Bahama Pundit

The House of Assembly, the Fig Tree, Bishop Humes & Derrick Atkins

by Craig Butler

Members in the House of Assembly needed to be cognizant of the fact that the proceedings are being broadcast on radio and television so it is important for them to display proper decorum and provide a healthy example for our youth.

With the problems that the nation is presently facing in respect of crime it is imperative that those in leadership positions do all that they can to stem this flow. Accordingly, the recent fracas between Speaker Alvin Smith and the PLP Member for Golden Gates, Shane Gibson, should have never happened.

I don’t know why the Speaker would want to drag the House backward by ban the latest technology - specifically the use of laptop computers - although I too have heard the rumors. Even so, I don’t think that it makes any sense but rather impedes the progress of the House. However, the Speaker can certainly make these pronouncements, which ought to be followed.

It has been postulated that the reason for banning their usage is that it was a privilege abused by some members and that during his time in opposition the Speaker would have observed the same. It is said that rather than participate in the proceedings of the House many members used the time to surf the net, play games, read email and even visit pornographic sites.

On Independence

by Nicolette Bethel

When I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me: “If you aim for a star, you might hit a tree.” Being a rather literal-minded child, I used to imagine myself in a gigantic catapult, aiming at Polaris, and crashing into the dilly tree in our back yard on the way.

The point is you need to dream big dreams to accomplish even a little bit of them. The bigger your dreams, the higher your goals, the further you are going to go. But if you begin with small goals, you will go nowhere at all.

The More Things Change...Nassau's Straw Market Controversy

by Larry Smith

"The daily passage of market women up and down Market Street, under the stone arch named after Govenor Gregory, completed in 1852, was one of the picturesque Nassau sights. Some vendors walked great distances, their goods expertly balanced in flat wooden trays on their heads."-- Islanders in the Stream, by Gail Saunders & Michael Craton.

It seems that the more things change in Nassau, the more they stay the same. The following comment was written to a local newspaper in 1880, and we are still making the same complaints today.

"Anyone walking down Bay Street may count dozens of lewd characters of both sexes lurking especially in the vicinity of Vendue House using most obscene language...while perchance may be seen a policeman listlessly walking by, apparently heedless of what is happening."

Vendue House - now the Pompey Museum - was already a century old when that letter to the editor was written. It had been built on the site of an earlier market (at the junction of George and Bay Streets) to process the arrival of enslaved Africans.

Soon after, another market was set up on the waterfront further east. This is the site which is now - 200 years later - just a big hole in the ground. And it was those same enslaved Africans who gave rise to the straw vendors who once occupied that market, by adapting basketware traditions brought from their home cultures.

The Roots of Crime in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Conversations with taxi drivers these days are no longer about the weather or business - they're all about the latest killings.

Another young man stabbed or shot to death for who knows what. Another young woman dispatched in a domestic quarrel. Another gunfight at the fish fry. Experts say homicide is a reliable barometer of all violent crime, and we have had 46 murders so far this year - one of the highest per capita rates in the world.

Death by violence is commonplace on New Providence, along with armed robbery and rape, and our youth seem to be armed to the teeth. When 18-year-old Mardio Hall was killed at the QE sports centre days ago, newspaper reports said other young people in the crowd were moved to fire their weapons in the air.

Police say 70 per cent of local murders are committed by young men between the ages of 18 and 35 - and their victims are usually other young men. The causes range from gang warfare to lovers' quarrels to drug disputes to plain old arguments.

And public response to this unprecedented tide of killings has been predictable. The Christian Council demands "immediate hangings." Others call for prayer meetings. And some have suggested an amnesty for thugs to turn in their weapons to local pastors.

Life is Cheap in the Bahamas

by Craig Butler

Within the space of five days two young men had their lives stubbed out for nothing at all. I have to ask myself 'why?' And honestly I don’t have an answer. Is life now so cheap that we take it without a second thought?

Our young men are angry and their inability to control their emotions causes them to act impulsively. This results many times in consequences that could easily have been avoided had someone stopped to think, but more likely than not has ended in tragedy for two families.

Always remember it is not only the victim’s family that are grieving after suffering the loss of one dear to them, but the perpetrator's family have to endure the shame of it all and the fact that their child will now be dragged before the courts to face justice and on each occasion they will ponder the question to which there is no answer...What if?

Freedom of Information in The Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Without the press, the modern emperor – whether dictator or elected president – is insulated, encapsulated in a cocoon of many who are either sycophants or who are truly awed by those in power. -- David Steinberg

It is in the public interest that everything should come out. -- Tony Benn

Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret. -- Max Weber

Frankly, I find it difficult to write about this subject - it's such a no-brainer, and so crucial to the good governance of the country that it upsets me.

Here is the bare-faced truth: Public authorities act in the public interest. There is no legitimate value in keeping public information private. And without access to information we cannot hold public authorities to account.

In fact, colonial authorities purposely used secrecy to maintain their power and prestige. And although we gained our "freedom" from British rule over 30 years ago, we have yet to persuade our homeboy rulers to tolerate freedom of information. On the contrary, they continue to equate secrecy (of even the most trivial information) with power.

Foulkes Column Suspended

Sir Arthur Foulkes has been appointed director of Bahamas Information Services and has therefore suspended his Tribune column - To the Point - which has been reproduced here since 2005.

Celebrating the 34th Anniversary of Bahamian Independence

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

We have observed another anniversary as an independent state in the world community of nations and we have much to celebrate. Independence itself was only a milestone -- an important one to be sure -- but still only a milestone.

The milestone we have just passed says 34 but we have, in fact, a great history of centuries of struggle and progress. And those two elements – struggle and progress – as the American civil rights crusader Frederick Douglass so eloquently reminded us, always go together:

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.”

Many of those who agitated and plowed up the ground were not even around when the great day came. Some, like the slave Pompey, were long in their graves, and others just missed it by a few years, even months.

So it is fitting that this year we acknowledge the nation-builders who went before us, who did the agitating and plowing, who sowed the early seeds for the growth of a nation. And we became a nation long before we became an independent state.

On Cultural Production

by Nicolette Bethel

There's a lot of talk about globalization these days.

We talk about it as though it's something new and potentially dangerous. Globalization is coming, we say, as though it's some kind of demonic force that is going to take us over. And we worry about the free movement of people, our ability to compete in the global job market, our ability to stand up and be counted when it comes to the global scene.

We've got a problem.

Because you see, there's at least one area in which we Bahamians (and all Caribbean people) can compete on a global scale.

It's the area of culture.

Storm World: Hurricanes and Global Warming

by Larry Smith

As we enter the 2007 you-know-what season - with 14 named storms and seven hurricanes predicted - a science journalist named Chris Mooney has published Storm World, a book linking hurricanes with the battle over global warming.

Mooney grew up in New Orleans, the city that was smashed by Hurricane Katrina recently, and is the Washington correspondent for Seed Magazine. His new book presents a scientific history of our current understanding of hurricanes and asks if we are making these dangerous storms even bigger monsters than they already are.

His starting point is that since the Earth's atmosphere is warming, and since hurricanes draw their power from the heat energy stored in tropical ocean waters, warmer seas should (all else being equal) produce more intense storms.

This has enormous implications - particularly for us in the Bahamas - because strong hurricanes cause dramatically more destruction than weak ones when they hit land. Although that might sound obvious at first, the fact is that the amount of damage increases at a faster rate than wind speed.

The Roots of the Bahamian Parliamentary System

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Those who had the time to watch on television last week the transition of power from one prime minister to another in Britain would have been greatly rewarded by the experience.

It was instructive to watch this seamless process in one of the world’s great democracies and the former imperial power from which we inherited our system of parliamentary democracy.

Among those countries in the world that can be described as democracies, about 60 have chosen to be parliamentary democracies with Iceland being the oldest and India the biggest. Some are unicameral.

Nearly all of the former colonial territories in the Caribbean chose to be parliamentary democracies, including Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica which are republics. Guyana is the exception.

There is obviously a consensus among them that this system is to be preferred over the presidential republic in which great power is vested in a directly-elected head of government who is also head of state.