Happy 40th Independence Anniversary Bahamas... ...Enormous Challenges Ahead for the Bahamian People and Nation

The road to reform

PM places focus on constitutional change

By Candia Dames
Guardian News Editor
candia@nasguard.com

This week will be a week of celebration in The Bahamas as the country observes its 40th anniversary of independence.

But it is also being marked by debate over what kind of nation we have built since July 10, 1973.

Bahamians everywhere know what the challenges are for us at this time: High crime, a still shaky economy, poor socialization, educational challenges and a lack of economic empowerment, which was the topic of last week’s National Review.

Prime Minister Perry Christie has also decided that the 40th anniversary is an ideal time to take another stab at constitutional reform.

This morning, he is set to receive the report of the Constitutional Commission, which was headed by former Attorney General Sean McWeeney, QC.

The report to be presented to the prime minister at the British Colonial Hilton hotel this morning is expected to make significant recommendations.

The question of citizenship and the inability of Bahamian women married to foreign men to automatically pass citizenship on to their children was among the issues addressed by the McWeeney commission.

At the time of the commission’s appointment last year, Christie said, “It’s a very important issue and it’s one that we indicated that we are prepared to put to the people of the country.”

ABERRATION

Explaining how this provision ended up in the constitution, Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes, who was a part of constitutional negotiations in 1972, said in a recent interview, “The argument was that in matters of citizenship the international practice was that the women follow the men and I suppose that was true.

“Some of us took the position that at this time, you know the world is moving on, and that women should be equal in every respect, including bequeathing citizenship on their foreign spouses and their children [we believed that it should be equal].

“There should be no difference between getting citizenship between the mother and the father. The British government did not agree with that at the time, and so we still have what I regard as an aberration in our constitution and it is a matter now that we have debated before and it is a matter now that I believe the Constitutional Commission is looking at again.

“What you see today is what exists in the constitution, that there should be a difference between the acquisition of citizenship between the male and the female and that was the fundamental difference and the British government of course prevailed on that issue.”

Former Cabinet Minister George Smith, who was also a part of the official delegation to the Constitutional Conference in 1972, agreed that it is time to clear up any misrepresentation about the question of citizenship.

“All those people who were born in The Bahamas prior to 1973 should be made citizens of The Bahamas unless there is some security reasons for them not to be,” Smith said.

“So we have some weighty issues to address in our constitution. The only way we can do it is to take away any political division and look very maturely at what changes ought to be made, how we can modernize it, how we could celebrate citizenship and put the question to the Bahamian people in a way where the Bahamian people understand that the leaders of our country have looked at these issues and they agree on them.

“This is why it is important for both sides of the political divide to come together as one, to look at the document, agree on it and even have some all party conference prior to it going to the people in a referendum, so that when it gets to the people in a referendum a simple question is put, not a complicated question.”

MODERN

Sir Arthur opined that while reform is a good thing, The Bahamas has a modern constitution.

“We have a constitution that guarantees, with the exception of what we talked about earlier, rights and those rights are spelt out in our constitution,” he said.

“Our system of governance, it’s a good system and our constitution is based on the idea of parliamentary democracy and one of the fundamentals of that is this, and sometimes people forget this, the fundamental idea of a parliamentary democracy is that a people are governed by their own elected representatives.

“That’s the bottom line and all the other things are built on that foundation and we have been governed by our own elected representatives and in the last 40 years we’ve had, I think, four changes of government and they’ve all gone smoothly and at the end of the day when it is time for election, in our system of governance there’s no question about who is responsible.”

Sir Arthur said the citizenship issue is the most pressing issue crying for reform.

But he said, “We have to be very careful that we don’t tamper with the fundamentals of our constitution.

“For instance, I hear people talk about term limits (for the prime minister). Why do we want to import elements of a different kind of constitution, the American constitution, into our constitution where obviously they do not fit?

“...I don’t think Bahamians would like that. I think Bahamians ought to decide through their political parties who they want to lead us. If they want someone to lead us for five years, fine, 10 years, fine, 15 years [fine]. It should be a choice for the Bahamian people.”

The governor general also believes this might be an appropriate juncture to re-examine the role of the Senate.

He said both the Progressive Liberal Party and the Free National Movement have used the Senate in ways not originally contemplated.

“The idea of the Senate was supposed to be at the end of the day your senior politicians, your statesmen would sit in that [august] House. That’s why we call it the upper House and that’s why the title you attach is honorable.

“These are men and women who have been through the system, who are senior, who are mature. These are the people who should be sitting in the upper House. Both political parties for the same reasons really have decided to use the Senate as a training ground and as a consolation prize for defeated candidates and that has undermined the whole idea of the Senate and this idea of its seniority and statesmanship and all of that.”

MONARCHY

Loftus Roker, a former minister in the Pindling cabinet who also attended the 1972 talks, pointed out that many Bahamians do not understand their constitution.

“I don’t believe it is taught in the schools or anything,” he said. “I don’t believe we know what the constitution is all about. A constitution is the basis of our sovereignty and to willy nilly change that in my view is folly because if the average person believes this is only a piece of paper and you could tear it up and put another piece of paper there any time you like, that’s trouble.”

It is not clear at this point whether the McWeeney commission will recommend The Bahamas move away from the monarchy.

“I know the monarchy bothers a lot of people and it used to bother me too,” Roker said.

“You know when I was a student in London I decided one of the first things I will do if I get the chance is to move Queen Victoria’s statue from where it is and throw it in the ocean. It’s in Parliament Square…I don’t want nothing to do with it. It is still there.

“I discovered that there is something called history and you shouldn’t try to destroy history and history would still be there even if you destroyed it. You can’t give it away and we need to know what happened so we can know where we are going.”

Roker noted that the queen at no time has any power to do anything without the advice and instruction of the government of The Bahamas.

She is purely a figurehead represented in The Bahamas by the governor general.

Roker said the decision was made to leave the queen as a figurehead to comfort people who feared independence.

“We left her there as a symbol,” he said. “That is why we also kept the Privy Council because they were saying Bahamian judges and all of that were going to do all sorts of foolish things. And we decided we would leave the Privy Council there as some last resort that you can go to that we don’t influence.”

REFERENDUM

This is the second such commission appointed by Christie.

He appointed the first on December 23, 2002, and mandated it to carry out a comprehensive review and make recommendations that would strengthen fundamental freedoms and civil and political rights of the individual, and critically examine the structure of the executive authority.

Important work was done by commission chairs, the late former Attorney General Paul L. Adderley and Harvey Tynes, QC, who, together with the other members of that commission, traveled the country extensively, holding town meetings and gathering the views of Bahamians on what they would like to see changed.

But that commission died a swift death — as did its recommendations — when in 2007, the Free National Movement (FNM) was re-elected.

Hubert Ingraham, prime minister at the time, was weary of dealing with constitutional issues and proposing reforms.

At his first press conference as newly re-elected prime minister at the Cabinet Office one Sunday, he declared to reporters that there would be no more referenda under his watch.

Five years earlier, Bahamian voters overwhelmingly rejected key questions put to them in a referendum brought by the Ingraham administration.

The current Christie administration has already revealed that it intends to call a referendum intended to eliminate discriminatory clauses from the constitution.

This is what Ingraham attempted back in February 2002. But the perhaps pure intentions of the then government were overshadowed by a divisive political climate and the issues of the referendum were derailed.

There is a tendency for politics in The Bahamas to overshadow much.

In some circles, there exists the view, for instance, that the independence celebrations are PLP celebrations.

The current Constitutional Commission has had a strong mix of well-respected Bahamian professionals. Former Attorney General Carl Bethel was the opposition’s representative.

We shall have to wait and see whether the process leading to the next constitutional referendum is able to proceed without the smear of political posturing.

If not, reform could once again be impossible to achieve.

July 08, 2013

thenassauguardian

Governance, Governing and the Governed after 40 years of Political Independence in The Bahamas

Governance, governing and the governed

By RAYNARD RIGBY
Nassau, The Bahamas

There is no doubt that we have yet to develop a concept or model of governance that adequately complements our political development and our uniqueness as a people.

Since independence, our sense of governance is dictated by the whims of the leaders who wear the hat as chief.  The chief has the ordained right to assess and determine the best form and method for the dispensation of executive power.

His sole guiding rod is the singular provision in the Constitution (Article 72) that mandates that his Cabinet must be no less than eight other ministers and that “the Cabinet shall have the direction and control of the government of The Bahamas”.  Even this simple declaration has led to abuse, by evidence of Gussiemae Cabinets and the appointment of incompetent ministers.

It is no doubt true that in our political dispensation the selection of a Cabinet is even fraught by much anxiety, even though many will agree that this should be the easiest first step in the development of a style of governance.

It appears that less consideration is placed on intellect, capacity, knowledge and just plain commonsense.

Far too little value is allotted to the possible minister’s record of excellence in business or a profession.  This may be surprising given that the minister is treated as the CEO of the ministry.

It does not help though that the Constitution only refers to the principles of “direction” and “control” as tenements of governance.  This perhaps creates a deep fallacy in our system because the notions of direction and control, by their very nature, are coextensive with all manners of governance.  That is, by having the power to govern one must have control of the direction of the governed.

At the outset let me state that I am not an advocate for codifying, whether in the Constitution or by an act of Parliament, what should be the by-products of governance.

Truth is that there are some elements that must be left to the personal dogmas of a leader.  However, there are shades of governance that must be universal, that apply to a people no matter who is their leader or prime minister.  It is that side of the coin that should compel us to assess the state of our governance, the state and direction of the Bahamian people.

Maturity

It must also be remembered that our nation is only now approaching ‘true adult’ maturity.  For some the decade of membership in the elite 40-plus-group means a new burst of life, vigor and perspectives.

I assume that as this equally applies to adults it must be the same for a nation-state.  So this means that next year should be the start of a golden era for governance in The Bahamas.

Within the doctrines of political science and history, governance is at its core a notion that rules should be made, followed and executed by the leader or prime minister (in our system) without fear, favor or failure.

It is a process.  It mandates that all citizens and stakeholders have an appreciation for an understanding of the rules.  More fundamentally, it expects that there will be no arbitrary alteration of the rules, but that change and modification will come by way of an organized and civilized process.

We often hear chatter from elected politicians of good governance.  This is a new twist to the concept of governance.  It probably was intended to be an extension of well-established and respected democratic traditions.

The use of the concept of good governance may also have been designed to attempt to define the quality of governance.  It must be good versus bad or chaotic or even dogmatic.

Whatever descriptive word is employed, it really goes back to a rather simple narrative as to the state of governance within a society of people alongside their norms and customs.

Governance too invokes the strength of a nation’s traditions and institutions.  Executive authority and power should be exercised through the institutions by way of a process of balanced value assessments.

Too, there must be a recognized framework for the airing-out of differing views and opinions and even for dissent in the sacred ranks.  Individual thought and opinions must never be subjected to an archaic concept of loyalty.

Additionally, there must be an environment that fosters and demands excellence in thought, policy formation and public participation.

There is no denying the fact that governance as a concept invokes the notions and emotions of transparency, accountability, competence and equitable participation.  By the latter, I mean that there must be carved out in the domain of public opinion rooms of thought for all socio-economic classes, which are masked by gender and age neutrality and even perhaps political neutrality.

In our current system, the thought of political neutrality is barren as no leader will think that he can manage his political survivability by encroaching on the precincts of a competing political ideology and or membership.

Governance and decision making

There must also be a well-established and recognized policy of restraint in governance.  Just as the notion of good governance demands an appreciation for judicial independence, the restraints that operate must be of a similar nature that reject all forms and fashion of corruption, nepotism, abuse of power and harmful incompetence.

The restraints should be worn as a breastplate of the citizenry to demand and voice opposition to the prevailing threat that exists, which often leads to an unequal society.

This brings me to ask two questions: What is the state of Bahamian governance?  Do we have a developing set of rules for decision making?

To answer the first question, without any political naivete or impartiality, requires an out-of-body experience for the majority of Bahamians, because we typically wrap our answers into a sense that speaks to the failures or successes of the party that we support.

In truth, the state of our governance is a by-product and a reflection of our collectivism and of community.  It is a great indicator of our values, our vision for the future and our commitment to national development.

It is a clarion call to demand the formation of sensible policies, a pragmatic and participatory approach to decision making and a shared vision that is oriental in its respect for balancing the needs and saving the fruits of the national treasures for future generations.

It must also be recognized that to grade a nation’s state of governance is a difficult task because of all of the items in the breadbasket.  A superficial analysis may dictate that realization be given to the level of poverty, unemployment and the lack of basic social and human essentials.

An all-inclusive and holistic evaluation will encompass an assessment of many factors, one of which is the state of active participation by the governed, meaning the electorate, in the apparatus of governance.  And in this context, the governed refers to all sectors of the society and to all peoples.

No one can be left out of the equation, and if there is a segment of the populace that is silenced then the state of governance is poor.  Democracies are by their very nature designed to be democratic and that means being open to all peoples.

Over the last 20 years, a trend is beginning to steadily creep into and is near institutionalization in our nation.  Those with wealth and influence appear to be able to set the rules that favor them to the exclusion of others.

Too many are now marginalized and yet they are the ones who have a blind obsession to their ‘chief’.  Politics sometimes produces the ugliness about human nature and we see it exemplified in the actions and decision-making style of those elected to govern.

There are so many events that demonstrate and support this view.  One need only start with the continuation of an obscene policy that forces taxpayers’ dollars, now ever limited, to assist in the advertising of new hotels, or the payment of subsidies for cruise ships or the inability to levy a rational tax on companies that repatriate the lion’s share of their profits to overseas headquarters.

The most glaring recent example is the disclosure of the new gaming legislation that would favor an expanded industry for foreigner owners of casinos to the exclusion of Bahamian ownership.

No one needs to have a deep sense of nationalism to recognize the sharp economic inequality that such a policy will continue to foster.  It is regressive and foolhardy.

The recent audit of NIB with a price tag of $861,000 is another fine example of the failures of a modern and thought-out approach to governance.  A negotiated settlement of the disengagement of the director of NIB would have cost the tax payers far less than $861,000.

A new course

There are so many other illustrations where the lack of a clear, concise and well thought-out approach to governing The Bahamas have failed the nation and her people.

There are far too many people whose eyes reveal the sheer pain of their desperation and hopelessness in the future of this nation.  These are the features of a society and people that are being subjected to a system of governance that is stale, out dated and unsuited for their continued development and evolution.

The governed must begin a new march for fundamental change in the way that the country is being managed.  This demands a rethink of the national priorities and the recognition that the government must be reflective of the people’s wishes, hopes and dreams for tomorrow.

We must chart a new course that is built on the principles of moral and intelligent decision making.  Our society must evolve and reject an insular approach to problem solving, and we must work together so that the future is secured and belongs to all of us and not just the chosen few.

I remain ever so convinced that The Bahamas remains the best vehicle by which the world can be transformed for the better.

• Raynard Rigby is a practising attorney-at-law at Baycourt Chambers. You are free to send comments about the column via email to rrigby@baycourtlaw.com.

May 29, 2013

thenassauguardian

Bahamas Blog International

Bahamas: National pride is heightened as Bahamians' 37th anniversary of independence from Great Britain is observed: July 10, 1973 - July 10, 2010

National pride heightened as independence is observed
By JASMIN BONIMY
Guardian Staff Reporter
jasmin@nasguard.com:



At a time when the effects of the global economic recession continue to grip the country and violent crime is at an all time high, some residents say they are prouder than ever to be Bahamian.

Their pride comes as the nation celebrates its 37th anniversary of independence today. Despite the grim economic and social conditions over the past few months, many Bahamians said they plan to overlook their worries this holiday weekend.

The people The Nassau Guardian spoke to insisted that there is still much to be proud of as the nation turns 37.

Marcia Hutcheson, a street vendor and owner of VIP Productions, a stall that specializes in Bahamian merchandise, said, "There are problems no matter where you are in the world, but in The Bahamas we are doing well. So I am proud to be a Bahamian.

"We are in a recession and everybody is still surviving. We're helping each other out so we can all do well. Regardless of whatever, we are going to wear our colors because we are an independent and proud people."

Zarria Moxey, a teenager, said she loves celebrating independence because it is the only time everything Bahamian is truly embraced.

"I like all of the festivals that we celebrate like Crab Fest and the regattas on different islands," said the 16-year-old.

For some who have traveled the world and experienced other cultures, like Michael Thurston, there is no place like home.

"The Bahamas is one of the best places in the world," said Thurston. "I have been here most of my life but I've done a lot of traveling. But I love The Bahamas, I love the Bahamian people, but most of all I love the Kalik beer."

Charity Brennen, who attended the first Independence Day celebrations on July 10, 1973, said, "I was born here and there is no other place I'd like to be."

For 67-year-old Franklyn Dorsette, the nation's growth and development over the past 37 years is what defines Bahamian history.

"I am proud of The Bahamas simply because we are free from all sorts of things that would impede us," he said, "that is freedom of speech and freedom of worship. In many other countries they aren't as lucky."

In his independence message to the nation, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham said celebrations are tempered by what has become a prolonged global economic downturn.

"However, we are a resilient people, resourceful and creative in times of hardship," he said. "We are heartened by the promise of the beginning of recovery and we look forward to improved economic times in the months ahead."

7/9/2010

The Nassau Guardian

Bahamas Blog International