Bahama Pundit

A Season of Demagogues

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.

Demagogues are a staple of history, re-emerging with greater force and virulence during trying times, such as economic crises, as well as in periods of increased violence and mass inward migration. 

Political power is an enticement to demagoguery.  Adolf Hitler exploited a poisonous cocktail of German pride, humiliation and economic collapse following its defeat in World War I, becoming one of history’s more notorious demagogues.  In the U.S., Senator Joseph McCarthy exploited fears of communism to hunt for “the godless commie traitors” in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”.

Commerce is also a lucrative enticement.  American talk show huckster Rush Limbaugh and a charade of pundit-profiteers manipulate severe economic dislocation in the world’s leading superpower, manufacturing -- from an alchemy of race-baiting, immigrant-bashing and other exploitable grievances -- troves of gold.

The Bahamas faces a season of demagoguery as we confront a perfect storm of fear and anxiety induced by one of the worst economic crises in most of our lifetimes, and waves of violent crime and illegal migrants, neither of which are likely to crest in the foreseeable future.

Lies, Dammed Lies and Emails!

by Larry Smith

Frankly, I am sick and tired of all those forwarded emails peddling scams, lies and hate propaganda.

This irksome correspondence used to derive mostly from unsophisticated internet users who thought they were doing their friends and relatives a favour by sending a useful safety tip or an interesting take on the news. But now it seems almost everyone is getting into the act - even well-educated and otherwise level-headed folks - and the information they are peddling grows more outrageous by the day.

Why is this? Well, as one blogger put it recently, "these forwards are not just a way of spreading an idea efficiently, they are a way of getting people to commit to the idea, or deepen their commitment, by the very act of forwarding it. This is a dangerous practice in a democracy: getting people to commit to ideas and beliefs which may be false, without any regard to the actual evidence."

The most egregious recent example came from a lawyer friend, and it had already been forwarded by several other Bahamian lawyers as a cautionary word to the wise. The email featured a link to a video, which purported to show the former health minister of Finland, Dr Rauni Kilde, warning that the swine flu vaccine is actually a bio-weapon intended to cripple the immune system for purposes of population control.

Local Government for New Providence – Part 2

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.

This is the conclusion of a two-part commentary on the type of local government best suited for New Providence (NP).  Part one suggests that the capital island may need a different form of local government as compared to what is needed on the Family Islands.

Moreover, rather than simply parroting clichés about the need for local government in NP, it may be best to start at the beginning, stating the principles which might guide an informed debate, while looking forward, reminding ourselves about what we want to achieve through local government.

The 'Prostitution' of Development in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

"This is how the islands from the shame of necessity sell themselves; this is the seasonal erosion of their identity, that high-pitched repetition of the same images of service that cannot distinguish one island from the other, with a future of poiluted marinas, land deals negotiated by ministers, and all of this conducted to the music of the Happy Hour and the rictus of a smile." -- Derek Walcott, Fragments of Epic Memory.

The stark contrast between lavish government incentives for "huge hotels" and the starvation of Caribbean culture by "stupid" politicians ,"threatens us with intellectual extinction", according to St Lucian poet and playwright Derek Walcott.

Walcott, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1992, provided star material for the Construction Seminar Group's biennial event at the College of the Bahamas last week. Although pushing 80, deaf and visibly frail, he is a master of the epigram - a concise, clever way of expression - and still wields a cutting wit that he likens to Don Quixote's lance.

In style and appearance Walcott resembles Bahamian songwriter Eric Minns. But he was able to draw a standing room-only audience of the local literati at the COB's Anatol Rodgers lecture the night before the Construction Group's workshop. At both events he pushed a lifelong argument that nation-building requires more than just big, foreign-owned hotels that steal the landscape.

It’s the Economy, Stupid!

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.

With the speech-making concluded and the decorations packed away following the national party conventions of the PLP and the FNM, voters remain fixated on the state and prospects for the world and national economies.

While the adage, “It’s the economy, stupid!” was popularized by Bill Clinton during his successful bid for the U.S. presidency in 1992, a country’s economic situation is typically a central election issue, even more so during economic crises.

No less a figure than British Prime Minister Winston Churchill learned this lesson following the humiliating defeat of his Conservative Party soon after it led an all-party coalition government that secured victory for Great Britain in World War II.

Bahamas Healthcare Plan Parallels US Reform Debate

by Larry Smith

Before the 1920s, people didn't give much thought to healthcare. You could die from infectious diseases like cholera or from "natural" causes, and medical technology was so poor that most patients were treated at home.

In fact, the chief cost associated with illness in earlier times was the lack of pay when sick people couldn't work. But all that changed after the Second World War, when two sharply different approaches were taken in Britain and the United States to deal with the rapid growth of medical technology and costs.

The British set up a National Health Service in 1948, in the belief that universal access to healthcare was part of the structure of a civilized society. Prior to this, hospitals were operated by local governments or charities and many people could not afford care. The publicly-owned NHS is financed by taxes, with services free to everyone at the point of use.

Local Government for New Providence – Part 1

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.

Local government for New Providence is one of those ideas many people support in principle but have little idea as to how it might work in practice.  Moreover, many of the proponents of local government on the capital island have yet to grasp or define basic terms.

Because of the archipelagic nature of The Bahamas, with the central government some distance from those communities, and the propensity of officials to focus on New Providence, the idea of elected local government for Grand Bahama and the other islands was much to be desired. 

It is doubtful if a similar system is necessary or practical for New Providence.  A number of questions may be posed and a number of observations may be useful.  Among others, there are three principles which rationalize the nature of and need for local government, namely: subsidiarity, the common good and participatory democracy.

Fixing the Montagu Mess—Finally!

by Larry Smith

Eighteen years ago, the injection well at Malcolm's Park that disposes of the city's sewerage deep underground malfunctioned, leading to the discharge of hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw waste into the harbour just west of the Potter's Cay fish market.

As a result, more than a thousand people were hospitalized from eating conch infected with a cholera-related bacteria picked up from the polluted waters around Potters Cay. The market was closed for months while garbage and discarded conch shells were cleared away, and the vendors were temporarily moved to the Symonette Shipyard property on Bay Street.

But some of them took advantage of this relocation to drift to the Montagu ramp, where a few casual fishermen had been hawking their catch since the 1970s. Although the plan was for them to return to Potters Cay when the market reopened, they never did.

Today, the Montagu ramp has become a huge issue for the 30-50,000 people living in the eastern district of New Providence. Unregulated commerce disrupts traffic flow and interferes with recreation in the area's only green space, while the lack of sanitation poses health risks that could be far more serious than the 1991 poisoning scare.

Aftermath of the PLP Convention

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.

Perry Christie’s evolution towards and final transformation into the Lynden Pindling of the more scandal-ridden days of the PLP was completed last week. 

In crushing the reform spirit within, labelled as traitorous, Mr. Christie demonstrated that in circling the wagons, the PLP is mostly a closed political organization, majority-ruled by appointed Stalwart Councillors, rather than elected branch representatives as is the case with most modern political parties founded on democratic principles.  

This is in keeping with the party’s intolerance of dissent, which is the back story to the events of last week. That story has been unfolding for decades, featuring some of the central players in a drama that exploded with fury over the past few weeks, culminating in Mr. Christie’s Gussimae re-election.