Bahama Pundit

Branville McCartney’s Messianic Complex & Makeover

by Simon

Branville McCartney’s supersized vanity and hunger for political power are glaring despite his feigned humility and rhetoric that he is merely a servant of the people and not really a politician.

Curiously, some are falling for this ploy by Mr. McCartney who seeks to exploit their antipathy towards politicians even as he is deeply engaged in the political arena in order to achieve his heated political ambition.  This is a classic political manoeuvre often pulled on the naive and the willfully naive.

Many of these same naive Bahamians support Barack Obama who, of course, is a career politician and who lauds the virtues of politics to achieve big and important things.  Mr. McCartney has on occasion compared himself with Mr. Obama.  We will leave that conceit for another time.  For now, he might consider borrowing some of Mr. Obama’s forthrightness in acknowledging his political nature.

What is needed are effective and good politicians, not those claiming to be non-politicians simply to exploit various frustrations and anxieties.  Mr. McCartney has also noted: "I am more of a businessman than I am a lawyer”, another part of his makeover, in this instance seemingly distancing himself from his lifelong legal career perhaps to deflect the often general antipathy towards that profession. 

Protecting Bahamian Forests

by Larry Smith

Ever since the pine forests of the Bahamas were logged during the first 60 or so years of the last century, their ultimate survival has been in jeopardy due to conflicts with agricultural and commercial development. But a new Forestry Act passed last year could change that.

This landmark legislation created a small Forestry Unit within the Ministry of the Environment that is charged with managing this important natural resource. And for the first time in many decades, a sawmill is operating again on Abaco.

The Forestry Unit has signed an agreement with a local company called Lindar Industries for the harvesting of pine trees on Abaco to make finished lumber, initially for the local market. Lindar is owned by Rob Roman, a Canadian engineer with a background in mining and forestry who is married to a Bahamian.

Max Tido and the Death Penalty in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

The Privy Council's recent ruling to overturn the death sentence of convicted murderer Max Tido has reignited the smouldering debate over capital punishment in the Bahamas.

In dismissing an appeal against conviction, the Privy Council said there was "overwhelming" evidence against Tido, so "a finding of guilt was inevitable" - despite noting that the defendant should have been identified first in a line-up, and not while alone in the dock, and that there should have been a psychological determination that he was sane at the time of the murder.

But the judgment also concluded that this was not a murder that warranted the most extreme punishment of death. This conclusion was based on what the Privy Council viewed as "established law" - that the death penalty should be reserved only for the most extreme and exceptional cases, and only where there is no prospect of reform of the offender.

Cases where the death penalty is justified, it said, are "those in which the murder is carefully planned and carried out in furtherance of another crime", such as armed robbery, rape, human smuggling, drug wars, kidnapping, witness intimidation, "and the killing of innocents for the gratification of base desires." As a result, Tido's case is being sent back to the Court of Appeal in Nassau for "the imposition of an appropriate sentence."

Max Tido was found guilty in 2006 of the murder of 16-year-old Donnella Conover after testimony that the teenager was lured from her home in the early morning hours of May 2, 2002, and brutally beaten to death off Cowpen Road. He later received a discretionary death sentence, but after appeals for clemency were denied in 2007 and 2009, lawyers took the case to the Privy Council.

Three Projects That Could Transform the City of Nassau

by Larry Smith

Three interesting environmental projects are in the works that could have a big impact on our landscapes and lifestyles  - at the eastern, western and southern extremities of Nassau.

They are the proposed redevelopment of the 18-acre Botanical Gardens at Chippingham, the multi-million-dollar reorganisation and restoration of the derelict Montagu foreshore, and the possible creation of a model Bahamian township on 250 acres of undeveloped land at South Beach.

South Beach Township
A public tender to design the township was won late last year by Nassau architects Alexiou & Associates, who linked up with TSW & Associates of Atlanta, a leading New Urbanist design firm. Lionel Johnson, a young Bahamian architect now receiving post-graduate planning experience at TSW, will work with principals Mike Alexiou and Bill Tunnel on this capstone project.

The key goal is to create a new community that breaks the pattern of urban sprawl that has blighted most Bahamian development over recent decades. Draft plans for the South Beach Township propose 3,000 high-density residential units mixed with commercial, civic and recreational areas.

Innovation and Electric Vehicles in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Indian-American journalist Fareed Zakaria presented an interesting CNN special this past weekend. The topic was innovation, which is something that the Bahamas desperately needs in both the private and public sectors if we are to move forward at more than a snail's pace.

Zakaria is editor-at-large of Time Magazine and host of CNN's Global Public Square Sunday newsmagazine. He is an incisive commentator and author, who argues that older industries in the US are under tremendous pressure and future growth will have to come from new industries that create new products and processes.

This requires a high level of innovation, but surveys show the US ranks well down the top ten list in spending on things like research, patents and venture projects. In one measure of how much a country has improved its innovation capacity over the past decade, the US was last among 40 nations. That survey took account of factors like research funding, education and corporate-tax policies.

Innovation requires novel business ideas and new technology. For example, Google's Eric Schmidt explained that after developing a better online search programme, his company figured out how to make money from it by creating a new model for advertising sales. But Zakaria makes the interesting point that innovation is not an exclusive property of the private sector.

Third Party Merry-Go-Round—Again

by Simon

History offers perspective.  In 1963 Paul Adderley and a group of senior party members attempted to force Sir Lynden Pindling to resign as Leader of the Progressive Liberal Party.  What has been named the Christmas Coup, failed. 

Two years later Sir Lynden’s leadership and the direction of the PLP were again called into question.  That criticism came after Black Tuesday when Sir Lynden famously threw the Speaker’s mace out of the House of Assembly in protest against the UBP’s gerrymandering of constituency boundaries, among other voting reform issues.

That historic event 46 years ago this month was followed by a PLP boycott of the House.  The boycott was broken by PLP MPs Paul Adderley, Orville Turnquest, Cyril Stevenson, and Spurgeon Bethel who remained troubled by Sir Lynden’s leadership and the party’s political strategy.

Mr. Adderley, a British-trained attorney and scion of a prominent family said at the time that he broke the boycott to ensure that the people’s voice could still be heard in the House.  He also viewed himself as a better potential Prime Minister than Sir Lynden and did not believe that the PLP could win the government.

Following the mace incident and the boycott of the House in 1965, Mr. Adderley and his colleagues left the PLP and formed a third party with a familiar name:  the National Democratic Party or NDP.  Mr. Stevenson did not join the NDP but declared himself an independent.

Two years later the PLP won the government while Mr. Adderley and his colleagues all lost their seats.  Eventually, Mr. Adderley returned to the PLP and Sir Orville joined with a group of Free PLPs to help form the Free National Movement.  

The WikiLeaks Cables and Pollution at Montagu

by Larry Smith

"In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win." -- newspaper publisher Rupert Murdoch

The whsitleblowing website WikiLeaks first came across Tough Call's radar in 2009, when it published the unexpurgated 266-page Commission of Inquiry report for the Turks & Caicos Islands.

The commission identified "systemic corruption" in the TCI's government, legislature and civil service. Their report was published in July 2009, with some sensitive information removed. The document was then pulled from public view altogether, and a judge issued a media gag order.

But within a few hours the full report appeared on WikiLeaks and, accepting that the information was now in the public domain, the gag order was quickly lifted. As a result, I was able to write an article in this space in September 2009 based on the full uncensored report.

The Obama and the Ingraham Haters

by Simon

In a recent article I included brief accounts on the formation of the country’s two major political parties.  Those accounts are well-sourced and researched, not an invention of self-aggrandizement.  They are based on reliable written and oral information, most of which has been in the public domain for many years.

That information is from sources that are infinitely more credible than those who are now peddling self-serving accounts in a futile attempt to write themselves into history in a manner unsupported by the broader historical record.

Attempts to rewrite history or draw false historical parallels are typically in the service of particular agendas or vanities.  But, it is not only the past that is skewed and mangled in the interest of such vanity of vanities and narrow agendas.  

The Generic & Genetic Make-Up of Bran’s DNA

by Simon

After the roll-out of the country’s latest third party, two things are clearer:  the generic nature of the Democratic National Alliance and the genetic make-up of the political character of its founder Branville McCartney.

Despite Mr. McCartney’s inability to resist the self-referential and narcissistic claim that it’s a Bran(d) new day, there is little original about the generic brand he is desperately peddling as new and exciting.  He will never have to worry himself with being considered an original thinker, nor for that matter, much of a thinker. 

Whether or not he purloined the lighthouse logo from an erstwhile ally, his green flavour, in only one sense of that word, was the party colour of the defunct Bahamian Democratic Party.  Green was the gloss Mr. McCartney used for much of his public relations even as an FNM, curiously painting his Bamboo Town headquarters green at one point.

Was it not always about Bran, with his mutable party colours, depending on whatever served his vaunting ambitions?  We have seen this before with those inveterate party hoppers cum political chameleons whose loyalty is to themselves, not to a party or cause larger than their personal ambitions.

Montagu Remediation, Invasive Scaevola & the Bill to Kill Bin Laden

by Larry Smith

"Little Fort Montagu was finished in 1742...It always calls up pleasant memories, as we often passed near it during the forenoon sails and afternoon rides that did so much to fill our cup of pleasure at Nassau." -- Charles Ives, 1880.

Unfortunately, it is more and more difficult for contemporary visitors and locals to spend a pleasant day at Montagu. The little fort itself may have remained relatively unchanged over the centuries, but its environs are another story.

The beach has all but disappeared due to man-made erosion, and the inappropriately placed seawall has to be rebuilt at great expense every few years. The complex intersection is a major safety hazard, And there is a significant public health threat from garbage, oil and fuel discharges, human and animal waste, sewerage and storm water runoff.

Over the last 20 years this urban waterfront - one of our few recreational areas - has degenerated into an open-air slaughterhouse, flea market and commercial boat ramp  - right smack in the middle of a major road junction next to a public park - without the slightest thought or organization. And these are issues that daily affect an estimated 50,000 people living in the eastern portion of the island.

But that may be about to change - although this is something I have repeated so often in recent years that I am afraid to hold my breath.