by Simon
The contribution to the 2010/11 budget debate by the Leader of Opposition Business in the Senate was one of the more egregious examples of neo-colonial claptrap by a Bahamian political figure in the nearly four decades after independence.
It merits the Bait and Switch Award. It would be granted to Senator Allyson Maynard Gibson on behalf of the PLP for using the bait of progressive rhetoric to camouflage a regressive mindset and then switch to reactionary policies.
From women’s rights to land policy, the once progressive and liberal PLP continues to betray its roots. It does so while ritually thumping its chest about a legacy it long ago abandoned and now mostly uses as window-dressing.
Senator Allyson Maynard Gibson’s full-throttled defence of one of the worst give-aways of land in the modern Bahamas was stunning and revealing. During her communication, she breathlessly ginned up support for the agreement the Christie administration concluded with the I-Group to “develop” Mayaguana.
The sales pitch on the Mayaguana Project by the former Minister responsible for foreign investment was mostly one of appearances and artifice. The facts are more disturbing and dispositive in terms of the demerits of the original deal.
The agreement Senator Maynard Gibson gleefully promotes just about every chance she gets, gave most of Mayaguana’s coastal area to a company which was ostensibly to be owned 50/50 by a foreign group and the Bahamas Government.
Yet there is something critical that the PLP and the Senator conveniently leave out during their obsequious hoop-la about this oddly crafted wheel of fortune: This 50/50 arrangement would have eventually sold off nearly 100 per cent of Mayaguana’s coastal area and nearly 10,000 acres, to non-Bahamians.
As Mayaguana, by comparison, is somewhat larger than New Providence, the deal the PLP continues to brag about was the equivalent of turning over to a single developer a stretch of coastal land from the eastern end of New Providence to Lyford Cay. Again, the vast majority of this land would have ended up in foreign hands.
If there are no changes to the current deal, all other touristic development, Bahamian or foreign, would be relegated to Mayaguana’s interior or less desirable coastal land.
In one fell-swoop, the PLP signed an agreement placing the price and potential ownership of this land out of the reach of most Bahamians and Mayaguanians. This deal reduced to next to nil the opportunity of any ownership of this prime land by “the small man” or the descendants of Poor Black Kate.
When “the small man” protested about the encroachment of the land assigned to the I-Group on their settlements, the Christie administration turned a blind eye. It ignored the pleas of the small men and women of Mayaguana regarding the extent to which this encroachment would severely limit the expansion of Mayaguana’s settlements as well as easy access to beaches and the waterfront by Bahamians.
AIDED & ABETTED
Perhaps the best title for this bizarre episode is Survivor-Bahamas. It is the story of how a few hundred Bahamians endured the assault on the country’s most easterly jewel in an unprecedented give-away cum land-grab.
That today’s PLP continues to enthusiastically defend such an egregious assault on the Bahamian national interest is a profoundly sad indictment of its current leadership and direction.
Legendary realtor and UBP stalwart, Sir Harold Christie, and his associates would have been ecstatic over this deal. The deal would have effectively turned the Bahamas Government into a real estate developer.
It is reminiscent of the good old days when an oligarchy of UBP ministers cum business people made few distinctions between political office and financial interests. Moreover, the Mayaguana deal would have landed the Bahamas Government in the position of being both the regulator and the regulated.
As disturbing, the deal would have mushroomed into an enclave of predominantly foreign settlers on an entire Bahamian island. This is precisely what Sir Stafford Sands had in mind for Freeport.
The cupidity involved in the Mayaguana deal is expected from some foreign investors. But that it was aided and abetted by a government supposedly acting in the name of the Bahamian people, is an insult to the spirit of Majority Rule and independence.
Senator Maynard Gibson compared the proposed development in Mayaguana to that of La Samana in St. Maarten. There are differences with extraordinary distinctions. Foremost, Mayaguana is a part of an independent Bahamas, unlike St. Maarten, which remains an overseas territory of France and the Netherlands.
As shocking, Senator Maynard Gibson favourably compared the Mayaguana deal to that of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement. The point should not be missed. The Senator said of the Mayaguana and the Freeport deals: “These types of agreement are very important to qualitative national development. I support both.”
Phillip Galanis and fellow progressives in the PLP must be having fits over her comments and the rightward direction of the PLP. The Hawksbill Agreement, the brainchild of the UBP, would never have been approved today for scores of good reasons. Or perhaps, it mostly would have been approved by the same PLP Cabinet that green-lighted the Great Mayaguana Land Give-Away.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS
But land policy is not the only area in which the PLP and Senator Maynard Gibson are historical throwbacks, disconnected from the small man or woman. Women’s rights are an area in which the Senator has featured prominently. Indeed, she has spoken extensively, at home and abroad, of expanding protections for women.
But, when it came to supporting landmark legislation to enhance gender equality, the PLP and Senator Maynard Gibson did not live up to their speeches.
Ironically, the Senator failed to support legislative advancements which would have brought the Bahamas into greater accord with evolving international standards, even as she travelled abroad burnishing her feminist credentials.
Senator Maynard Gibson and the PLP opposed a constitutional change which would have granted women equality with men in terms of one’s foreign born children automatically receiving Bahamian citizenship. Then the PLP obfuscated on proposed domestic rape legislation, waiting to gauge the public mood.
Soon after failing to support the latter measure, Senator Maynard Gibson spoke at an International Women’s Day Symposium. She began her address, “The International Theme for International Women’s Day 2010 is “Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress for All.” Really? Then what about the right of a woman to protect herself from being raped by her own husband?
The Senator’s fence-sitting was akin to a suffragist who after vigorously campaigning for years for a woman’s right to vote, suggests at crunch time that more study is needed on the matter.
The Senator continued: “The question is, “in the 1st decade of the 21st century have [we] built on and multiplied progress or has the 20th century progress eroded”? Some people have built on this progress. But, in two of the early 21st century battles to multiply progress for Bahamian women, the PLP and Senator Maynard Gibson elected to bypass opportunities to advance that progress.
Moreover, Bahamians are on to the game of using so-called principled language to forsake other stated principles. Senator Maynard Gibson says that, in principle, she supports many of the principles in the aforementioned legislation to expand women’s rights. But, what she cannot support, in principle, is the process.
Some historical licence may be in order. One can imagine that before the cosseted and smug Marie Antoinette famously and cluelessly said let them eat cake, that she may have also said that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too. This has basically been the Senator’s stance on the aforementioned opportunities to expand gender equality.
History ultimately honours those who demonstrate the courage of their convictions during pivotal moments and who help to fashion majorities for change. This is why the early PLP will always have an extraordinary place in the history books.
History looks less favourably on those who wait for a majority to form and then align themselves with the swelling tide. This is why the current PLP may largely be relegated to an historical sidebar in the history books.
Today, despite the rhetoric of Senator Maynard Gibson and much of her party, the PLP’s recent record on gender equality and land policy are more in the service of the status quo and selective interests than “the small man”.
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