| Gov. Wetherell cites achievements, disappointments | | Print | |
| Written by Richard Green/richard@fptci.com | |||
| Thursday, 18 August 2011 10:13 | |||
 The Turks and Caicos Islands might be closer to returning to self government if not for delays in the Commission of Inquiry and the righting of public finance, but His Excellency the Gov. Gordon Wetherell said there have been several important accomplishments under his watch. “As I leave here, I do so very confident that the future of the Turks and Caicos Islands is a very bright one,” he said at a press conference during his final Advisory Council meeting Aug. 11. First among achievements that he cited was revision of the Constitution, one of the major milestones set by the U.K. for return to elected government. The document will take force 30 days prior to the next elections, which the governor believes will take place in 2012. Revision of the Crown land policy to protect the country’s “single biggest capital resource” from being mismanaged and undersold also topped his list. Huge tracts of Crown land were sold at incredible discounts and in protected areas, although many have been recovered and a new policy developed to protect government land in the future. Some have complained that investigations into alleged government corruption have taken too long, but the governor thinks both the Special Investigation and Prosecution Team (SIPT) and the Civil Recovery Team have made good progress, and he hoped the SIPT would “move very fairly soon to the next phase” of prosecutions. Many positive steps have been taken to strengthen the government’s financial management, but he sees that area as both an achievement and a disappointment. “With the mismanagement that had taken place over a number of years and the advent of the global economic and financial crisis, a lot of the attention which we would have liked to have devoted to implementing other recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry in more timely fashion or indeed milestones that have been subsequently set, a lot of that energy and effort was diverted to getting the finances of the TCI right,” he said. “But ultimately I think that the work done in that area has put the TCI in a much better position going forward.” He was disappointed that the completion of the Commission of Inquiry, which was originally scheduled to report in November 2008, did not happen until July 2009. The commission report found evidence of government corruption, called for suspension of elected government, and suggested a number of steps to putting the country in order. However, help was slow in coming on several fronts. “It would have been helpful in retrospect if some of the strengthening of the team that has been available to us in recent months had been available at a much earlier time,” the governor said. “But I think we are now finally well equipped on all fronts to make the progress that is necessary to meet the milestones in time for elections during 2012. “Of course we would have been in a much better position had we had the resources that have been available to us in a financial sense too, and I am very grateful to the coalition government in the U.K. for what they have done in terms of providing the guarantee for the loan of $260 million which has really allowed I think the Turks and Caicos Islands to live reasonably comfortably through the last several months on a basis of much greater stability and to look forward to achieving that milestone of balancing the budget for the foreseeable future beginning to build up a reserve and looking forward to a brighter future.” He also thanked the council members whom he appointed to help him run the country until elected government is returned to the islands. “I think we’ve all had difficult moments …, but I hope that we can all feel a sense of satisfaction in having participated, however arduous that task at times, in a process that will ultimately be a benefit to the Turks and Caicos Islands. “I think they’ve all been a very fine group of people to work with, and I personally felt both a great pleasure and privilege to have had them around the table with me over the past couple of years, so thank you very much to everyone.” Wetherell took office in August 2008 and has served a three-year term, the standard length of appointments for governors of overseas territories. He will be succeeded at the end of August by veteran Foreign and Commonwealth Office diplomat Ric Todd, who is currently Her Majesty’s ambassador to Poland.
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