Bahama Pundit

The Bahamas, Climate Change and the Revenge of Gaia

by Larry Smith

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” — Mark Twain

At the height of the Cold War, a huge underground bunker deep in the Rocky Mountains was crammed with sophisticated instruments to detect and deter military threats from the Soviet bloc.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command (or NORAD) was a “doomsday” machine designed to fight a nuclear war that no-one could win. The Cold War is over now, but life on Earth is still under threat - although from a very different quarter.

Recently, newspapers reported the building of another kind of ‘NORAD’ in the heart of a mountain on a frozen island in the Norwegian Arctic. And some say the future of humanity could rest within this multi-million-dollar concrete vault.

But instead of radars and computers, it will contain a collection of two million plant seeds, representing all known varieties of the crops that mankind developed in the 10,000 years since agriculture was invented.

Parliamentary Rules are Important

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

No one expects the business of parliament to be conducted like a Sunday school. Parliament is where the laws governing the nation are made, where public policy is debated, where the collection of revenue and the expenditure of the people’s money are authorized and where the executive is held accountable for its conduct of the people’s business.

That is heady stuff and so it is expected that passions should flare up from time to time and that members will engage in sharp exchanges and even indulge in occasional dramatics to draw attention to their causes. In some parliaments members driven by personal animosities and ideological differences have resorted to fisticuffs.

That has not happened in our House of Assembly in recent memory although it was reported that many years ago Sir Etienne Dupuch and Walton Young exchanged blows in a committee room. Sir Etienne was a pugilist and it was said that Mr. Young got the worse of the exchange.

Town Planning in the Bahamas

by Andrew Allen

At a town meeting some two months ago on the question of the proposed Wendy’s restaurant at Cable Beach, residents of the area left both their MP and the owner of Wendy’s in no doubt about their opposition to the plan.

They also made clear their frustration with a licensing process that seems insensitive (to say the least) to the views and interests of those that will be affected by the outcome of its decisions.

Two months on and residents are no closer to knowing how approval (albeit provisional) could have been given to a project that will so adversely affect their area, and for which they were given no opportunity for consultation.

While some have questioned why Cable Beach or Delaporte deserves any special exemption from the invasive commercialisation that is generally consuming this island, they miss the point.

Seeking a Consensus on Fixing Education in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

For the past several years, some business and labour leaders have been seeking a consensus on how to fix our failed education system so that ordinary Bahamians can continue to engage in the economy.

We know our public schools have failed because of the poor grades most students get, as well as the collapse of discipline on many campuses. And also because, as the Inter-American Development Bank said, there are “acute skills shortages at all levels of the Bahamian economy.”

Our awareness of that failure is also based on everyday experience with young people who can’t write simple sentences, do basic arithmetic or work comfortably with computers.

As the IADB put it, “economic prosperity and growth is underpinned by the capacity of the education and training system to prepare a skilled workforce....(and) there is a deficit of basic work skills among secondary school graduates“ in the Bahamas.

Bahamian Third Parties are not Viable

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

It was not at all surprising that the Coalition for Democratic Reform folded its tent last week. The party was wiped out in the last general election and when its founding leader went back to the PLP recently it was obvious that yet another attempt at establishing a viable third party in the Bahamas would fail, like all the others.

It is easy to start a political party. In a democracy like ours any group of citizens can do it. They get together, draw up a constitution and a platform, elect officers and they are in business. In the Bahamas the press will gladly afford their public pronouncements and activities prominence as if they were an established national party.

The Europeans are particularly good at starting parties, especially the French and the Italians. It was said that any time three Frenchmen got together to talk politics that would be the beginning of another party.

In Memory of Kayla Lockhart-Edwards

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

A quite remarkable Bahamian life came to an end recently. Kayla Lockhart Edwards sang her way with joy, performed the closing notes with grace, and orchestrated her going home with style. Throughout the entire performance she brought much enjoyment to the nation, made us feel good about ourselves and taught us some valuable lessons.

Mrs. Edwards finally succumbed after a protracted but spirited battle with cancer. Although she received a Silver Jubilee Award in 1998, she was inadequately recognized for the outstanding services she rendered to her country.

Prime Minster Perry Christie alluded to this in his remarks at her going home celebration when he acknowledged that we have not yet got it right when it comes to recognizing outstanding Bahamians during their lifetime.

On Tourism and Sustainable Development

by Nicolette Bethel

In early June, The Bahamas played host to a conference to discuss tourism and sustainable development. Now I don’t mind telling you that I found that more than mildly ironic — if there’s one thing you can’t say about the current state of the Bahamian tourism industry, it’s that it’s sustainable. The fact that the conference was held in the conference rooms of what was once the largest and splashiest hotel south of Atlantic City only increased the irony for me; I can remember the days when, as the Carnival Crystal Palace, the floors used to light up like a rainbow at night while we Bahamians lit candles in powercuts and fanned ourselves in front rooms hot as the infernal hinges.

A Salvadoran Message for The Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Francisco Flores, the former president of El Salvador, spoke at a conference here last week organised by the Nassau Institute, a public policy group that promotes capitalism and free markets.

The conference at the Atlantis Resort was co-sponsored by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which supports a network of market-oriented think tanks around the globe. Atlas gets a lot of its money from the John Templeton Foundation.

Flores was the guest of honour. At only 45, he is the poster boy of free marketeers everywhere. One of the most successful post-Cold War leaders, he helped reconstruct a notoriously failed state. And his message is one that should be heeded by Bahamian politicos - who were, of course, conspicuously
absent at last Friday's event.

Privatisation in The Bahamas

by Andrew Allen

In their rush to divest themselves of the burden of the public corporations, politicians of all stripes seem to have forgotten that what began the exercise in the first place is their collective failure to run any public body to an acceptable standard.

These days, the exercise seems to have taken on a logic of its very own, and the new, unquestioned consensus in favour of divestment has prompted politicians to take pride in their commitment to the idea of their own collective incompetence. Bradley Roberts is yet the latest Minister to join the chorus, berating his predecessors not for seeking to privatize BTC, but in failing to do it properly and completely.

But aside from the political farce, there are some truly pernicious effects of the apparent consensus that government cannot run anything properly.

Comparing US & Bahamian Immigration Policies

by Larry Smith

The most recent image of American immigration policy is hundreds of miles of fencing along the Mexican border guarded by thousands of troops. And our most recent image is of police officers dragging immigrant families from their beds in night-time raids.

But look behind the images, and the realities are quite different.

Although the Bush Administration can be blamed for many things, the immigration plan it rolled out two and a half years ago was a far-reaching reform that should become a model for our own efforts to deal with illegal Haitian immigration.