Providenciales, Turks and Caicos – March 20, 2018 – (CORRECTED) On Thursday March 15, in the House of Assembly, I requested to move my seat from the government benches and to sit elsewhere in the House.

I walked the floor to sit as an Independent not, let me be clear, with the PNP.

I believe I owe the public and my supporters an explanation. 

I was voted in by more than 3,000 people in the 2016 election to represent them and to help bring about the change that the country wanted.

Since being fired by the Premier as a Minister in June 2017, without explanation, I have been side-lined.

For the last 9 months I have not been contacted by the Premier nor anyone in Government. I have not been asked to comment on any bill, nor asked if I can assist with the Hurricane assistance program, nothing. Not one communication in 9 months!

As a back bencher I believe I still have much to offer the government with both ideas and practical solutions to the many problems we face.  The Premier has chosen to ignore me and disrespect the people who voted for me because of her long standing personal animosity towards me.

I have wrestled with my conscience as the problems for this country have multiplied and as this Government under the dominant leadership of the Premier has floundered.

I have watched in silence, as our borders are breached, our children are left to study under atrocious conditions, our tourists are left to collapse from heat in long immigration lines, and Salt Cay, Grand Turk and South Caicos are ignored. 

The Premier’s public pronouncement on Wednesday on Exhale indicated that Honourable Connolly is not part of my team and will never be part of my team certainly cleared all doubt that my exclusion was some type of oversight.  What in fact the Premier was saying was ‘I will ignore the representative of more than 3,000 people, nearly half the voting population, because I do not like her’.

To repeat what I said during election time, for me, ‘enough is enough’. My silence, up to now, has been out of loyalty to the Party and the people who elected me, but I have come to the realization that if I am to be loyal to the Party and the people of this country I need to take a stand against the failings of this Government and the lack of leadership before it is too late.

If I cannot represent my people inside this Government, I will represent them as an independent member outside of Government.

I have spoken to many PDM supporters who agree with my stance and are unhappy with the way this Government has performed.  The PDM voters know that this present Government does not reflect the values and principles of the PDM party, but their protests are muted because of the fear of retribution.  

The fear is justifiable, in my opinion, as I and my family have been the subject of vicious attacks in social media by the unsavory elements who have attached themselves to the coat tails of this Government.

The Premier is a Leader of a Democratic Party with a constitution that was drawn up by the founders of the Party led by Hon. Jags McCartney.The supporters, the Party Branches and the NGC all have a part to play under the PDM Constitution to ensure that the Party represents the people, to ensure democracy.

The PDM, as a Democratic Party, no longer exists. A few influential enablers in the NGC have ceded absolute power to the Premier. The NGC hardly meets, the Constitution is routinely ignored, and the Branches and supporters will not be needed again until 2020, so do not expect your calls to be returned until then.

Those with strong opinions are side-lined or purged from the Party. The list of long serving PDM’s who have been driven out of the Party since the appointment of the Premier as leader in 2012 is long and well known so it does not need repeating.

I am sure my actions will be painted as being disloyal to the Party. They are not! They are the actions of a committed democrat who believes in the party and loves her country.  I have no goals other than for my country to succeed.  I do not play games, I do not do deals and I will not be intimidated.

I am sure that the usual puppets in the social media will say that ‘she was never a real PDM’. But I would ask all PDM members and supporters to consider the other people purged from the Party, some who were founders of the Party, perhaps they were never ‘real PDM’s’.

The truth is that the party stands apart and above any one individual and it is dangerous to label all dissenters as disloyal. That is a recipe for dictatorship, not democracy.

Last week the Premier sought to blame the hardworking civil servants for the queues at the airport. As Minister of Finance (she has many ministries) she is well aware that the chaos at the airport was a direct result of her decision to cut the salaries budget of every department in the Immigration and Border Control Ministry.

The Premier was being disingenuous, but this type of attack on perceived enemies either directly or by proxies in social media is the one defining characteristic of this government.  The ‘I didn’t get the email’ excuse has become a running joke as it has been used so often as the explanation for none attendance at important community events.  Important for the community that is, if not for this government.

The Premier continues to use social media to distract, deflect and blame others for the ills of this country, but the real problems in this country cannot be fixed by the spin doctors.

Without a brave and honest NGC holding the Leader to account then the Government, the PDM Party and the country are destined to the same failed leadership for the next 2.5 years that we have seen in the last 16 months. I am not sure this country can stand another few months of mismanagement let alone 2 years and more.

There has been a remarkably bitter, vicious and long running campaign against me by the Premier since I won my seat in 2012. There was a brief truce during the run up to voting in the 2016 election which, as she gloatingly told me later, was because “she had an election to win”. 

I am comforted that I am not the only one who was fooled by the false promise of the campaign. I am sure all the hotel workers will understand that the Premier ‘had an election to win’, as will the voters who were promised change only to find that the only thing that changed was the promise.

Well I am fooled no longer. As an independent member of the House I will be an outspoken supporter of the promises the PDM party made in the 2016 campaign, including the payment of the 100% service charge for hospitality workers. If there are some who want to brand me as disloyal for seeking to carry out the promises that the PDM made to its supporters and the country in the election, so be it.