Callers to Speak out BVI mostly agreed for term limits for politicians. Photo: VINO

One of the members of the HOA during a debate suggested that there should be term limits so that some of the politicians, who have been in the House for a very long time without a break could get an opportunity to exit the House and see what life is like on the outside and maybe return if they are re-elected another time where they would be able to bring a different perspective to the debates.

According to one of the callers to the programme, which was aired February 14, 2012, she would like to see no more than four terms for politicians in office “because we come to think that we own those seats and during campaign you hear people talk about coming to run against me in my district, it is not your district, we loaned it to you for a time and you would be lucky if we return you...And you hear people talk about my Ministry. It is not your Ministry, it is the Ministry to which you have oversight for a time and when they get in there they feel like they are on a path with Jesus Christ, nobody is to say anything about them, not question what they do...”

The caller further said she wished that in this four year term of Government, that enough votes would be garnered to put term limits for no more than four terms. “Go out and then you could come back because a lot of them would not do like Oliver Cills and Terrence Lettsome...Kenny Rodgers said know when to walk away know when to run. A lot of them don’t have that courage to leave and go out there, they want to stay there until they are totally unable to do what needs to be done. So term limits would be doing the constituents of any district a service...”

Another caller recommended that it should be five terms in office rather than four to which the person who had suggested four called back to express her agreement.

One caller, however, said he doesn’t believe someone should be taken out of office as longs as he is performing well. “If someone there is doing good I don’t think you should change them...and once you are strong, healthy and could move around...if they aren’t doing good you get rid of them,” the caller stated.

Meanwhile, host of the show Douglas Wheatley said he also favoured it for politicians but also said there should be term limits for persons in the bureaucracy.

“If you have someone who is appointed to a position, whether in the public service or in a statutory body, or a commission or committee and they may be doing a good job sometimes the tendency is if they are doing a good job they should be left to perform and sometimes they may be there for up to 10, 15, 25 years. But when we look as a country as a whole we are selling ourselves short because we know only that one person and how that one person performs but we don’t give other persons an opportunity to perform. Perhaps the other person might perform a lot better than the last person but you would never know because they were never given a chance....and we are losing out on the diversity that would be brought in by some other person”.