Hon Fraser made these statements during his official campaign launch at Finc Building in Sea Cows Bay on April 1, 2023.

He said he had proposed an all-party system before the Commission of Inquiry, which had found favour with the idea.

‘Legal dictatorship’

“I told them that this system that I have proposed, will eliminate something I call a legal dictatorship which is what we have as our system. Our system is nothing but a legal dictatorship and the dictator is the Premier or the Chief Minister or whoever he is at the time,” Hon Fraser said.

He added: “All this campaigning you see out here going on, where a bunch of guys get up on a stage and say ‘elect us’, ‘vote for us’, as soon as the campaigns are over and elections are had and a government is formed and one guy is chosen as the Chief Minister or the Premier he becomes a god…That is wrong. He’s such a god that if when he see weekend come like Saturday and Sunday, your phone rings and you look and see its him calling don’t answer it. You don’t know what he’s going to tell you. Like ‘I’m firing you’ kind of thing…Like ‘I’m taking away’ something from you.”

Hon Fraser said the House of Assembly is nothing more than a “rubber stamp” for what takes place down in the Cabinet as he pointed to a lack of accountability by executives.

All-party government

The veteran legislator also said the decision to abandon the concept of a one-Party government in favour of an all-Party government was his idea and one he presented to the Premier then later to the Governor and Minister for Overseas Territory.

“And that idea, even though understandably rejected by the government, was without question the one thing that made the deal acceptable to the United Kingdom… I am afraid that any decisions at the polls that result in a single Party winning a majority will not be pleasing to the United Kingdom government, especially if that Party is the Virgin Islands Party…given that hey were the ones who had to abandon the concept of a single Party government in order to avoid subjecting the territory to the embarrassment of having our constitution suspended and the governor taking control of the country,” he said.

Meanwhile, it is unclear why PVIM, known to many as NDP 2, has chosen to align itself with Hon Fraser, who led the Virgin Islands Party (VIP) to the 2015 General Elections and was soundly beaten by the National Democratic Party (NDP), 11 seats to 2.

Hon Fraser is now being challenged in the Third District by VIP candidate Kevin C. Smith aka ‘OJ’ and NDP candidate Aaron F. Parillon.