by Simon
•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com
The country recently granted Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, C.M.G., one of its highest honours. Soon thereafter it entrusted to him one of our greater national challenges: the rethinking and revitalization of our premier industry.
Technocrats often do not make for the best politicians cum cabinet ministers, especially in a highly charged political environment. However, there are notable exceptions.
On the eve of being handed the keys to the Prime Ministry, Manmohan Singh had never stood for election to the Lok Sabha or House of the People, India’s lower house.
But after Sonia Gandhi’s refusal to become her adopted country’s leader, the Congress Party turned to Mr. Singh because of his having established an impressive record as Finance Minister during Congress’ prior term in office.
Mr. Singh is credited with helping to lay the foundation for India’s economic transformation and its subsequent stellar performance. The jury is still deliberating his evolving premiership.
After his 2002 victory, then Prime Minister Perry Christie chose a technocrat, the highly respected and civic-minded former Central Bank Governor, James Smith, as his Minister of State for Finance.
He did so in order to reassure various audiences, as well as to utilize highly valuable talent in a critical ministry. Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham has chosen similarly in selecting Mr. Vanderpool-Wallace as Minister of Tourism and Aviation.
Having served for 12 years as Tourism’s Director-General, Mr. Vanderpool-Wallace re-enters his old ministry in a new capacity, one in which he does not report to the Minister.
As the Minister in the chair, he no longer has the advisor’s luxury of complaining that the political directorate simply will not heed his advice.
As a part of that directorate, his urgent task is to convince fellow cabinet members and the country that he can help to craft, sell and implement the policies necessary to re-imagine and re-invigorate Bahamian tourism.
In addition to current global economic realities, he must manage his brief within the context of a regional challenge. When the Minister was still a young boy, the Cuban revolution helped to produce a Bahamian tourism boom.
Almost 50 years later, Mr. Vanderpool-Wallace must help to lead the response of the Bahamas and the Caribbean to an evolving Cuban market.
Still, he is one of many. As sustainable tourism advocate Lelei LeLaulu noted while praising the new Minister, “The appointment of one brilliant man will not save the region.” The same can be said of the country.
In our system of cabinet government, he is not solely the tourism chief. He must also weigh in on, and accept shared responsibility for, a complex of critical issues from national security to education to heritage.
Because tourism is intertwined with so many areas of national life – this is good news. Though the lead tourism agent, because of our system of collective responsibility he is not the only agent. He will need the cooperation, insights and political savvy of his cabinet colleagues.
As welcome as his appointment has been by a broad cross-section of the public, he should appreciate that in front-line politics one does not necessarily win points for sound arguments and sober analysis.
Accordingly, Senator Vanderpool-Wallace must show that he has the tenacity and astuteness to navigate the political waves upon which he now sails. This is as it should be in a parliamentary democracy.
The daily operations of this ministry are no longer his remit. Rather his primary task is to provide that which the lack thereof tends to lead a people to perish – vision.
The Senator has a historic opportunity and an impressive range of skill-sets that few of his predecessors possessed. He also has the kind of prepared mind that chance and political imagination tend to favour.
The passage of time and circumstances -- and luck -- make clichéd comparisons more odious than usual.
Still, both Sir Stafford Sands and Vanderpool-Wallace took office amidst a number of similar challenges and opportunities, and possess comparable gifts, namely, imagination, intellect and gravitas.
The former had to figure out how to use the analogue novelty of television – a one-way avenue – to promote tourism. The latter has to master a complex of digital super-highways built on an internet platform that would make Sir Stafford swoon.
Strikingly, the father of modern tourism may have found his match. The new Minister has historic opportunities of which Sir Stafford failed to take advantage.
Undoubtedly the UBP Minister’s vision for tourism had a dramatic impact on the nation’s modern history. His policies helped to create what has been termed an economic miracle for the Bahamas.
Still, like most entrepreneurs, Sir Stafford built on the pioneering work of others, including Sir Bede Clifford and real estate mogul Sir Harold Christie.
Sir Bede, Governor from 1923 to 1937, realized that the end of Prohibition spelt disaster for the Bahamian economy. In proposing tourism as an alternative, he cast it as “a choice between the tourist industry and bankruptcy”.
Governor Clifford devised policies which encouraged visitors – including the building of amenities and the development of assorted visitor experiences.
Despite all the current recent rage about second-home tourism, Sir Harold promoted the idea decades ago. Beginning in the 1920s, he recognized the benefits of branding the Bahamas as a boutique destination and investment opportunity for the wealthy.
Unfortunately, Sir Stafford, among others, alienated considerable ownership of the Bahamian economy to scores of foreigners. Of course, a number of Bahamians -- mainly these middle-men – benefitted handsomely.
In this regard, Sir Stafford failed to appreciate, deepen and broaden tourism’s developmental potential by fostering greater ownership of the major engines of the industry by a wider cross-section of Bahamians.
Though we pioneered mass tourism in the Caribbean, and though it is our dominant industry, the Bahamas has yet to produce a Bahamian John Issa or Butch Stewart. None of our major hotels or resorts is partially, jointly or wholly owned by a Bahamian.
Sir Stafford never lived to witness Bahamian independence. But even if he had, would a man so steeped in racism and cronyism have been able to recognize and help leverage its extraordinary promise for the majority?
Mr. Vanderpool-Wallace knows that if he simply increases revenues and visitor numbers, the glass would only be a quarter full. He has previously stated that metrics such as poverty reduction must also serve as key measures of his and the country’s success.
His is a greater historic opportunity and burden, and not just because of the expectations that his appointment has engendered.
The Minister of Tourism and Aviation’s burden and opportunity can be posed in the form of a single question in two parts, or as variations on a common national theme.
How do we see ourselves and how do we wish to portray ourselves to international audiences? In tourism argot, the former refers to product and the latter to promotion. Both, of course, are questions of patrimony.
It is his and our response to these questions, to which this column will return next week.
Comments