Bahama Pundit

The Brother of Big Brother Comes Visiting

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

The Bahamas is not the only friend of the United States that has a problem with its big neighbour’s policy towards Cuba. Most of the nations in this hemisphere do not agree with the policy and neither do the Europeans. They have refused to participate in the embargo against Cuba despite American pressure.

While the US government has tried to stop its citizens from visiting Cuba, millions of Latin Americans, Canadians and Europeans have sustained Cuba’s tourism industry. Thousands of Americans have also defied their government’s ban on travel to Cuba.

Attempts by the US to enforce its laws beyond its own territory have bred resentment among its friends. A recent incident caused outrage in Mexico, America’s closest neighbour along with Canada and the Bahamas.

Racism & Colonialism in the Bahamas

by Andrew Allen

Helen Klonaris, a white Bahamian, recently published a letter on the issue of racism and colonialism in the Bahamas. Her letter prompted several responses, among them a rebuttal last week from The Nassau Institute.

While it is easy to disagree with some of Ms Klonaris' suggestions (such as the supposed racism of most whites, or the extent of 'white' economic power in The Bahamas today) it would seem that the writer of the institute's response either did not understand or did not want to understand the broader thrust of her arguments.

In fact, to her credit, Ms Klonaris sets out, in a compelling way, some of the legacies of the colonial and racial domination that did undoubtedly blight most of our history.

Florida Governor Visits Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Florida Governor Jeb Bush's long-planned official visit this week highlighted some of the bilateral issues we have with the United States.

Mr Bush runs a state of about 15 million people with a budget of over $70 billion a year (compared to our billion dollar plus budget and 325,000 inhabitants). He is also the brother of the current American president, George W Bush, although that hardly endears him to the local political class.

This is not the first time Mr Bush and Prime Minister Christie have met. Two years ago they discussed the governor's efforts to promote Miami's candidacy for the Permanent Secretariat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The Christie government - led by Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell - went on to support Trinidad as the site for that facility, in solidarity with Caricom.

Other topics of mutual interest include education reform, illegal immigration, drug trafficking, relations with Cuba, the treatment of Cuban refugees, and new trade and investment opportunities - such as the stalled proposals for LNG terminals in the Bahamas to supply South Florida power stations.

The State of the Bahamian Parliament

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Two weeks ago I referred to the PLP government’s failure to have a prorogation and new opening of parliament in nearly four years.

In most parliaments this is an annual event which serves to celebrate the institution of parliament and also to give the government of the day an opportunity formally to outline its agenda for the year.

There might not have been a prorogation at all in the life of this parliament but for the fact that a new governor-general had been appointed and the government wanted to make the most of this.

Governor-general Arthur D. Hanna last week presided over the pomp and pageantry with obvious relish. Mr. Hanna has a keen sense of history and is rightly proud of the progress and stability of our Bahamas.

It is unlikely that we will see the opening of another session of this parliament since 2007 is an election year and this parliament will be dissolved perhaps no later than May. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing if both political parties would resolve to stage this important event in the political life of the nation every year.

Settling on a Healthcare Model for The Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Over the past 50 years, the world has moved away from the issue of equitable access to figuring out how to sustain healthcare services in the long-term.

And as the Bahamas is about to embark on a compulsory government-run health plan, there is growing evidence that similar systems elsewhere are already staring at financial disaster.

The social health insurance system that our government is touting is based on the French model, which the World Health Organisation rates as the best in the world. But the French system is imploding:

"Our health system has gone mad," Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told a parliamentary commission a couple of years ago. "Profound reforms are urgent."

The West Must Listen to Moderate Islam

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

After centuries of bloodletting, including two wars which enveloped much of the world, the nations of Western Europe finally discovered that there was a better way. It dawned on them that, in the words of Britain’s war-time leader Winston Churchill, “It is better to jaw-jaw than war-war.”

Still, some who today guide the destiny of humanity seem not to have learned that lesson. The ancient but failed policy of demonizing then seeking to destroy one’s enemy is still being enthusiastically practised in the early years of the twenty-first century.

If more enlightened leadership – political and religious – does not quickly emerge in both the West and the East, then the sad history of slaughter will continue.

Assessing A Bahamian National Health Plan

by Larry Smith

National Health Insurance:
The compassion of the Internal Revenue Service
The efficiency of the Postal Service
All at Pentagon prices!
-American bumper sticker

It was Benjamin Franklin who said: "In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."

And some jokers would apply this to the government's proposed national health plan, because it is more concerned about raising money than keeping us alive and healthy.

Others complain that the government is introducing socialised medicine - but we already have that. The Ministry of Health currently offers universal access to publicly funded medical care at a cost of some $200 million a year.

The country's three main hospitals (the Princess Margaret, Sandilands and the Rand in Freeport) are run by a public corporation, and there are about a hundred government-operated clinics scattered around the country.

Just under half the population uses these tax-supported facilities, often paying nothing for treatment. The government wants to shift the cost of this healthcare from the Treasury to a new payroll tax levied on the other half of the population - who are already paying through the nose for private insurance and generally don't access the public healthcare system.

The Impediment of Colonialism

by Andrew Allen

On the first of January, 1877, a small, middle-aged Englishwoman took the title "Empress of India", signifying her dominion over a huge, ancient land thousands of miles from her own.

Alexandrina Victoria, then in the 40th year of her reign in England, was said to have swooned when her favourite Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, delivered the anniversary present.

She certainly never forgot the honour, henceforth developing a quite inappropriate bias towards Mr Disraeli and against his great rival, William Gladstone.

But what to Victorian romanticists looked like good honest patriotism smacked to others, among them Mr Gladstone, as cheap politics.

Disraeli's answer to a rudderless, incompetent administration and flagging popularity was to flatter the English nation and its Queen with the notion that their great, benign Empire was somehow endowed with a mystic internationalism that separated it from such 'bad' empires as that of the Ottoman Turks.

In Celebration of Ceremony

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

The ascent of Arthur Dion Hanna to the highest position in the nation is a matter for celebration, and it was celebrated in grand style at Government House last week.

It is well that we observe such important events in the life of the nation with suitable ceremony and pageantry.

These rituals speak in rich cadences about our good fortune to be living in a land where justice, law, order, democracy and peaceful transition are cherished; a land where some of the finest are still willing to serve in politics in spite of the hazards of that arena and in spite of their own human frailties.

Many other nations in this troubled world are not nearly so fortunate. They have no politicians to criticize and blame and kick out of office whenever they wish. Their lives are controlled by foreign occupiers or home-grown tyrants who dictate by the barrel of a gun or the edge of a machete.

US Ambassador Pans Bahamas Voting Record at UN

by Larry Smith

Shucks - a Shi'ite Bomb
Iran (or Persia as it used to be called) was one of the world's main flash points during the Cold War. And it remains a potent source of danger today. 

The suppression of Iran's nationalist aspirations over the past century led to the situation we find ourselves in now - where an extremist government that tramples on human rights is about to acquire nuclear weapons.

Fears of Soviet influence led the United States to engineer a coup against a popular prime minister in 1953, and prop up the Shah (or king) for decades to keep Iran in the Western camp. 

But the Shah's record on political and economic reform was mixed. And some reforms (such as women's rights) upset the conservative Islamic clergy. Opposition grew as the regime became more corrupt, and the Shah was forced to flee in January, 1979. He lived for a time in exile at a villa on Paradise Island before dying in Egypt in 1980.