After three long years, two conflicting narratives have emerged about the Commission of Inquiry reforms.
On one extreme is the view that they will usher in a golden era of accountability, transparency and good governance. On the other extreme is the view that they will change nothing.
The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle, but the Virgin Islands community must do everything in its power to ensure that the first perspective wins the day.
And this means more hard work for many years to come.
First, though, the sheer scale of the reforms must be acknowledged. The COI programme was truly monumental — especially considering that it was undertaken simultaneously with equally extensive recommendations from the United Kingdom law-enforcement review and a 2024 report by the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force.
The premier, his elected government, the public service, and the governor appear to have worked tirelessly (and, with a few exceptions, in good faith) to implement so many measures so quickly.
Kudos all around.
The COI process has achieved badly needed reforms that in many cases auditors and other watchdogs had recommended for decades as successive VI governments and governors looked the other way.
Notable highlights include removing elected leaders’ power over assistance grants; strengthening the auditor general; implementing measures to reform some statutory boards; and tightening procurement systems in a way that will help de-politicise contracts and get better value for taxpayers’ money.
All these steps are already making an important difference in the way the territory is managed, and over time they will surely improve the lives of the people.
Other reforms, however, have fallen short of what was promised.
A glaring example is the House of Assembly members’ Register of Interests, which the reform framework promised to make public. Today, the public can view the register for a price, but they can’t take notes or copies, and they are barred by law from publishing what they find there. These absurd restrictions are counter to the spirit of the COI recommendations.
Also problematic are the new law and policy on residency and belongership, which appear to have officially codified the very confusion the COI criticised in the previous system. To wit, they set up a quota system for how many new belongers can be allowed each year while also purporting to clarify the length of residency required to qualify for belongership.
The low quota that will surely be set will almost certainly render the residency requirement effectively meaningless, perpetuating the problem identified by the COI: People often wait for many years after meeting the residency requirement without being seriously considered for belongership and without any way to know when they might come eligible.
We have also noted troubling signs that some statutory boards — many of which have long believed they are not bound by the same basic governance standards as the central government — plan to continue with business as usual despite the COI reforms.
Meanwhile, transparency is still lacking despite lip service from the government and the governor alike. Indeed, in recent days the Beacon published two stories about officials refusing to disclose important taxpayer-funded documents that clearly should be public: The governor is withholding his police-vetting agreement with the United Kingdom Home Office, and the government is withholding the first and second parts of the airport business case, which were completed last September and in recent days, respectively.
In the absence of freedom-of-information legislation, the media and public have no recourse.
Some of the COI shortcomings stem from wilful resistance on the part of legislators loath to leave behind business as usual. But in fairness, we believe that the larger issue is one of magnitude: It is impossible to properly implement decades’ worth of neglected reforms in three years. And that’s why it is so important for the work to continue.
The UK, of course, has a big part to play. But the people of the VI ultimately must shoulder the responsibility for making the reforms stick. Too often in the past, the territory has adopted laws and policies only to ignore them in practice. After the monumental effort of the past three years, this must not happen with the COI reforms.
