Bahama Pundit

PLP’s Betrayal of the Movement for Equality

by Simon

“A right delayed is a right denied.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

The Bahamas Independence Conference convened 12 days before Christmas 1972 at the red Dutch brick Marlborough House in central London, which once served as a royal residence, eventually housing the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation.

Leading the Bahamian delegations were Premier Sir Lynden Pindling (PLP) and Leader of the Opposition Sir Kendal Isaacs (FNM).  The central order of business was the independence constitution.

Marlborough House, adorned with paintings, murals, tapestries and sculptures symbolizing the apogee of British imperial and colonial rule was now a museum of sorts where the nadir of empire was unfolding with a succession of colonies holding independence talks in the stately mansion.

There was, at the conference, another irony; a tragic one:  Ten years after women’s suffrage and at the birth of a new constitution committed to equality, the PLP, the party which helped usher in majority rule, opposed full equality for Bahamian women in terms of passing on a right of automatic citizenship to children born outside The Bahamas of a non-Bahamian husband. 

Sawmill Sink Update & Two Christmas Books

by Larry Smith

Sawmill Sink
The rocks that make up up the Bahamas platform were formed over millions of years in shallow water as layers of sediment. As these layers gradually subsided under the weight of new deposits, they were converted into limestone.The top layers were blown into vast sand dunes, and by the end of the last glacial period - about 12,000 years ago - the geography of the Bahamas was more or less complete.

But during the ice age, when sea levels were much lower, rainwater had eroded the limestone rocks to form solution holes that gradually expanded into huge underground cave systems. These were described as early as 1725 by the great English naturalist Mark Catesby, while the marine caves known as blue holes were first recorded on sea charts in 1843. 

In fact, the entire Bahamas platform is riddled with cracks and fissures like the holes in a piece of Swiss cheese, and everything is tidally connected. One of these fissures is called Sawmill Sink - an inland blue hole in south central Abaco that extends 150 feet below sea level, and then spreads out into miles of horizontal passages. Scientists have spent the last several years investigating a treasure-trove of fossils found in its depths - all perfectly preserved by the cavern's unique water chemistry.

According to top cave diver Brian Kakuk,"These systems hold hidden but vital historical data on our past global climate, giving benchmark evidence of past sea levels. They are not simply holes in the ground in which to throw things, but precious containers of potable water and rare marine life - time vaults of Bahamian history and generators of tourism revenues."

Kakuk has more than 2000 exploration cave dives to his credit, and he is one of the lead investigators in the Sawmill Sink Project, having found the first fossil there in 2004 - an extinct giant tortoise. Later investigations in this undisturbed cave have turned up a range of impressive fossils - the prehistoric reptiles, birds, and mammals that once roamed Abaco.

Among the chief investigators of this treasure trove are Dr David Steadman, curator of birds at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville; and Janet Franklin, a landscape ecologist at Arizona State University. And both were in Nassau last week to update environmentalists and other officials on their Abaco research.

So far, the research team has recovered the bones of 54 land crocodiles - including some that lived 4500 years ago - as well as several giant tortoises, who lived contemporaneously with the crocodiles and often served as their prey. Among the fossils are bones from a Lucayan child dated to about a thousand years ago - the earliest evidence for human occupation in the northern Bahamas and the oldest radiocarbon date on human bone in the entire archipelago. 

"We are also finding lots of bones of birds, snakes, frogs and lizards," Steadman said. "The whole fauna of the last few thousand years before people arrived in the islands and caused many of these animals to become extinct. We are finding a similar species composition to the present, so we will be able to put extinction into perspective over time."

Christie’s & Minnis’ Shared Failure on Gambling

by Simon

The performances of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are severely wanting on the range of issues related to gambling.  Perry Christie’s performance has been abysmal.  Dr. Hubert Minnis has been wrong-footed, wobbly and confusing.

Most pronouncements by the government and the opposition respectively have generally proven to be rambling, inconsistent and curiously unreflective, with some exceptions.  Thankfully, the debate has been joined by others who have raised critical issues and common concerns.  

Two of these are the Anglican and Roman Catholic prelates, both of whom issued pastoral reflections.  The latter word is key, as the respective documents were decidedly more reflective, well-researched and deliberative than the hastily concocted announcements by the PLP and the FNM. 

This is unsettling as it is the obligation of the government and the opposition to present to the public, policy ideas and the philosophy informing their views on the many issues relative of gambling.

The leadership of both parties bear responsibility for the embarrassing and inexcusable failure to address in a more detailed and thoughtful manner the array of issues related to legalizing gambling.  Still, Christie and Minnis bear a particular responsibility.

The roll-out of the government’s web cafe referendum, driven mostly by Christie, ran into a storm of opposition coalescing into a super storm seemingly as quickly as Hurricane Sandy made up its mind and took aim at The Bahamas and the US with dedicated fury.