Bahama Pundit

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.