Disgraced former Premier Andrew Fahie in prison wear.
Social commentator Claude Skelton Cline said the Virgin Islands has yet to properly mourn the arrest and conviction of former Premier Andrew Fahie, whose downfall sent shockwaves through the territory and continues to affect its political and social climate.
Speaking on his radio programme Honestly Speaking, Skelton Cline argued the territory remains gripped by unprocessed fear and silence.
“This country, we have yet to have had a public conversation about what happened to our former premier and the impact of what happened to him, what that has had on this country,” he stated. “I don’t know if it’s because we’ve been afraid… I don’t know if it’s that we’re still in shock… But the truth of the matter is we have not mourned this thing properly.”
Fahie, who was arrested in April 2022 in a US Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation in Miami, was convicted in February 2024 of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. He was sentenced in August to 11 years in federal prison. Prosecutors said he agreed to use BVI ports to facilitate drug trafficking in exchange for bribes.
Skelton Cline said the arrest had a chilling effect on both the public and the government. “It instilled fear in the country. It paralysed not only public officers, it paralysed the whole country,” he said. “It made us afraid to even have certain conversations with each other.”
He also claimed the UK government used the incident as justification for stepping up control over the territory. “The United Kingdom officialdom used it as a pretext for the context and the content of what has happened and is happening now,” he asserted.
Following Fahie’s arrest, the then-Unity Government took control amid public outcry and a report from a UK-sanctioned Commission of Inquiry, which had already criticised governance in the BVI.
Skelton Cline said the people of the Virgin Islands should not remain silent. “We should not be afraid to talk about our disappointment with what has happened to us. We should not be afraid to give voice to the anger, to the righteous indignation of the condition our country was put into,” he stated.
He further warned that “whatever you bury alive will come back and haunt you.”
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