Bahama Pundit

On the Upholding of the Law

by Nicolette Bethel

This week, I want to write about the upholding of the law.

Now, given the fact that we recently suffered a breakout and riot at Fox Hill Prison, you will be forgiven for thinking that this article is about that affair. And I hope you'll forgive me when I tell you it isn't. In fact, what I focus on in this article may strike you as a little trivial, given the magnitude of the recent lawlessness we've witnessed.

But I don't think it is.

What seeded this topic in my mind, you see, wasn't the riot, or the general indifference to petty crime all around us, or even the fact that even before January's over we've had several murders to keep our police from growing too bored.

What seeded it was the fact that one day recently my father-in-law came to me and said, "I see they took the right house down."

He was talking, of course, about the house that was supposed to have been demolished that day last February that my grandmother's house was bulldozed. I found that very interesting, because to take that house down -- even though it was the so-called "right" house -- was in complete contravention of the law.

Of several laws, in fact.

The Meaning of Majority Rule

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Last week I outlined the events leading to majority rule on January 10 1967, mentioned some of the circumstances and personalities involved and promised to discuss this week the meaning of majority rule and how it was consolidated.

I told readers that this discussion must necessarily be brief and therefore run the risk of being inadequate. I referred to the electoral system which remained deeply flawed up to that time despite a number of reforms including universal adult suffrage in 1962 but some readers wanted more information on this point.

The political leadership of the Bahamas has always recognized the difficulty in achieving equivalence of constituencies in an archipelagic country like ours. Our constitution allows for this but development, improved communications and local government should now make feasible something nearer parity.

The outrageous disparity and jerrymandering which still existed in 1967 can be easily illustrated.

Whatever Happened to Marine Reserves in The Bahamas?

by Larry Smith

We are more than halfway through the second closed season for Nassau grouper, and reports are mixed about the ban’s effectiveness.

“We’ve heard that roe and grouper are being sold under the table at local markets, and some restaurants are still offering grouper even though they were asked to take it off the menu for just these few weeks,” Sir Nicholas Nuttall said recently.

Sir Nick set up the Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation back in 1994 and has been a tireless promoter of marine conservation ever since. He was one of the architects of the ban on grouper fishing during the critical winter spawning season.

Nassau grouper is commercially extinct throughout the Caribbean and its survival here is threatened by overfishing. When the fish congregate to breed at specific locations during the winter, they are easy targets. In fact, we were the first country to protect grouper spawning aggregations when the sites off High Cay, Andros were declared off limits in 1998.

Last winter, after years of lobbying by conservationists and fishery managers, the government made it illegal to capture, buy or sell grouper from mid-December to mid-February. And that general ban was re-imposed this season. According to Fisheries Director Michael Braynen, “we have to control fishing now so that there can be fishing in the future.”

Which leads to the question of what has happened to the much-publicised, five-year-old decision to set up a network of marine reserves throughout the country to protect our fishery resources?

Politicos Flaunt Their Power

by Andrew Allen

Recently, the Commissioner of Police reaffirmed his office's determination to continue the crackdown against individual policemen who abuse their power and embarrass the force. This emphasis on bringing to justice those policemen who fall foul of their duties is a commendable new direction on the part of the force's leadership.

But, unfortunately, the problem of policemen abusing their powers and behaving in a corrupt or aggressive manner towards members of the public is by no means an isolated problem. It is part of a deep cultural problem that finds expression at the highest level of the Bahamian public service.

Too many of those with public power in The Bahamas are eager to show it, presumably lest it be overlooked. It is part of the same cultural phenomenon that causes those with money (and even many of those without) to seek to display it by building implausibly large homes as close to the public road as possible - minimum comfort, maximum visibility.

Offshore Finance in The Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Years ago, government officials were wont to dismiss out of hand any suggestion that our unregulated offshore sector and strict bank secrecy laws helped real criminals. It was all about taxes, they said.

Referring to US deposits in Bahamian banks, former attorney-general Paul Adderley once said "these figures have excited the Treasury Department...There is money here which may be evading American income tax, and that is perfectly legitimate."

But as the United states and others began to pay more attention to international crime, we turned more belligerent even as our position became less tenable.

Mr Adderley went so far as to blame the entire "nation for sale" drug trafficking scandal (which almost brought down the Pindling government in the mid-1980s) on a "warlike" American plot.

Race in the 21st Century Bahamas

by Larry Smith

For much of our recent history, the Bahamas has come packaged in two distinct versions – ebony and ivory.

Although there was never any legal apartheid after slavery, our two communities co-existed separately – to a greater or lesser degree, depending on who you talk to, which accounts you read or what settlements you come from.

But you need only thumb through the pages of a few editions of Nassau Magazine to get an appreciation of what life was really like in the old days - on the surface at least.

From 1934 to 1948 this magazine was produced by THE leading citizen of the day - Guardian publisher Mary Moseley. It was mostly a society record, documenting the comings and goings of this colonial bigwig and that rich resident.

The March to Majority Rule in The Bahamas

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Another January 10 has come and gone and with it another round in the debate about what it means and whether it should be officially recognized in the calendar of national holidays.

There were many interesting comments on the radio talk shows and two particularly good contributions in the print media. One was by Tribune columnist Zhivargo Laing on January 12 and the other by Guardian writer Andrew Edwards. The piece by Mr. Edwards was tucked away in the Weekender supplement of The Guardian distributed with its January 13 issue. Both are well worth reading.

Unfortunately, today’s PLP, despite some appropriate comments by Prime Minister Perry Christie, has not matured enough to accept the full implications of the change, how it came to be and how it has been sustained and developed. It is unable to resist the temptation to treat it as a PLP thing and to milk it for partisan advantage.

One of the interesting questions posed by a caller on one of the radio shows went something like this: Why does not the 1962 general election mark the real beginning of majority rule and the full flowering of democracy in the Bahamas?

On Race, Class, and the Tyranny of Worldviews

by Nicolette Bethel

I had trouble with the title of this one. I wanted to call this article "On Hegemony". To be truthful, I almost did. What stopped me, though, was the vision that assailed me as my fingers hovered over the keyboard -- the vision of my faithful readers picking up the paper, seeing the title, and throwing it down again unread.

So I changed the title. But I still think that "On Hegemony" would be better. The word "hegemony" -- which sounds, by the way, like a cross between "hedge" and "anemone" -- refers to a way of seeing the world that's created by a small group of people who are in power. In the past, people might have called it "brainwashing", but it's far more friendly than that. Very specific and subtle ways of viewing the world are created by any number of means, from the spread of world religions to the sharing of philosophies to the coverage of news by the mass media. Hegemonies masquerade as truth, and they govern the way in which we see our world in ways that are often so subtle we aren't aware of them.

Political Interference in State Corporations

by Andrew Allen

What began four years ago as a troubling sign of political interference with the corporations has now escalated into a pattern of confrontation between members of this government and those charged with managing public institutions.

We can all, perhaps, be thankful to Sidney Stubbs for having given us all an early warning of what to expect.

Back in 2002, as part of an exuberant generation of new PLP MPs, Mr Stubbs began throwing around pretensions of power literally within weeks of his appointment as chairman of BAIC.

In a now well-publicised letter, he used shockingly abusive and threatening language against the general manager when their swords crossed over his (the chairman's) summary dismissal of staff members.

Cracked Conch, Grouper Fingers & Chicken in the Bag - Big Time!

by Larry Smith

Lil' Nassau was a sleepy place a half century ago, and Bay Street east of Mackey no more than a country road. The waterfront lapped the pavement in most places, punctuated by a few ‘fire truck docks’, which later turned into the bustling boat yards we know today.

One of those concrete piers became the marina for the Pilot House Club – a small hotel built by Bahamian sailing enthusiast Bobby Symonette in the 1950s, on the site of the harbour pilot’s residence. The ‘new’ Pilot House catered mostly to high-rolling visiting yachtsmen.

The Yacht Haven was the first marina on the East Bay strip. Construction began in 1949 according to Sir Durwood Knowles, who ran it, and the office building was added a decade later. It featured a small dive operation called Underwater Tours on the ground floor and a rough and ready snack bar upstairs overlooking the boat slips.

With a dozen small tables squeezed around the bar, the cafe served about 25 meals a day, from a menu with just three choices – grouper fingers, cracked conch and chicken in the bag. All three were priced at $3, and could be washed down with plenty of even cheaper beer and rum.

Some Leading Bahamians Take Their Leave

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

In cold countries more people die during the autumn and winter months than at any other time of the year. Many of these deaths – especially among older people – are directly related to the cold weather.

Age Concern, an advocacy group in Britain, says that eight pensioners will die every hour of a cold-related illness and that about 20,000 older people will die this winter in the UK.

Here in the Bahamas we have nothing to compare with a northern winter; a few cold fronts, perhaps, but nothing more. Still, it seems that our death rate also increases around this time. This is only an impression and I have no statistics to support it.

It also seems that we tend to lose more of our leading citizens around this time. Perhaps the stresses of the holiday season, together with the change of weather, have something to do with it.

On Carts and Horses

by Nicolette Bethel

I've often thought that when we think or talk about Junkanoo in public we have a tendency to think and talk about things that are in fact incidentals. If we describe it to people who have never seen it, chances are we'll talk about the costumes. We may mention groups and performance, and we'll probably talk about the way in which all of Bay Street rocks when a big group comes down the road.

We talk about the costumes. Or the B-52s. Or the brass section. Or the choreographed dancers. Or the bellers. Or the bleachers, for heaven's sake, or the tickets, or the way in which the fans respond. Rarely do we talk about the heartbeat of the thing.

Rarely do we talk about the rhythm drum.

On Honour

by Nicolette Bethel

I once had a colleague at COB who gave his students questions like the following at the beginning of every semester and asked the class to discuss the answers together:

1. You find a wallet on the ground. In it are a BEC bill for $80 and four twenty dollar bills. What do you do?
2. You just came home from a long day at work and you are starving. Nothing is open, and you are far too tired to cook. You find that your brother has cooked dinner, and you ask him to give you some. He agrees, but says that he wants you to give him your share of your inheritance in return. What do you do?
3. You are a bright young person from a poor Family Island home. You want to go to university but you can't afford it. One day you meet a man who invites you to make delivery of a consignment of drugs, and promises you enough money to put you through the first two years of college. What do you do?
4. You have been accused of a crime you have not committed, and for which you will be put to death. So far, you have protested your innocence, but no one will believe you. Finally you are told that if you confess your life will be spared, and, even better, if you name your accomplices, you could be set free. You have no accomplices. What do you do?

American LNG Diplomacy in The Bahamas

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

US Ambassador John Rood is a good friend of the Bahamas. Indeed, he has had a long association with this country even before he took up his ambassadorial post.

His friendly, outgoing manner has endeared him to many and his public statements have been couched in proper terms, even when they were meant to be critical. In this respect Mr. Rood towers over his immediate predecessor who, to be blunt, was seriously deficient and somewhat susceptible to foot-in-mouth disease.

Mr. Rood has been an excellent representative for the US in the Bahamas. Those Bahamians who long to see a more liberal administration in Washington will not be happy when the time comes for his demission. Nevertheless, Bahamians must bear in mind that the ambassador’s first responsibility is to protect and promote the interests of America and Americans.