Dickson Igwe. Photo: Provided

He is a politician capable of placing the myriad issues of the day into a framework for effective governance. He is a leader with strategic vision. And he has an economic and social philosophy.

His predecessor Ralph T O’Neal was a formidable politician and historian. The Old King of Virgin Islands politics possessed the memory of an elephant. Fraser brings different, but equally essential qualities, to the Grand Ole party, and the Virgin Islands.

Fraser is a fighter. He is a tough guy. He is not a man to suffer fools. He is impatient about getting these Virgin Islands to the right place. He reminds this Journalist of another tough guy politician in Great Britain. Norman Tebbit was Margaret Thatcher’s attack dog. Tebbit was not loved by the Left. But Tebbit got things done and was instrumental to Thatcher’s Social and Economic Revolution of the 1980s. Fraser is that type of CAN DO politician. 

Fraser has his idiosyncrasies. He has been described as pompous and arrogant. Those that know Fraser will state that this is a gross oversimplification of a very complex man. Fraser is a very private man. He will now have to become a very public man.  

He has his party core fired up. The skeleton of the party throughout the country has been resurrected. It will begin to take on new flesh. That is crucial for GENERAL ELECTION SUCCESS.

The task Fraser now faces is reaching out to a NEW DEMOGRAPHIC. These are the under 50s who are mostly the product of migration. Fraser will have to show them that he is INCLUSIVE and TOLERANT. Fraser will also have to reach out to the expatriate population. These are men and women who have been told wrongly, that Fraser is insular, and prejudiced against outsiders.   

The following story was penned days before Fraser’s internal party election victory. This Old Boy Journalist will return to the political significance of a Julian Fraser Leadership of the Grand Ole Party at a later date.

Now, obsessive secrecy is only required in time of war, or when a state has powerful enemies at home and abroad. However, in peaceful times, unnecessary secrecy is simple a ruse to hide unethical behavior.

Transparency these early 2000s is a synonym for effective and good governance. On the other hand a lack of transparency is synonymous with corruption and deception.

Digital technology is making secrecy a much more difficult proposition for governments these days, and for everyone else for that matter. Virgin Islands politicians are only just beginning to grasp that fact. A simple Google search will severely embarrass a politician with too many skeletons in his cupboard. In recent years, the integrity of the US Government has been seriously compromised by high tech WHISTLE BLOWERS.

The British Establishment too, loves secrecy. However, check the history. Some of the most compromising security incidents took place when it became too secret. It just took a couple of well placed spies of a foreign power to bring the security order crashing to pieces. Had there been more transparency, those spies may well have been detected before the damage was done: ‘’two heads are better than one,’’ is the old adage. With the digital environment, one gifted hacker can deliver an encyclopedia of secrets to the enemy at the click of a mouse.

Today, a nonprofit organization or charity that lacks transparency is avoided and shunned by donors, sponsors and volunteers. In private enterprise, a new culture of transparency has become the order of the day. Read any management journal, today’s management culture stresses transparency as good for business.

This is a new digital epoch, where the advent of social media and various types of intrusive software, swiftly expose the dirty laundry of the obsessively secret. Privacy is a good thing. However, to be totally private these days means going to live in a remote jungle or on a remote island.

This will have to be a place with no modern technology whatsoever. And even then a powerful satellite hundreds of miles above the earth’s surface can take a photo of the veritable Robinson Crusoe, bathing in a freshwater pond.

To be continued

Dickson Igwe is a current affairs columnist and scholar of strategy. Connect with Dickson Igwe on Twitter and FACEBOOK.