Organiser of the online petition entitled Make “Willock Pay his Own Bill” believes the success of his petition will be effective in convincing the government not to move forward with passing the motion in the House of Assembly which exempts Speaker Julian Willock from footing the $120,000 legal bill.
Lawrence ‘Bunchie’ Wheatley who is the creator of the petition made the statement during an interview with 284News on Monday November 1.
He said, “I do firmly believe that it will. I’m somebody who is in constant contact with a lot of these ministers and the premier a lot. They know my stance and they know when I start something like this that I don’t go down without a fight and that I’ll make their lives a living hell, if they don’t comply with the needs of the people.”
“We need to hold one head as a community when it comes to issues like this and remind the politicians that at the end of the day, we put them there, they are working for us and not the other way around. And although it may be challenging to them seeing that they had to go through this pandemic and stuff, a lot of them are first timers in office, at the end of day they have a lot more pressing issues and we don’t want to see our taxpayer’s money going to waste,” he added.
Wheatley also revealed that the article published by 284News which broke the news of the government’s plan to use taxpayers’ money from the Consolidated Fund to pay the bill, was the reason behind the creation of his petition.
“Initial reaction was that this is just foolishness, that it’s unfair to us the people to have to pay this bill when we didn’t even want him to be doing the legal proceedings in the first place. And literally five minutes after reading the article is when the petition was created. It was created right after,” he stated.
Surprised by quick response of the public
Wheatley also said that he was a bit surprised by the response of the BVI public, stating that his goal of getting at least 1200 votes was achieved in less than 24 hours.
He also explained the logic behind his 1200-mark initial goal.
He said, “Seeing that we got the 1000 votes in the first 24 hours, you could say it was very well supported. Everyone seemed to agree that we shouldn’t have to be footing this bill with taxpayers’ money and to me it was a little bit astonishing because I didn’t expect a thousand so quickly and then actually completing the goal, I think it was in a little under 48 hours.”
“The logic behind the goal of 1200, was that assuming that everyone who signs the petition is a taxpaying citizen of the Virgin Islands and has paid at least 100 in tax probably within this year, that adds up to the $120,000 bill that will acquired and it’s basically a way for us to tell the government that we don’t want our $100 being used. Basically, everyone who’s signing is saying you cannot use my $100 to pay for this bill,” Wheatley further explained.
Up until the publication of this article the petition had amassed a total of 1268 votes.