USVI TAKING STEPS TOWARDS GREATER SELF DETERMINATION THROUGH A NEW CONSTITUTION

As project director of a U.S. Department of the Interior grant devoted toward capacity building to increase constitutional development and self-determination, I have the historic responsibility to stimulate greater awareness, civic consciousness, and political will to improve self-government.

The U.S. Virgin Islands is in the throes of political transition. As attentive residents may know already, I have openly supported the pending legislation, Bill No. 34-0153. Why? It is the logical step to take after the Nov. 3, 2020, referendum that overwhelmingly showed the public position of many voters. For the benefit of the people of the Virgin Islands, I am reiterating my position today, and I am providing an excerpt of my written testimony:

Let us agree to a few basic facts. A constitution is a political framework of government. In the U.S. tradition, it is a written framework that the people craft and ratify. At least 35 states were once territories that had organic acts which served as the temporary or transitional constitutions that were replaced by state constitutions.

By every modern standard of political development, the creation of a written constitution that places increasing responsibility, accountability, and power in the hands of the people or as some say — the masses — by definition is inherently progressive, and in a way decolonizing. In the new millennium or today, every United Nations committee that reviews political development and insists on decolonization, measures the path a non-self-governing territory, colony, or dependent area has moved forward in the path of self-government, economic development, human development, cultural advancement, and every attribute of modern life.

The quest for a USVI constitution must be seen as part and parcel of the necessary growth of our people, our society, and our aspirations. We, the people of the Virgin Islands, are not new to this aspiration for political development.