Thanks to the foresight of our Bahamian constitutional fathers who adeptly negotiated with the British, The Bahamas is now a modern, stable, successful parliamentary democracy

Understanding Bahamian parliamentary democracy

Front Porch

Today, 45 years to the day of the attainment of majority rule, there is chronic and widespread ignorance of our system of government and national constitution.  Sadly, no longer surprisingly, so-called “informed” people in civil society, academia, business and “the press corps” are among the woefully uninformed.

Many of them regurgitate effluvia on the supposed problems of our parliamentary democracy on matters ranging from “checks and balances” to collective responsibility and the constitutional powers of the prime minister.

Mesmerized by American politics including the theatrics that substitute for news on U.S. cable news, some local commentators cannot utter “checks” without mindlessly adding “balances”, with seemingly limited appreciation for either term.

The supposed corrective measures to repair our supposedly broken democracy are, to paraphrase attorney Andrew Allen in the context of shallow arguments for term limits, superficial non-solutions to imaginary problems.

One recent and egregious example is an opinion piece entitled, “The Bahamas: A Constitutional Dictatorship?”  The commentary is callow.  It lacks depth and breadth.  One wonders how conversant the columnist is with the Bahamian constitution, our constitutional history and the rudimentary history and philosophy of parliamentary democracy.

Noise

It is important to have a diversity of opinion on the issues of the day.  But opinion devoid of or sloppy with facts, by personalities helping to form the opinions of others through talk radio, television, the Internet and in the print media, is just more noise.  Public dialogue is impoverished not enriched when opinions are divorced from critical thinking and fact-finding.

The column in question descended into unthinking rhetoric and a cavalcade of contradictions partly because it was based on and began with false premises, so nauseatingly repeated that they have become accepted as fact:

“We have an anachronistic, colonial governance system that is no longer suitable for the needs of our developing nation in this 21st century.  We inherited this Westminster system of governance from the British.”

It is difficult to take seriously opinions that get basic facts wrong.  To discuss the issue of governance we need to get our language and concepts in order.  The appellation Westminster system of governance is not quite precise and misses some critical differences between Bahamian and British parliamentary democracy.

For instance, at Westminster the British parliament is sovereign.  There is no supreme law or written constitution in Britain.  By a simple majority of parliament in Britain fundamental rights can be altered and the monarchy itself can be abolished.

The Bahamas has a written constitution with clearly defined checks on power.  Before certain fundamental provisions of the constitution (entrenched and specially entrenched) can be changed, a two-thirds or three-quarters majority vote of both Houses of Parliament is required.

Furthermore, the proposed changes must be approved by the electorate in a referendum before they can become law.  This process is an innovation that is not enjoyed by all parliamentary democracies, including some in the Caribbean.

It gives the Bahamian people direct control over the fundamental provisions of the Constitution, including provisions relating to citizenship, fundamental rights and freedoms, and the establishment of our national governmental institutions.

There are frameworks, templates and provisions utilized by most countries, including former British colonies, in the drafting of national constitutions.  Still, The Bahamas does not have a cookie cutter constitution.  Any suggestion to that effect is misleading and does not fully acknowledge or appreciate the role played by our constitutional fathers in the framing of the independence constitution.

Larger

A number of the customs and traditions used in the much larger British parliamentary system are not germane to and would be unworkable in our context.  With a 650-member House of Commons compared to our much smaller House of Assembly, our practice of parliamentary democracy is necessarily different.

The assertion that we have a colonial system of governance in itself is patently not true.  Furthermore, it contradicts the assertion, made in the same breath, that we have a Westminster model of governance.

Under the colonial system of governance the Colony of the Bahama Islands had a parliament that was, in the words of the late Bahamian constitutional expert the Hon. Eugene Dupuch, “representative but not responsible”.

There was no Cabinet, but there was an Executive Council, presided over by the British governor, who enjoyed enormous power.  There was also a system of boards, forerunners to government ministries, with the governor enjoying ultimate control over major decisions by the boards.

The dismantling of that colonial system began with the 1964 Constitution that was negotiated in London the previous year.  That Constitution ushered in a large measure of internal self-rule with the British governor still retaining some powers including defense, security and foreign affairs.  That process continued with the 1969 Constitution, when more power devolved to the Cabinet, and was completed with the Independence Constitution of 1973.

Thanks to the foresight of our Bahamian constitutional fathers who adeptly negotiated with the British, The Bahamas is now a modern, stable, successful parliamentary democracy.  While there were differences between the Bahamian political parties at the Independence Conference on a few matters relating to rights, there was general agreement on matters of governance.

We no more have a colonial system of governance than India, Australia, Jamaica, Barbados or Canada, fellow parliamentary democracies in the Commonwealth of Nations.  Anything but anachronistic, this system has proven to be durable, flexible and workable across cultures, countries and centuries.

Unfortunately, many who should know better believe that parliamentary democracy itself is antiquated, and that the United States has a better system of government, and one that is inherently more advisable or workable.  This is a fallacy to which we will have to return.

There are many non-Commonwealth nations which have opted for parliamentary democracy.  They have similarly discovered a certain genius within the system, the rudiments of which are hundreds of years old having evolved into one of the more effective systems of government in human history.

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www.bahamapundit.com

Jan 10, 2012

thenassauguardian

caribbean Blog International

The Bain and Grants Town Association calls for a deepening of Bahamian democracy by the introduction of local government to New Providence

Call for local government in New Providence

tribune242

Nassau, Bahamas



A LOCAL social activism group is calling for a deepening of Bahamian democracy by the introduction of local government to New Providence.

The Bain and Grants Town Association commended the government for the smooth running of the recently held Local Government elections in the Family Islands, and asked why a system which has survived for 15 years in the rest of the country has yet to be implemented in the capital, where more than two thirds of the population lives.

"The time has come, indeed come and gone, for a modern, effective and transparent system of Local Government to be introduced in New Providence and we hereby issue a very strong and urgent call for its formulation and implementation at the very earliest time possible", said Rev CB Moss, president of the association.

According to Rev Moss, Local Government should have been implemented in New Providence first and then extended to the Family Islands.

New Providence is one of the few significant democratic population centres in the world with only a single level of government, he pointed out.

"This anomaly has contributed to the stagnation of the development of the Bahamian society, as residents with tremendous potential residing in communities are underutilised and marginalised and their communities and the nation is deprived of their leadership skills and abilities to the detriment of all.

"Surely 41 persons in the national parliament cannot be expected, nor relied upon, to understand local concerns and aspirations, and to move the entire nation forward, upward, and onward."

Rev Moss pointed out that successive governments have promised to implement Local Government in New Providence, but none of them have delivered.

"Bain Grants Town, also known as Over-the Hill, has long been ready, willing and able to embrace Local Government in order to revitalise and renew what is the heartland of the Bahamas," he said.

July 20, 2011

tribune242

Bahamian Politics Blog

The Nature of Politics, Politicks and Democracy in The Bahamas

Politicking and Democracy. What’s the difference?

Edward Hutcheson


I have spent the last two weeks looking at the nation and people of the Bahamas, attempted to write letters and found myself reaching some rebellious conclusions about what answers and remedies should be about. Speaking to an older friend reminded me that life is not about answers, there are answers for more things than there are questions. His sage response to “What is democracy?” was, “Have you answered the question in your own country?” He was referring to the fact that we in the Bahamas take our cues from how people are doing things everywhere else in the world, it is not too original, but it takes away the responsibility of being responsible, since the idea came from somewhere else. And when you think of it, that is how the country has progressed – a lot of outside help and money, with Bahamians acting like tourists most of the time.

At the end of my looking, I had the opportunity to view, on one of the local television stations a discussion on the privatization of BTC, the talk show host had some members of a political party giving their view on the process. It was amazing, the amount of information that came out of it, there were answers for everything, until the moderator asked a question that was not anticipated. He wanted to know what was that particular party’s policy on the privatization, seeing that they had attempted the same process, some time ago. They were not able to give an answer, and then the host reminded them that their position had changed from what it previously was, and the reply was that that was the nature of politics. The host was able to pin down one of the rising stars in the party and his reply was that they did not have a policy on BTC, but they had a model that they were following. I wanted the host to push for a further explanation of that model, but they ran out of time.

Lately, it seems like most of the answers the public is getting are more like opinions; everybody has one. We must come to the place where we are able to ask the questions to whoever is leading out nation or who would like to lead and not get out of their face until the answers are forthcoming. I am getting ticked about the BTC issue, primarily because the public is not being told what is happening and/or the bodies involved in the process are not informed on the issues that they are addressing and this exercise up to now is more about persons maintaining their lifestyles or various groups of persons promoting social unrest.

The historic reality is that technology renders a judgment that government legislation cannot protect anybody from, except you are living in a dictatorship, and those of us who think we are gaining something by promoting battles are wasting time and money. We became a democracy in 1967, but it took us 25years to get our voices, and even within that time frame persons who should have known better made an attempt to ban dialect from the airwaves.

So what is a Democracy? It is when persons who were democratically elected exercise transparency in their dealings with the persons who elected them, and those who would like to be elected give a fair and impartial presentation of what they do know and would like to see, leaving nothing out. Anything else is politicking.

March 22, 2011

weblogbahamas

Bahamas Blog International

Where is our future Bahamas?

Democracy, independence and complacency
thenassauguardian editorial



The images and news stories that have dominated the international news media for the past week or so in Egypt are a telling story on the importance of the basic concept of democracy, a concept that is spoken about often, but a concept often not fully appreciated. The benefits that are gained from a properly functioning democracy are too often taken for granted.

The beauty of a democracy is that we, the people, get to elect the leaders of our own choosing through a formal process of narrowing down the candidates and casting a vote.

Another key aspect of that electoral process is that there is a time frame in which those elections must come around again. If we the people are not happy with our leaders, we have the opportunity to elect a new leader, thus holding our leaders to a certain degree of accountability.

The equation is not complicated: Please the people or get voted out of office. The common demands from the people are basic: Provide security (from outside forces and crime at home), infrastructure, jobs, and a growing economy. In other words, provide results.

A true democracy also has a time frame in which there is change. In The Bahamas, the government must have an election every five years. In the United States, it is every two years (for House representatives and senators) and four years for the president. The ability to call for change on a consistent basis allows for stability.

In Egypt, there is no democracy. President Hosni Mubarak has been in power for 29 years. The people are now rioting in the streets and calling for change. Suppressing the voice of the masses acknowledges the ineptitude of a leader to provide for his people while hiding behind the shield of his power.

We must accept that rallies and protests are part of many democracies. The rallies against the Vietnam War in the United States or those here in The Bahamas against the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) sale are examples. But these generally don’t call for ousting a leader, just a change in the policy position currently held by the government in power.

But one aspect of a consistent election process that we do not follow is that of term limits.

Sir Lynden Pindling was in power from 1967 to 1992 (25 years). Our current prime minister has been in power from 1992 to 2002 and 2007 to the present (15 years). The interim period was held by Prime Minister Perry Christie (five years).

Over 44 years we have had three leaders. The United States over a similar period has had eight leaders, almost triple that of The Bahamas. The United Kingdom has had 12 leaders, quadruple that of The Bahamas.

The Bahamas has benefited enormously from the perseverance of these leaders for equality, prosperity and peace. The people of The Bahamas enjoy one of the highest per capita incomes in the region and access to clean water, power, and communication. We have so much to be thankful for.

But it is inevitable that change is upon us. In the coming years it will be time for a new generation to take governing responsibility for The Bahamas. We must take heed of the lessons provided by our leaders and understand that Independence was won with heart and vigor, not to be forgotten.

We have become complacent in our positions and surroundings, a comfort that shields us from the change happening around us. To be constantly challenged by our peers and countrymen sets forth a standard that cannot be undermined.

The children of Independence need to stand and prove that they too possess the skills to govern a country in the 21st century. We know that the prime ministers past and present can do it, but where is our future? It lies in the hands of those born during the Independence era.

2/7/2011

thenassauguardian editorial

Bahamas Blog