Bahama Pundit

Bahamian Education Reform

by Larry Smith

Education is one of today’s celebrity issues. The question of how to fix our failing schools appeared on the radar earlier this year and has become even more controversial lately.

Government held a “secret” national education conference last summer (the 18th so far) and a coalition of private sector employers and trade unions finally released a disturbing report on educational failings after spending months unsuccessfully trying to present it directly to Education Minister Alfred Sears.

We drew attention to some of their conclusions last August. The coalition report (titled the Untapped Resource) was one of several research papers included in the Ministry of Education’s conference journal, which has never been publicly circulated.

Not surprisingly, there has been no word from the government on the results of last July’s expensive conference. But the general idea was to come up with a strategic plan for education in the 21st century, recognising that “knowledge is the most important factor in economic development” today.

Assessing 2005 in The Bahamas

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Was it a good year? Or a bad year? Or is this arbitrary measurement of time utterly indifferent, like the chalice that is filled with fine wine one moment and deadly poison the next?

As the year races to its close many will be doing their personal calculations to deliver a verdict on 2005. For some it will be easy.

Great personal loss, such as the sudden passing of a loved one, or a string of adversities will clearly dictate the answer.

It will be equally decisive if everything went well: the last payment on the mortgage was made, the youngest child ceased to be a dependent and good health prevailed.

For others – perhaps the majority – the year will have been filled with the usual ups and downs, successes and failures, pleasures and pains.

Bahamas Should Look to Hawaiian Model of Tourism Development

by Andrew Allen

A five-minute taxi-ride from the Hawaiian capital, Honolulu, lies the resort area of Waikiki, one of the principal hotel/condominium destinations in the world.

As intensively developed as Paradise Island, but on an altogether different scale (Waikiki comprises thousands of acres and boasts a Hilton, a Hyatt and a Sheraton among many, many other recognisable resort names) it differs from our tourist product in a number of respects.

On Service

by Nicolette Bethel

I've got a question. Why is it that in this country, service is a dirty word?

I'm not talking about the kind of service that we charge money for, the kind of service that makes us a "service" economy — though I could be. I'm talking about the kind of service that regards it as an inherent part of any blessing to give a bit of it away — not to the pastor who hooked us up to the Good-Things Pipeline, but to people who have given us nothing, because they have less than we have.

I'm talking about loving our neighbours as ourselves.

A Bahamian Political Review

by Larry Smith

Make fun of politics, everyone says.

Ok, you got me. Nobody really asked me to write a tongue-in-cheek, end-of-year political piece that could get me into a lot of hot water with people who have an abridged sense of humour.

But someone did ask me recently to work out a development strategy for the country - obviously convinced that I would totally outfox the politicos (see feedback below). Although flattering, that seems like too much effort for
this time of year.

No doubt critics will call this attempt at lightheartedness, heavy-handed, or just not up to their snuff. But when you are staring writer’s block in the face, anything is worth a try. The quotations below are either excerpts from actual speeches or slight adaptations from press reports. Not even the names have been changed.

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Repercussions of Free Trade for The Bahamas

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Last week the eyes of the world were focused on Hong Kong where the representatives of 149 countries were meeting in an effort to reach agreement on rules for the further expansion of global trade. The negotiations inside were accompanied by confrontational and violent demonstrations outside.

Not much progress was made in advancing new trade arrangements that would affect hundreds of millions of people around the globe. Indeed some of the complex issues and conflicts involved seem to defy resolution. The European Union’s Peter Mandelson described it as not a failure and not a success.

The Bahamas is not yet a member of the World Trade Organization but we are a member of the African Caribbean Pacific Group which interfaces with the European Union to promote development of ACP countries and trade with their European partners.

On Friday The Tribune published a story based on an interview with Bahamas Minister of Trade and Industry Leslie Miller. According to Mr. Miller, ACP countries have failed to get a further extension of preferential tariffs from 2007 to 2010.

Independence Requires Integrity

by Andrew Allen

In 1962, Prime Minister Alexander Bustamante announced that Jamaica, fed up with colonialism and tired of the ill-fated Federation of the West Indies, would "go it alone" straight to outright independence. In so doing, he set a tone for the whole region, with Trinidad, Guyana and Barbados following in rapid succession.

Today, Jamaica is charting its own independent course, handling its own affairs and managing its own institutions. Well, kind of. You see, with crime now virtually out of control, and politicians heavily compromised and lacking any credibility in their efforts to stop it, Jamaica has just contracted the services of a senior Scotland Yard officer to oversee the restoration of law and order to the island.

Of course, the crime wave is not exactly new. Halfway through its independent history, during the now infamous 1980 election campaign, Jamaica earned itself a reputation for political violence that it has never quite shaken. Back then, politicians on both sides made use of politicised gangsters, or "edons", in winning hearts and minds in the so-called "garrison" constituencies of urban Kingston.

Today, the dons (some of them still politically connected) are a sad symbol of an independent Jamaica. They control a global drug trade, sending forth cocaine-laden "emules" to countries near and far. Their reign has earned their countrymen the humiliation of visa restrictions for travel even to the UK (the ex-mother country) as well as the neighbouring Cayman Islands, which were once governed as part of Jamaica and looked upon her as a big sister colony.

Politics Prevents Nassau Redevelopment

by Larry Smith

“Can’t you see the sun setting fast? And just like they say nothing good ever lasts. Go on now and say your goodbye, to our town, to our town. Can’t you see the sun setting down, on our town, our town. Goodnight.” - Iris Dement

On September 4, 2001 a looneytune peanut seller named Gardiner walked into the downtown straw market and struck a match, putting hundreds of vendors and tourism personnel out of work and almost burning down Bay Street itself.

The event was a ”national disaster”, and officials scrambled to make good. Within months they were envisioning a state-of-the-art complex that would help to transform the downtown waterfront. A design competition was launched with much fanfare, and rebuilding was set to begin in 2003.

By that time the unfortunate arsonist had progressed through our molasses-like court system to begin a 12-year jail term, and the Ministry of Tourism had acquired posh new offices at a cost of more than $4 million.

But even now – more than four years after the fire – the straw market remains a vacant lot in the heart of the city, just a stone’s throw from the cruise port, with vendors still working beneath a makeshift tent.

Bahamians and British Honours

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Father Sebastian Campbell and his Heroes Day Committee have been campaigning vigorously for years for institutionalized recognition and memorialization of Bahamian national heroes. They have also advocated the institution of a Bahamian system of honours.

Many Bahamians support these objectives. I was privileged to serve for a short while on a committee appointed by former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham to make recommendations for the establishment of a national honours system. But the government did something else, and as far as I know the committee never completed its work.

Father Campbell and his colleagues go further. They demand an immediate end to the system of honours we now have and they berate those Bahamians who have accepted honours from the Queen.

On the Attractiveness of Exile

by Nicolette Bethel

It's said that one of the things that sets Bahamians apart from other West Indians is our tendency to avoid emigration. We travel a lot. But unlike Jamaicans, Haitians, Trinidadians, Barbadians, Guyanese and others, we always come home. We Bahamians have been fortunate enough to have had economic prosperity for so long that we've built a society out of people who travelled abroad for education and came back to contribute to their country. It hasn't hurt that most of us who have come back have learned that, to some degree or another, life is truly better here. We may pay more for a pound of butter or a leg of beef, and the cost of a gallon of gas may make us swear, but we have the unenviable advantage of being the architects of our own destinies -- a rare condition indeed for descendants of Africa, wherever they may be found.

I've lived long enough now to watch with some amusement the return of many of my contemporaries who made the final life move. The last ten years have brought with them the return to Nassau many of my friends and family who swore that they would never come home. But the air is cleaner, the drives are shorter (despite traffic), the views are prettier, and, for many of them, business is better in the Bahamas.

So it may surprise many of you who are reading this column that more and more I have been considering the attractiveness of exile.

Development Issues for New Providence

by Larry Smith

“We cannot adopt the way of living that was satisfactory a hundred years ago. The world in which we live has changed, and we must change with it.” - Felix Adler

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.” - Alfred North Whitehead

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A top dinner table topic these days is how our lives will change as New Providence grows into a single chaotic conurbation, from shore to teeming shore.

More and more of us with an option to leave are worried that we won’t be able to live here much longer the way things are going. It will surely take some hard decisions and tough management to maintain a reasonable quality of life on this 80-square-mile island.

Experts predict a huge jump in the island’s population to over 300,000 by the next decade. This will make Nassau as crowded as Malta is today - and that Mediterranean island is already the world’s fourth most densely packed nation.

So the big question on everyone’s mind is: how can we possibly cope – both financially and organisationally – when the authorities already find it hard to grasp the scale of problems we face now?

Constitutional Changes in The Bahamas

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

The consultation on the Constitutional Commission’s Options for Change initiative has been rather tame. Even in the councils of the political parties there has apparently been little enthusiasm for debate.

Not much heat is likely to be generated until the Commission publishes its findings and make specific recommendations. Nevertheless, some interesting points have been put forward. In a recent letter to The Tribune Dr. Dexter Johnson advocated proportional representation for the Bahamas.

This is one of the questions proposed in Options:

“Should members of the House of Assembly be chosen on the basis of proportional representation (i.e., the number of members be determined by the percentage of votes polled nationally), as opposed to the first-past-the- post system (i.e., the party that wins the majority of seats)?

Dr. Johnson was obviously motivated not so much by a desire to respond to Options but to lament the return of CDR leader Dr. Bernard Nottage to the PLP and the failure of splinter parties to survive in the Bahamian political arena. He attributes this failure to the Bahamas Constitution which he claims is a two-party constitution that is hostile to third parties.

On History

by Nicolette Bethel

Too many of us, still, thirty-two years after independence and thirty-eight years after we began to govern ourselves, believe that things Bahamian are second-class, gauche, nothing much to write home about. And too many of us who think that are black.

I once taught a class of English students the beginning principles of argumentation. They were a bright group, eager to engage with the topics we raised, anxious to master new skills. They had only one limitation, through no fault of their own: they knew very little about Bahamian history.

It surprised me then, but it shouldn’t have. After all, history has never been our strong suit. The success of Majority Rule in the 1960s created a kind of intellectual myopia that led us to reject everything that oppressed us before in our embracing of our newfound freedom. Unlike our neighbours in the USA and Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica, we did not embark upon a massive campaign of education about the Bahamian people, political or otherwise. The first comprehensive Bahamian history book was written by an Englishman, the second by a white Bahamian. The majority of us existed the ever-living Now.

In the three decades that we have been content to go with the flow, to sail along, catching the currents wherever they take us, we have allowed what is past get taken by the slipstream. Our old buildings decay, our elderly die; too much that is fundamental is being forgotten. And we have raised up generations who know so little about themselves and their past that think they are descended from nothing.

On Federation

by Nicolette Bethel

I have long been dissatisfied with local government as it exists in the Bahamas. At the moment, frankly, it's a farce. When a country has "local government" in its outlying territories, but has no municipal governments to govern the two-thirds of the population that lives in the capital, the concept of local government is laughable. I’m going to propose that The Bahamas become a federation.

I can hear the scoffing now. The has always been administered as a single unit; the islands are separated by water, not by politics. If ain’t broke, why fix it?

A Rock in the Harbour - Latest Travels on the Bimini Road

by Larry Smith

"Ya never get a lickin' till ya go down to Bimini..."

The so-called Bimini Road – long dismissed by scientists as a patch of fractured beach rock – is back in the news again.

Dr Greg Little, a psychologist who dabbles in these things, issued a report (http://www.i-newswire.com/pr49748.html) this month which claims to show the site is actually an ancient harbour.

He doesn’t say who built it, but ever since the pavement-like formation was found in 20 feet of water just off North Bimini in 1968, enthusiasts have tried to link it to the Atlantis myth.

Others (including the first commander of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, Bill Swinley) have said it is a dry dock built by a Chinese fleet that discovered America several decades before Columbus landed on San Salvador.

Nassau Redevelopment Requires Municipal Government

by Andrew Allen

The PLP's plans for a redevelopment of the city of Nassau, as outlined in the Prime Minister's convention speech, could not have come at a more opportune time.

As the country looks poised for its largest ever investment boom, the public and touristic centre of Nassau remains an eyesore in many places.

A visitor by sea to this island could be forgiven for wondering whether we who reside in and run the place know the first things about zoning and urban planning.