disagreed inside of Council with the decision that was taken. This is my understanding of how that Collective Responsibility functions inside of Executive Council.
W. Cabey: Let’s get back to the Select Committee. What are you plans? What happens next? And when will we know if we are going to be moving ahead?
C. Browne: Well, again, the British Government has stated openly—because as a Member of the Legislative Council and as a Member of the Committee, I did meet with British Officials who came here initially and they stated quite frankly that there is absolutely no time frame on this constitutional reform.
It is up to each Colonial Government to determine the time and the pace that they will take to establish the reform suggestions that they want to submit.
And it is then up to each Government to request a bilateral talk, (bilateral meaning talks between governments on the issue when they feel they are fully prepared to hold talks on that issue) so there’s no hard and fast timeframe.
There never was from the very beginning and there is no hard and fast time frame now. And now, the fact that none of us wrote anything in our recommendation to say that we wanted to remain a British Colony forever, that timeframe has become even looser.
So there is absolutely no rush. We can now afford to take our time and go through a proper dedicated process in terms of constitutional education, in terms of constitutional review and talks vis-à-vis the people of the country, in terms of gathering information, in terms of accessing constitutional lawyers, in terms of accessing the United Nations Decolonisation Committee.
We now have enough time to broaden our scope and ensure that what we put together is actually of benefit to us, the People of Montserrat and is in keeping with all the legal necessities to form a good Constitution that pertains to good government and the best interests of the people of any particular country.
W. Cabey: Are you happy with the way the education process is going, informing the populace as to what is at stake here?
C. Browne: Well, actually, I’m not. That’s been one of my major beefs and now that I actually am the Chairman, I guess the ball rests in my court now to take up the issue and move on.
I was never happy with what the original Constitutional Review did, in terms of education. I have not been happy with what has been done in the timeframe in between and I feel the first step, now that you pointed at, the first in this issue actually should be a wide-ranging public education program in terms of understanding what it really means and why it is so absolutely necessary that we do, in fact, have a Constitution that governs us in our best interests and not governs us in the best interests of somebody else.
W. Cabey: But how should we go about this? We know that we have the Town Hall meetings and we have the radio programs. What method should we use?
C. Browne: I would use both. I would say the radio is actually more effective. While you can get a closer rapport with the people in the Town Hall meetings, you get less attendance.
With a radio, you can be in every room in every house because basically everybody has a radio and basically many people listen to the radio.
So I would say, regular radio programming interspersed with regular town hall meetings but I say an in-depth education program is necessary.
W. Cabey: You said regular but how regular because sometimes we hear something this week, not until two months later or…?
C. Browne: It’s a matter of air time. I would do an intensive program on both the radio and the television if it were accessible. I guess now I can come and call on Radio Montserrat so I can, I believe, get some regular airtime to do a program of this nature.
Once I know it’s possible, then for me, regular would be at least two times a month.
W. Cabey: What sort of resource persons are you looking at for the Select Committee or do you have any resource persons?
C. Browne: The Members of the Committee are three Members of Parliament: Dr. Lewis, hon. Claude Hogan, myself and we have legal advice from the Attorney General’s office but as I said, I would like to broaden the scope.
I know that one of the other Colonies has already requested and already gotten from the British Government, access to a constitutional lawyer.
I think that should be one of our next steps also. We need a constitutional lawyer with background in Colonies attempting to move out of Colonialism. So I think we need to now access that.
We also need to start accessing a lot of the information, which I have on my computer, from the United Nations, as it pertains to decolonisation and the human rights issues, in terms of decolonisation.
We need to now start bringing these bits and pieces of information together and putting complete packages together to disseminate to the people in terms of the same types of programming that I have been talking about.
W. Cabey: You said a lawyer. We may need more than one lawyer. Who will foot the bill?
C. Browne: The British Government; this is the British Government’s program. The British Government is the one attempting to assure the United Nations that it has done everything possible to have constitutional reform in its colonies.
This whole issue started with the British Government and it started with the British Government because the British Government wants to reassure the United Nations that it has done everything possible to move us out of our Colonial state into some other status and therefore, having done that, it can make a case to the United Nations that we prefer to remain in our present status, a British Colony.
As I said before, no Colony has supported that at the Decolonisation Meetings so the British Government is stuck but it is their issue.
They are the ones that brought it up. They are the ones that now must see it through.
W. Cabey: You speak with a lot of persons on a one-on-one basis, what generally is the feeling in terms of remaining as a Colony or moving ahead?
C. Browne: This came up very clearly at all the Town Hall meetings that we held because remember, for a period, I was also part of the Constitutional Review Team.
The majority of the people who spoke on that issue in Montserrat spoke to the same voice. They did not see Montserrat remaining a Colony of Britain forever.
Let me tell you where the problem lies. The problem lies in a timeframe. We have no specific timeframe out of Colonialism into Associated Statehood or Independence but we do know in all our minds that we never perceived ourselves as remaining a British Colony forever.
So there’s absolutely no doubt on that issue. The problem lies in other areas. The problem lies in economics. The problem lies in timeframes. The problem lies in our present status. There are other issues that do not allow us to think clearly specifically on the question but there is no issue on the question of whether we intend to remain a British Colony or not.
Clearly, everybody says no. At some point time in time in our future, we will become an independent country. So it’s always a timeframe; it’s never that we’re not going to go there. It’s always when are we going to get there or when are we going to start preparing to get there or we should be preparing to get there.
That is generally the response that you get. Never a response that we will remain the way we are forever.
W. Cabey: Let me be a little controversial here. If we’re having all these problems and we’re not sure what we’re doing, what do we do? We’re talking about national song, national dress, shouldn’t these come after?
C. Browne: I agree with you. We put the cart before the horse in a lot of instances but it’s also an indicator. That also is an indicator that there are different sectors of the society who recognize that at some point in time, we are going to become a Nation and when we do become a nation, we’re going to need all these national symbols. But the cart is before the horse so that clearly shows you also, it indicates just what I said before.
In our subconscious, we know at some point in time, we must become a Nation and different sectors of the society are, in fact, creating those national symbols long before we’ve started to address the issue of the steps towards nationhood.
W. Cabey: I’m very concerned about the youth and getting them on board. We have a Youth Parliament. What sort of program do we have to incorporate the youth in all of this?
C. Browne: Now that I am the Chairman and my daughter who lives in my house is also a sitting Member of that Youth Parliament, I will attempt to utilize that as a way in to speak to them.
But it’s not only the Youth Parliament, it's all our youth. It’s our entire education system.
It’s a process of education, which by the way, the British Government signed an agreement since 1959 under its obligation to disseminate information on these issues, which it has never done.
The British are bound by International Law to do that same educational process that I’m talking about now.
At the last meeting of the United Nations on Decolonisation, they brought out the fact that the Decolonisation Mandate was signed over 40 years ago by all the colonial powers and still 40 years later, there are still Colonies left in the world when it should have been eradicated by the year 2000.
So all these things that we’re talking about lie with the Administering Power, which in our case is Great Britain to bring us from one state to another state. Instead, they have kept us dormant in limbo in our Colonial state for 40 years.
So it is up to us, in a certain way, to take the bull by the horns now and move on. If somebody is supposed to do something and they’re not going to do it, you don’t lie down and cry about, you get up and do it for yourself. That’s my approach anyway.
W. Cabey: What would you say to those persons who still feel that we should remain a Colony because Montserrat is small, we can’t make it on our own? They talk about OECS, CARICOM, all of these things.
C. Browne: I don’t have a problem with that. All of it has to do with a process of education. We can only draw our conclusions based upon information available to us.
I know as a child I was taught the same thing. Basically, we respond based upon the knowledge base that we have and most of us have been educated to draw that conclusion on most of the statements that you just made.
So I don’t have a problem with it. What I say is that it is an educational process. And in any case, even if the present generation has that thought process in mind, it does not indicate that we should not leave room for a future generation, who with a better understanding of global dynamics, might not want to follow the process right through to its logical conclusion.
So we should not anticipate that because we are not properly prepared that we should not properly prepare our children to make a step that we are not in a position to take.
W. Cabey: Finally Mr. Browne, can we say it’s going to be steady progress or full speed ahead from here on?
C. Browne: Steady, you can’t go full speed, because you can’t force feed the people so it’s going to be steady.
It’s going to be steady and regular. And I think at the end of this whole thing, we will have an understanding of where we need to go and the things that we need to put in a Constitution that gives us the right to govern ourselves but also ensures the people of the right to protection from the people they elect to govern them.
W. Cabey: And there’s not real time line on this?
C. Browne: Not according to what the British Government officials have said. No there’s no time line.> W. Cabey: Thank you very much, Mr. Browne. Any closing remarks?
C. Browne: I thank you very much for the interview and the length of the interview. I appreciate it and I hope, like I said, that I’ll be back here on a more regular basis.
W. Cabey: Thank you once again, Mr. Browne. That was Member of Parliament and the new Chairman of the Select Committee on the Constitution, Chedmond Browne. Once again, thanks for talking to us and I’m sure you’ll be updating us as time goes on.