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.

The United States is perhaps the best example of a successful presidential republic, but in Latin America, Africa and Asia the presidential republic has too often been synonymous with dictatorship.

A few democracies have a hybrid system in which there are elements of both the presidential and parliamentary models.

France adopted such a hybrid system after a proliferation of political parties and consequent instability brought about the collapse of the post-war Fourth Republic. Charles de Gaulle wrote the constitution for the Fifth Republic and became its first president.

The British system, commonly referred to as Westminster because of the palace in which both houses of parliament meet, evolved out of many centuries of sometime violent struggle between the monarchy, the nobility and the commoners.

The British are still trying to come to terms with the vestiges of hereditary political office as represented in the House of Lords. The genius of the system lies in its flexibility and powerful conventions together with the marriage of two opposing political ideas, hereditary and elected office.

The hereditary monarch no longer has power in Britain but is still the symbol of national stability and unity in what is a very healthy modern democracy.

The monarch’s discretion in appointing prime ministers has all but disappeared as the major political parties have now developed rules for the selection of their leaders.

The monarch is still supposed “to advise, to warn, to guide” prime ministers but, as commentators pointed out last week, it is not likely that a very young Queen Elizabeth II had any words of advice for the old war horse she met in office.

More likely Sir Winston Churchill lectured her on what was expected of a British monarch. Counting from Sir Winston, Gordon Brown last week became the eleventh prime minister of Elizabeth’s reign.

The story of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is a fascinating chapter in recent British political history. It is said that they had an arrangement between them that one would succeed the other as prime minister of Britain.

Both were powerful figures in the Labour Party and Mr. Brown served throughout as Mr. Blair’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. Some say only half joking that Mr. Brown never showed the Prime Minster his budget in advance of presentation to parliament.

Mr. Blair gets the credit for building on the work of Neil Kinnock and making the Labour Party electable again. He led his party to an unprecedented three straight victories at the polls.

His popularity waned considerably in the last few years because of the Iraq war but his Conservative opponents were unable to exploit this because they supported Britain’s participation in the invasion of Iraq.

For a while it looked as if Mr. Blair was reluctant to honour his deal with his friend and rival Gordon Brown but no doubt pressure from within the party because of the Iraq war finally led him to step down.

What is interesting is that this is not the way prime ministers as a rule make their exits. Some go when their party is defeated in an election and others go when they are chased out of office by their colleagues, as was Margaret Thatcher.

In any event, the days of mounting insurrections and shedding blood in order to achieve political office seem long gone in Britain. Mr. Blair left 10 Downing Street and went to Buckingham Palace to inform the Queen he was stepping down.

An hour later he was followed by Mr. Brown who went to the palace to get his mandate from the Queen to form a new government. Then he went back to Number 10 as Britain’s new prime minister. The whole thing was smooth as silk and elegant as a ballet.

This is the glorious tradition of parliamentary democracy that we share with Britain and most of the world’s democracies. Unlike Britain, we have a codified constitution but we still have many of the conventions that are so important to the successful operation of the system.

The great challenge for Bahamians is that we continue to honour these conventions. It was not at all certain in 1972 that we could exercise the restraint and good judgment that was necessary in the office of a political attorney general with ultimate power over prosecutions.

The alternative was a constitutional director of prosecutions. It was Loftus Roker who convincingly made the argument that Bahamians had assimilated the conventions and that a Bahamian attorney general could be trusted just as well as a British one not to abuse this power.

We are not out of the woods yet, as was demonstrated by the former administration when so many conventions were disregarded, and also by post-election events when some who were relegated to the role of opposition were reluctant to allow a seamless transition from one government to another.

* * *

The new administration has a lot on its plate but it is important to start planning now to provide a suitable home for our parliamentary institutions. Both the Senate and the House of Assembly, but especially the House, has outgrown by many years the accommodations into which they are now crammed.

There is not sufficient office space in the House, let alone proper accommodations where House committees can work and hold public hearings, and it is almost impossible to modernize parliament under these conditions. A new parliamentary complex is badly needed.

Comments

[interested]

Excellent article as usual.

More important than physical accommodations however is the need for a new and revised system of govt. The Bahamas is not Britain with its long history of customs and conventions hammered out over centuries.

The constitutions foisted upon former British colonies by the colonial office should really be reworked to provide greater and more dependable safeguards like true seperation of powers, more definitive checks and balances, and more access to independent political power than the current system provides.

Some leaders in th Caribbean for example feel that the system fails in affording talented an interested citizens the capability to allow their talent to rise to the top and so they drop out, and/or move to jurisdictions which offer better use of their talent politically.

The loss of this talent in the political and economic development of small struggling nations is a serious problem and one which the system and structure of govt can be extremely helpful in resolving.

See an article on this called
"Strings-Free Government" For The Caribbean, where some of the problems and potential solutions are proposed by one observer.

http://www.hannaian.com/stringsfreecarib.html

Keep up the good work and the excellent articles on the History, development and inside view of the political landscape in the Bahamas as only you can do. Your revelations have been eye opening and hopefully you will condense them into some sort of historical compilation for generations of Bahamians to have a true and informed perspective of this important time in our history.

Thanks again for your dedication and insight.

[EB Christen]

Excellent article.

Not only has parliament out grown its physical limitations, but the beautiful buildings downtown could be put to MUCH better use than housing verbose politicians and being the destination for shuttling hardened criminals to and from court. While I love the NAGB where it is, how many tourists really walk up there? Why not put the NAGB in RAWSON square, sell the prime minister's office complex to a private hotel group - how nice would a 5 star Ritz Carlton downtown be? Perhaps open a casino somewhere in the downtown area to draw people off the ships and expand our Nassau tourism?

Time to think outside the box Bahamas. The next 5 years need to be about prepping this place for 21st century success. It is sink or swim and right now we are barely treading water.

[dadon589]

AN OPEN LETTER TO ARTHUR FOULKES
By E. W. I. Watkins
My Dear Arthur: In your weekly Column, To The Point, in The Tribune of 26th June, 2007 in an Open Letter to Mrs. Allyson Maynard-Gibson, you, from the tone of your letter, seemed to be very upset with her, and really took her to task, while glorifying Cecil (Sir).
I was very amused. You also went to very great lengths in dishing out kudos for Midge (GG Arthur Hanna), his wife, Beryl, Sir Clem and Lady Zoe - a noble gesture -but why? It never ceases to amaze me, the lengths that some of us would go to defend our political masters, even though in some cases, they are indefensible. I do not want you, for the slightest moment to believe that I am defending Allyson Maynard-Gibson -far from it, My Brother - for she is more than capable of doing that herself. This letter is to correct certain statements by you, refresh your memory and try to gain some answers as to why you and others try so hard to hide the role played by the UBP in the formation of the FNM. As far as you and others advocating independence in the 50s, I know nothing of that, nor did I hear of it. It could have been so.

In naming the eight' dissidents,' you added two more to the list, giving readers the impression that the FNM was formed by the eight plus two. This, my friend, is misleading and far, very far, from the truth of the matter. I will try to refresh your memory and correct that which requires coITection. Sir Orville Tumquest and Kendal Isaacs were not a part of the amalgamation of the Free PLP and the UBP that emerged as the FNM. Tumquest was the Deputy Leader of the NDP. While waiting until around 1 a.m. in the morning for the Leader of his party to show up for the nominations of candidates to contest the 1972 General Elections for the NDP, and the Leader did not show, he (Tumquest) like the other members of the Grouping (NDP), just went adrift. Tumquest joined the new party, FNM after its formation. Isaacs was persuaded to join and given the safe UBP seat of Montague and the assurance of House Leader if Cecil should lose his seat - which he (Cecil) did.

When you speak in so glowing terms about Cecil, you made me smile and I thought to myself, is this the same Arthur Foulkes who, along with a number of other supposed Stalwarts and supporters of Cecil, abandoned him (Cecil) and his Party (FNM) and formed the BDP with Henry Bostwick as Leader because Cecil said that he was not nominating any white candidates in 19771 Then was it not you, Arthur, along with Bostwick and the remnants of the BDP who, after Norman Solomon, Jimmy Knowles and the other 'White Boys' abandoned the BDP - the same group that left the FNM in support of them (White Boys) -to form the SDP and became H. M. Loyal Opposition, crawled back to Cecil and forced a change of name from FNM to FNDM? Some loyalty, don't you think?

Now when Allyson or anyone else say that we, the FNM in 1972 opposed Independence, she and who else says it, are CORRECT. If your memory is fading on this matter, here is a reminder. The PLP's slogan was, "A vote for the PLP is a vote for Independence." Our (FNM) slogan was, "Independence - not now." The PLP won, the FNM lost. The FNM garnered 41% of the votes, but all - everyone of the Dissident 8 lost their seats. Kendal Isaacs, the outsider who was never - like Gerald Cash - affiliated with any Party, ended up as House Leader of the Party. It was after our defeat that Isaacs and others - you included - proclaimed that the FNM would now go along with the PLP on the Independence issue. Marsh Harbour refused and as their MP, I represented their wishes. Roland Symonette, Cleophas Adderley and Michael Lightbourne supported me in the Abaco stand, for which the four of us were expelled. It is not fair to say that Allyson lied when she said that the FNM opposed Independence in 1972; she was correct. She did not lie when she said that the roots of the FNM were opposed to Majority Rule. The UBP who held 9 seats and was H.M. Loyal Opposition in Parliament at the time of the amalgamation, was always opposed to Majority Rule, and you of all persons, was aware of this. To say that Majority Rule was attained before the marriage of the two entities does not alter the fact that the roots of the new entity of which the Free PLP was then an integral part, were so opposed. The Election slogan, "No Independence Now" is a testimonial of that fact.

You, Arthur and many others in the FNM, over the years, have been misleading John Q. Public into believing that the Dissident-8 formed the FNM. In doing this, you all failed to mention in any way or form the presence of the UBP, when not only were they a part, they were the hub on which the FNMs' wheel spun.

Arthur, you of all persons should know that the more you try to bury the truth, the more it would find a way to surface. It's history, my Brother, and there are a number of old UBPs out here not only kicking, but still riled up at the way many of you allowed not only yourselves, but close kin to be walked over and pushed around by a Political Transplant; but are quick to jump on opponents when the truth is brought to the fore. If, as you claimed, you were so patriotic and in favor of Independence, why did you campaign -like the rest of the FNM Candidates -so hard against it in the 1972 Elections. Further more, why did you, along with the FNM's Delegates attending the 1972 Constitutional Conference packed up and come back home, leaving the PLP (Government) to complete the Conference with the excuse that you all wanted to spend Christmas with your families? Findling and his Delegation remained until the Conference was

completed.

There is an old Bahamian saying, "The more you stir the wet stuff, the stinker it get." Another one is, "Its best to let sleeping dogs lie." The movers and shakers in the formation of the FNM were: Geoffrey G. A. D. Johnstone, Leader (UBP), Errington W. I. Watkins (Chairman, UBP), Peter Graham, M.P. (North L. I., Rum Cay & San Salvador), Donald d' Albenas, MP (South Long Island), Roland Symonette, MP (Shirlea), Noel Roberts, MP (N. Eleuthera), Capt. Sherwin Archer MP (Marsh Harbour), Cleophas Adderley, MP (Nassau City), Norman Solomon, C. A. Dorsett, Reginald Lobosky, the officers and members of the Council of the UBP - Cecil W allace-Whitfield, MP (Leader of the Free PLP), Curtis MacMillan, MP, Arthur Foulkes, M.P., James Shepherd, MP, Warren Levarity, MP, Dr. Elwood Donaldson, MP, George Thompson, MP and Maurice Moore, MP, along with supporters of the Group. This Blatant distorted and BIAS portrayal of the FORMATION of the Free National Movement by persons attempting to distance themselves as associates of former members of the UBP should cease.

If you had felt so strongly, as you often professed, about being associated with the White movers and shakers of the UBP, you should have -like the leader of the NDP -gone back to the PLP, then you would not have been in the awkward position of trying to hide the fact that the UBP played the MAJOR role in the formation of the FNM. History cannot and will not be changed on this issue. As Chairman of the UBP, I continued on as Coordinator of the New Entity. All records and Minutes of Meetings and other activities are still around for perusal and refreshing of memories.

[no name]

Hey Sir???Arthur Foulkes we are allllllll waiting for your response to Mr. E.W.I. Watkins.