Bahama Pundit

Majority Rule at Forty-Five

by Simon

The success of great political events and movements inspire all manner of grandstanding by secondary figures who played tangential or minor roles in such events.  As often, those who played more critical roles, and are disinclined to preen and prance, are not given their fuller due.     

Thankfully, in the light of greater historical accuracy, the pretensions of the airbags desperately attempting to inflate themselves into great leaders are often deflated.  And, the extraordinary contributions of the great men and women of history are recorded for accuracy and posterity.

Three events of the past few weeks highlighted aspects of the struggle for and legacy of Majority Rule.  They include the 45th anniversary of January 10th, 1967, the passing of Sir Clifford Darling, and the opportunity for ordinary Bahamians to own shares in the new Arawak Port Development (APD).

The 1958 General Strike and the Making of the Modern Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Last Friday marked the 54th anniversary of the 1958 general strike, one of the seminal events of the modern Bahamas. On January 13 of that year hundreds of public and private sector workers walked off their jobs, shutting down New Providence for almost three weeks and forcing some much-needed social and political change.

The key labour leaders of the time are no longer with us, but both have left behind a rich legacy in the form of their personal memoirs. Those leaders were Sir Clifford Darling, who died last month at the age of 89, and Sir Randol Fawkes, who died in 2000 at the age of 76.

Sir Randol's 1977 book, The Faith that Moved the Mountain, gives his personal (and what historian Michael Craton described as "somewhat self-serving") perspective as a leader of the Bahamas Federation of Labour, the umbrella union which called the strike. A memorial edition is available online at http://sirrandolfawkes.com.

Sir Clifford's 2002 book, A Bahamian Life Story, provides much of the background necessary to form an appreciation of this unique event. In addition to his personal perspective as leader of the Taxi Cab Union, which instigated the strike, his account includes secret communiques from the colonial authorities, as well as contemporary newspaper reports.

Understanding Bahamian Parliamentary Democracy—Part 1

by Simon

Today, 45 years to the day after the attainment of majority rule, there is chronic and widespread ignorance of our system of government and national constitution.  Sadly, no longer surprisingly, so-called “informed” people in civil society, academia, business and the press corps are among the woefully uninformed. 

Many of them regurgitate effluvia on the supposed problems of our parliamentary democracy on matters ranging from “checks and balances” to collective responsibility and the constitutional powers of the prime minister.

Mesmerized by American politics including the theatrics that substitute for news on US cable news, some local commentators cannot utter “checks” without mindlessly adding “balances”, with seemingly limited appreciation for either term.

The supposed corrective measures to repair our supposedly broken democracy are, to paraphrase attorney Andrew Allen in the context of shallow arguments for term limits, superficial non-solutions to imaginary problems.

The Right and Duty to Vote

by Simon

Those Bahamians who take for granted our democracy and their right to vote with smug or shallow excuses for not registering or voting, might wish to read the cover story of the December 26 edition of Time Magazine announcing its 2011 “Person of the Year”.

 Instead of a single person, Time selected “The Protestor” in tribute to protestors around the world, and especially across North Africa and the Middle East who are forcing democratic change, including the right to vote.   

What has been termed the Arab Spring is unfolding in different ways from the Maghreb to the Levant, perhaps even stirring protests for fairer elections in Russia.  Still, no matter the country, protestors are bound by the shared goals of political enfranchisement and greater economic empowerment. 

The choice of The Protestor has a double-significance: It links collective action with individual choice, which is the ideal of free and fair elections.  Just as it may require a mass of protestors to gain the right of an individual to vote, it takes a mass of voters to continually secure those rights by exercising their franchise.

Dig Up, Dig Up

by Simon

The once in a generation road transportation and road corridor programme is more than a decade old.  The New Providence Road Improvement Project began in the 1990s but did not significantly progress from 2002 to 2007.  Restarted under the current Ingraham administration, the programme went into higher gear beginning in 2007.

Geno D’s popular and witty single “Dig Up 2011” captures the mood of many residents of New Providence on the ambitious road works and utilities upgrades on the capital island:

“They doing some serious diggin’.../They stressing out my life, all kinds of dust in my nose, all over my car and my clothes/They say it’s all for my good, but not right now in my neighbourhood.../ Everywhere they diggin’ mornin’, noon and evenin’.../You gat to go north to go south/You gat to go east to go west/Gat to past my house to get home...” 

The General Election and the Firing of Ken Russell

by Larry Smith

Well, this is all very confusing isn't it?.

Just before an election the leader of the FNM government gets into a nomination spat with a three-time successful candidate in one of the party's Grand Bahama strongholds.

The 58-year-old candidate is a Cabinet minister, who has complained publicly about changes to the boundaries of his High Rock constituency, recently redrawn as East Grand Bahama. And in quick time, he is sacked from the Cabinet and starts behaving like Tennyson Wells and Pierre Dupuch - right before the election.

So what is this all about? Where does party business end and government business begin in this political squabble? And exactly why was Ken Russell fired?

Social media websites were deluged over the weekend with questions and opinions on these unusual developments. Most of those comments, and much newspaper coverage as well, focused on the nomination issue, and the supposed rift between "original" FNMs and so-called "Ingrahamites", who joined the party after 1990.

Sir Durward Knowles -- Driven by the Stars

by Simon

There is still at 94 both an irrepressible humour and twinkle in the eyes of Sir Durward Knowles.  They are permanent features of his exuberant spirit and dedication to squeezing out of life every measure of joy.

The title of Sir Durward’s biography is Driven by the Stars.  He has been driven by a constellation of lodestars and virtues, among them extraordinary generosity, sportsmanship and a passion for national unity.  In turn, he has become a guiding star for others.

Quite a bit has been written about Sir Durward’s contribution to sports and his exemplary philanthropy particularly in the areas of physical and mental disability.  Athletic prowess and disability may seem incongruent, but not to Sir Durward.

In both areas the champion athlete and champion of the disabled has sought to empower others, no matter their physical or mental capacity or disability, to be driven by their own stars, overcoming limits to achieve more than one ever dared imagine.

Politics and Pleasure in the Cayman Islands

by Larry Smith

GEORGE TOWN, the Cayman Islands - At a dinner party on Seven Mile Beach here I asked a longtime resident (who serves on two public boards) for a briefing on the island's political parties. Curiously, he could not even recall their names.

So the next day I drove along the modern four-lane highway to Camana Bay's signature bookstore here to pick up a copy of Roy Bodden's political history - the Cayman Islands in Transition.

Camana Bay itself - a $400 million 'live, work, play' development by billionaire Kenneth Dart - is an obvious physical example of that transition. Dart, an American with Caymanian status, recently acquired retail and office property in downtown Nassau, but has yet to launch a project.

Cayman's Freedom of Information Law Sets Bahamas Precedent

by Larry Smith

GEORGE TOWN, the Cayman Islands -- The political status of this tiny British Overseas Territory south of Cuba, which enjoys one of the world's highest standards of living, is often described by local intellectuals as "voluntary colonialism".

As late as the 1950s, the Caymanos - to use an earlier name - were known as "the islands that time forgot". But today they are home to a dazzling array of high-end tourist and financial infrastructure, populated by a cosmopolitan and largely affluent workforce of 36,000 - more than half of which is from other countries.

Grand Cayman has managed to preserve its position as a top financial centre in the face of a crackdown on international money laundering and tax evasion, as well as the recessionary impact of the global credit crisis. And tourism grew by more than 5 per cent last year, for a total of 1.9 million visitors. In fact, the island is buzzing with activity.

The Cayman islands are no longer a backwater. Despite being subject to British colonial rule (and occasionally whining about it), Caymanians are way ahead of Bahamians in terms of holding their government to account. In addition to a national ombudsman and an independent auditor-general, the legislature unanimously approved a freedom of information law in 2007.

Gerrymandering Districts and Questionable Citizenships

by Larry Smith

Another email popped into my inbox last week from retired politico Pierre Dupuch. In most cases, I scan these messages quickly and move on - they are poisonous political rants with no constructive proposals or substance, and it is obvious that Dupuch has a "thing" about his former leader in the FNM, Hubert Ingraham.

But this one caught my eye because it purports to deal with concrete 'facts' that have been percolating for months in the form of a monstrous conspiracy theory.

One of the most important functions of responsible journalism is to clarify such controversies so that the public is not deluded by ignorant or conniving individuals who set themselves up as authorities or champions, often in the pursuit of hidden agendas.

And frankly, I wanted to see for myself if anything Dupuch had to say on this matter was worth listening to. So I decided to take a closer look at the various allegations.

The main thrust of Dupuch's November 17 letter was a sinister FNM plot to give citizenship to thousands of Haitians so they can swing newly gerrymandered constituencies in the upcoming general election.

As near as I can tell, this mythology was first raised back in March by an anonymous propaganda website called Bahamas Press, which masquerades as a news site.