VI still 'paralysed' by Fahie scandal— Skelton-Cline
This is according to radio personality and former government consultant Pastor Claude O. Skelton-Cline, who on his April 15, 2025, edition of his popular radio programme Honestly Speaking on ZBVI 780 AM, called for a long-overdue national conversation on the issue.
Not Drug Traffickers
“The people of the Virgin Islands are yet to come to grips with the fallout from the arrest and jailing of former Premier Andrew A. Fahie,” he asserted, adding with emphasis, “The people of the Virgin Islands are not drug traffickers.”
Expressing dismay at what he described as a collective failure to publicly process the emotional and political aftermath of the former premier’s arrest in 2022 on drug trafficking and money laundering charges, he posits, “We have not mourned this thing properly because we have not had any public conversation and discourse about it; Whatever you bury alive will come back and haunt you.”
Calling attention to the societal and psychological impact, he suggested, “This country was put in the grip of fear, and fear is one of the most powerful currencies in the earth.”
The incident, he said, shocked the Territory into silence, explaining that the absence of open discourse had paralysed not just public officers but the entire population. “It instilled fear in the country… It made us afraid to even have certain conversations with each other.”
UK capitalised on the ‘moment of crisis’
According to the outspoken pastor, the UK government and other external actors seized upon the moment of crisis. “The United Kingdom, officialdom, used it as a pretext for the context and the content of what has happened and is happening now.”
The Commission of Inquiry (CoI) Report, with its recommendations for a UK takeover, was being held up by then-Governor John J. Rankin, but it was released the day after Mr Fahie was arrested in Miami.
Additionally, Skelton-Cline did not hesitate to address the racial undercurrents he believes shaped the post-Fahie era, urging open discussion.
“I want to say to my white brothers and sisters—and I want to really say to all of us—We must have a rational, sober, passionate conversation around the matters of race, financial disenfranchisement, inequities, and sexuality.”
Political Turmoil
According to Skelton-Cline, the public must be courageous in confronting hard truths, insisting “...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.”
Reflecting on the political turmoil that followed Fahie’s arrest—including the formation of the ‘Unity Government’ and the reshuffling of ministers—Skelton-Cline was unsparing in his critique of the response.
“In that moment, where we needed women and men to meet the moment… it was left up to the whomevers,” he lamented, and quipped, “We simply cowed, we complied, and we became complicit.”
Rejecting the notion that Fahie’s arrest was reflective of the wider Virgin Islands community, he was adamant, “...0.0001% of our population is involved in any drug trade or any other illicit or corrupted apparatus, for that matter. That’s the truth. That’s not the perception. But you can’t go by perception—you have to go by perspective.”
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