by Sir Arthur Foulkes
Events over the last few weeks have been interesting, exciting and sometimes depressing. At home the nation was shocked beyond words by the brutal attack on a six-year-old child and we are still wondering where we are going as society.
Yet another PLP Government Minister was under fire, this time for using his office to secure very special treatment for a close friend. Shane Gibson is one of those ministers who seem not to have the foggiest idea of how a Cabinet minister ought to conduct himself.
On the world stage there was high theatre with a session of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana and the opening of a new session of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York.
The Havana meeting at least provided an opportunity for two great nations, India and Pakistan, to put their peace-making efforts back on track in spite of the bloody history dividing them.
At the UN, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had some things to say to the United States that it needed to hear, but he damaged his cause with an outrageous personal attack on President George Bush.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the big winner at the UN. His speech and his comments at press conferences were controversial to be sure, but he conducted himself with dignity and made some telling points that the West ought to take to heart.
One conservative pundit described his performance as “riveting”, and more Americans are coming around to the view that their president should talk to this man. It would be better to seize every opportunity for peace before plunging the Middle East into more bombing and bloodshed.
In a BBC discussion hosted by Zeinab Badawi at the University of Colorado, a group of Nobel peace laureates, including the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, again emphasized that genuine peace can come only when the demands of social and economic justice are met.
In a scholarly discourse on faith and reason at the German University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI finally, as one commentator put it, emerged from the huge shadow of his great predecessor, John Paul II, but perhaps not in the way he might have wished.
The Pontiff reminisced about his days as a university lecturer and then launched into his talk by quoting a passage from an ancient dialogue between a Christian king and a Persian scholar. It was about the prophet Mohammed, and what he said so offended Muslims that violent demonstrations broke out in some cities.
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Leaders of church and state have always known how important it is to watch what they say because of the far-reaching consequences that can flow from an ill-considered statement, or even a well-intentioned statement that nevertheless lends itself to mischievous interpretation.
A snippet of a carefully-crafted pronouncement can be taken out of context and be, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, “twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools”.
The spontaneous comment politicians are often called upon to make can be risky, and barbs hurled in anger can be deadly. Then, of course, there is the downright stupid remark that even the most intelligent person can sometimes utter. All these dangers are more acute in today’s sound byte world.
The most popular historical case about how careful leaders have to be in what they say and to whom they say it is that of the 12th century King Henry II of England and Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury.
Becket was a brilliant young Norman living in England in the service of the church. He was very anxious to please the king and so when the opportunity presented itself, Henry arranged for him to be ordained priest and archbishop, all in a matter of days.
Then the archbishop suddenly started to put the will of the church above of the will of the king. Henry, a powerful king in Britain as well as on the continent, seems to have had a loyalty problem. His wife, Eleanor, and three sons, including the future Richard the Lionheart, also rebelled against him.
During the protracted conflict between Henry and Becket, the exasperated king exclaimed to some of his knights, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” or words to that effect. So four of his knights went to England and killed Becket in his cathedral. It is said that Henry regretted his hasty remark, but Becket was dead.
In Bahamian politics there is a very long list of quotes that -- rightly or wrongly – proved bothersome to their authors for many years, and some made history. Indeed, the politician who ends his career without at least one such to his credit can consider himself lucky, inconsequential or clever.
In the 1960s UBP politician Peter Bethell was at a conference in Africa when he was reported to have said that the white minority government had kept control of the black majority through careful planning.
PLP politicians, especially the flamboyant editor of The Herald, Cyril Stevenson, made creative use of the expression “careful planning” for many years afterwards.
On the eve of the 1967 general election, Sir Stafford Sands, in an unusually bold prediction for a politician, announced that “As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow the UBP will win 24 seats!”
That was the election which dramatically changed the course of Bahamian history. Sir Stafford’s party ended up with only 18 out of 38 seats in the House of Assembly, majority rule came to The Bahamas and a humiliated Sir Stafford went into exile in Portugal.
In 1974 Sir Clifford Darling, then Minister of Labour and Welfare, introduced the legislation for the establishment of National Insurance in The Bahamas. Sir Clifford was explaining that those Bahamians who were already senior citizens and therefore not able to contribute would nevertheless be included in the programme. But it sounded as if Sir Clifford was saying that “the old people would be getting something for nothing”.
The truth is, of course, that Sir Clifford’s only sin was a bad choice of words because all who knew him were aware of his genuine care for older Bahamians who found themselves in want in the twilight of their lives.
At a rally in 1972 just before the general election, FNM Leader Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield was condemning an alleged PLP plot to register voters in constituencies not where they were residing but where they were most needed by the party.
Sir Cecil warned that if those participating in such illegal activities were discovered, “I will prosecute their backsides straight to jail.” PLP operatives at ZNS lifted that statement out of context and replayed it repeatedly alongside a well-modulated clip from Sir Lynden Pindling.
Sir Lynden, whom Sir Cecil used to call “Sweet Mouth Willie”, was noted for his oratorical skills in the Bahamian vernacular, as well as flawless English when it suited the occasion, but he holds the record for ill-considered or misinterpreted statements.
In July 1969 when the PLP Government was locked in battle with the Grand Bahama Port Authority, Sir Lynden went to Freeport and made a speech acknowledging the economic opportunities for Bahamians in that city but adding:
“ … Bahamians are nevertheless still the victims of an unbending social order which, if it now refuses to bend, must be broken.”
That was reduced to “bend or break” and came to sum up, in the minds of many, Sir Lynden’s attitude and intentions towards Freeport. There were indeed changes that needed to be made in Freeport but some of Sir Lynden’s colleagues felt that those changes could have been effected without breaking the economic back of the city.
The way Sir Lynden handled the Freeport crisis and other matters, including Bahamas Airways, further agitated some of his colleagues and at the PLP convention in October 1970 led him to issue a historic challenge:
“If you can’t fish, cut bait. If you can’t cut bait, get to hell out of the boat!”
Sir Cecil accepted the challenge and in his convention speech dramatically announced his resignation from Sir Lynden’s Cabinet. That accelerated events leading to a no-confidence vote against Sir Lynden in the House of Assembly the next month, and the founding of the FNM in 1971.
It is hard to say whether Sir Lynden ever regretted his “get to hell out of the boat” challenge even though he was obviously stunned by the immediate reaction. No doubt he did regret some unkind public remarks he made about certain individuals, including his former friend and colleague Carlton Francis.
So the more powerful you are – politician or prelate -- and the higher you are, the more careful you have to be about what you say. Your word can change the course of history.
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