Bahama Pundit

Sir Ronald Sanders Uniquely Qualified For Commonwealth Secretary General

by Simon

Consider the complex of challenges before the international community, especially vulnerable small-island states such as The Bahamas and other Caricom members, as well as various Commonwealth countries in Africa and the Pacific.

The threats range from the effects of climate change with rising sea levels and droughts to human trafficking and the trade in guns and illicit drugs, helping to fuel alarming crime rates and piracy, as well as other security challenges including international terrorism and cybercrime. 

Many countries are reeling still from the fallout of the Great Recession with trade and financial services and banking regimes often rigged in favor of the global powers inclusive of governments and corporate behemoths.  Youth unemployment is staggeringly high.  Income inequality is on the rise.  

Arthur Porter, Peter Nygard and Perry Christie

by Larry Smith

The unravelling of Dr Arthur Porter’s life didn’t begin in the Bahamas. But it could be said to have ended here - more or less.

Porter is a leading cancer specialist. He became an international lobbyist, and an advisor to Bahamian, American, Canadian and African political leaders. His business dealings stretched across continents, and heads of state were his colleagues and friends,

He now resides in a Panamanian jail, fighting lung cancer as well as extradition to Canada on charges that he arranged $22.5 million in kickbacks, paid to Bahamian shell companies, during construction of a $1.3 billion hospital in Montreal.

 

Before his world collapsed three years ago, Porter had been the jet-setting chairman of the Canadian Security Intelligence Review Committee. He had served on a US presidential healthcare commission, had been appointed chairman of the Bahamas Stem Cell Task Force, and was a goodwill ambassador for Sierra Leone, the country of his birth.

 

The Prospects of Political Leadership in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

“We don’t make choices in politics - others make them for us.” — Earl Deveaux

With less than eight months to go before the next British general election, the opposition Labour Party appears to be having buyer’s remorse over its choice of leader. In fact, there are some interesting parallels with the political situation here.

After Labour’s 2010 loss, the defeated prime minister - Gordon Brown - resigned as party leader and sank from view (although he continues to represent his Scottish constituency). Hubert Ingraham did the same here in 2012, but he also quit parliament, watching as his formerly safe Abaco seat was captured by the PLP in a bye-election. 

A few months after the 2010 defeat, 40-year-old Ed Milliband (a former energy secretary) was elected leader of the Labour Party over his older brother David (a former foreign secretary). But the younger Milliband has been unable to galvanise his party.

Critics say he lacks style and authority, despite four years in the job. "What is the vision? What are the values? And more importantly, [what is] the narrative?,” asked one party leader recently. "Because quite frankly, the Tories have a narrative and we don’t."

As a writer in the Economist Magazine put it: "there is very little love for the government but perhaps even less enthusiasm for the alternative. And yet, there is a deep underlying disgruntlement with politics and a broad foreboding about the future.”

He could almost be talking about the Bahamas.

When the dispirited rump of the FNM gathered at the Holy Trinity Activities Centre on May 26 2012, they elected Dr Hubert Minnis, the former health minister, to replace Hubert Ingraham as party leader. He was unopposed. Loretta Butler-Turner was chosen as deputy, the late Charles Maynard as chairman, and Dr Duane Sands as deputy chairman.

We Are Not a Christian Nation Constitutionally

by Simon

The level of ignorance about our constitution is widespread and disturbing.  The ignorance is particularly alarming on the part of those who pretend to know about such matters, including certain pastors who repeatedly demonstrate a stunning ignorance of constitutional issues as well as certain inveterate writers of letters to the editor, not to mention certain uninformed radio talk show hosts. 

Despite such wilful ignorance, we are constitutionally a secular state.  The preamble to the constitution has a Christian reference.  But the preamble has no legal force and is not dispositive in deciding constitutional questions.  

Chapter I Article 1 of the constitution does have legal force.  It notes: “The Commonwealth of the Bahamas shall be a sovereign democratic State.”  Not a theocracy, not a Christian state, but a democracy.   

Ours is a secular state with a constitution dedicated to protecting certain fundamental rights and freedoms, not a theocratic state in which the doctrines of any religion or denomination reign supreme in adjudicating constitutional matters.  

The constitution does not protect or advance any notion of Christendom, in which Christianity is the state religion, nor does it grant any religion the right to force its doctrines or force its will on other citizens.