by Sir Arthur Foulkes
Steve McKinney and Philippa Russell should have been fired immediately and unceremoniously as talk show hosts on ZNS Radio the day after the election.
As a matter of fact, they should not have been hired for this job in the first place; but having hired them, it should not have taken the management of ZNS long to realize that they were totally unsuited to be talk show hosts on this national broadcast facility, or any other for that matter.
It was clear when the PLP came to office in 2002 that the leaders of that party fully intended to turn back the clock and to undermine much of the progress that had been made in deepening and expanding our democracy, not only with regard to broadcasting but in other areas as well.
When Prime Minister Perry Christie saddled the BCB with Calsey Johnson as Chairman, he sent a clear signal to the public about what kind of national radio and television he wanted to cultivate at ZNS.
For 25 years from 1967 to 1992 the first PLP Government failed to free the air waves for private broadcasting while they abused ZNS shamelessly from day to day and year to year.
This national institution was treated as if it belonged to the PLP and Mr. Johnson was one of the hatchet men who kept guard and severely restricted access to ZNS by the official opposition and others who had views that were not in accord with the PLP.
In this column just three weeks ago I recounted how Opposition politicians had to submit their convention and election speeches 48 hours in advance so that they could be vetted by Mr. Johnson or one of the others before they could be aired on ZNS.
Incredible as it may sound today, opposition politicians were called in and had to endure the humiliation of sitting in front of Mr. Johnson or some other PLP commissar who told them what they could and could not say in their speeches!
In protest against this iniquitous and undemocratic practice, Senator J. Henry Bostwick tore up one such vetted speech on the floor of his party’s convention and went on to say his piece before the hatchet men could react. That is the way it was for 25 years under the first PLP Government.
The FNM Government under Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham changed all that and ushered in democracy to the airwaves. Mr. Ingraham and his colleagues freed the airwaves and took Bahamian broadcasting out of the dark ages.
They licensed private radio stations, they opened up ZNS and they allowed opposition politicians unprecedented and easy access to that facility -- just as it should be in a genuine democracy.
In the recent election campaign the PLP had the effrontery to make one of their slogans “No turning back!” And all during their last five years in office they were busy trying to undermine the culture of democracy created under the FNM so as to restore their party to a privileged position.
Their “no turning back” slogan was nothing more than a PLP version of cynical Orwellian language in which hate means love, lie means truth, war means peace and backward means forward.
The principal purveyor of this language is Perry Christie who, like Humpty Dumpty, seems to think he can make words mean whatever he wants them to mean, and Mr. Christie is never short of words.
The trouble is that while command of the language is a valuable tool, language can turn on you if you abuse it. Language alone is not enough for a leader. After a while people begin to compare a leader’s language -- especially if it is constantly high blown and extravagant -- with his actions and with reality.
Everybody in the country, including the most ardent supporters of the PLP, now know that Mr. Christie has a huge surplus in words but a serious deficit in action, and a misapprehension of reality that borders on the delusional.
Also -- and this is an important lesson Mr. Christie has not learned in spite of his claim to oratorical excellence -- if you employ the same level of passion in every thing you say, it becomes tiresome and people begin to wonder whether you are sincere or merely a con artist.
Mr. Christie’s reaction to comments made by Prime Minister Ingraham in connection with Mr. McKinney and Ms. Russell was predictably overwrought, extreme and unjustified.
Mr. Christie, when he was Prime Minister, should have fired these two or least called them to account were he the consummate democrat he claims to be. But he was content all through the election campaign to have them blatantly abuse the national radio for his partisan benefit.
Then, aided and abetted by these two and others, Mr. Christie kept the country on pins and needles the whole day after the election because he could not accept that the people had rejected him and his government.
They collaborated in a cruel manipulation of the emotions of the Bahamian people, especially their own supporters, and ran the risk of provoking serious unrest in the country.
Furthermore, it was known to Mr. Christie, as to many others, that whenever Philippa Russell got within striking distance of a microphone she was likely to spew a nasty and dangerous brand of racist claptrap.
Referring to what he described as Mr. Ingraham’s threat to Mr. McKinney and Ms. Russell, Mr. Christie said “this is nothing short of disgraceful. This is rank political victimization of the worst kind. It is an obscenity. It is also flagrantly unconstitutional.”
This is, of course, typical of Perry Christie. He believes that if he says it is victimization and says it with enough passion, it will become victimization; that if he says it is unconstitutional that will make it unconstitutional.
The truth is that it is not victimization and it is not unconstitutional. Mr. Ingraham and his Government would be quite irresponsible if they allowed the abuse of ZNS to continue for another day, if they allowed the Bahamian people to be victimized by these two partisan operatives at the expense of the very same taxpayers they are abusing.
If Mr. Christie really wants to see the ugly face of victimization there are a number of examples that occurred on his watch and for which he could muster no condemnatory rhetoric.
He can start in Mayaguana with the three young Bahamian men and the mother of five who, because of their political affiliation, were denied employment in their own home island while expatriate workers were enjoying the fruit of the land he gave away to foreigners. That is victimization; that is unconstitutional.
The PLP has a disgraceful record when it comes to victimization because during their 25 years in office they routinely and brutally victimized many of their own Bahamian brothers and sisters. They should not use the word victimization for fear someone will remind them of their sordid past.
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In his zeal to convince Bahamians that Mr. Ingraham was about to slash all PLP appointees, Mr. Christie said he kept FNM appointees in place, and he named former Governor General Dame Ivy Dumont and former Bahamas Ambassador to the US Joshua Sears.
He apparently forgot that under the FNM former Governor General Sir Clifford Darling remained in office until 1995 and that Jimmy Moultrie remained as Bahamas Ambassador to the United Nations.
Mr. (now Fr.) Moultrie was an interesting case because, unlike Mr. Sears who was a civil servant, he was a political appointee; and political appointees are expected to offer their resignations as soon as a new government comes to office. Mr. Moultrie was very political, having previously served as a PLP Member of Parliament, yet he was allowed to stay on.
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