The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Approximately fourteen years ago, I enjoyed the single most important moment of my Parliamentary career; I was privileged to speak and vote on a series of Constitutional Amendments. The essential purpose of the vote was to remove, forever, the inequality between men and women, enshrined in our Constitution. Fourteen years later, that moment is still clearly etched in my memory. All Parliamentarians voted “Yes!” for the Amendments to bring about Constitutionally entitled equality of Bahamian men and women. The populace rejected the Referendum in a manner that still mystifies me today.

Forty-three years into independence, we are once again seeking to amend our Constitution. Based on commentary, in and out of Parliament, I can now understand why, 14 years ago, I may have been on the right side of history, but on the wrong side of Bahamian public sentiment about equality.

I have grave misgivings as to whether many in our society as a matter of principle, truly and fundamentally believe in equality of men and women. I hope that I am wrong. I hope the coming Referendum reverses the stain of 2002 and the majority of Bahamian men and women agree to vote for equality.

What is so amazing is the number of our fellow citizens who have no real appreciation or understanding of the concept of equality and how there is no partial equality.

The Bahamas, the melting pot of the Caribbean, is ambivalent about equality. This is indeed sad.

“...The vote is the embodiment of non violent expression of democratic ideas...” James Madison, an American Founding Father and fourth President, encouraged his colleagues to empower “...any votary of freedom to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind to self government...” According to Taylor Branch, Award winning Civil Rights Historian, “...this revolutionary premise (the vote) challenges the once universal hierarchy of rules and subjects, along with its stubborn assumption that a populace needs discipline by a superior force or authority...”

Madison based his faith in the vote on the virtue of the people.” …Without …virtue in populace, no theoretical checks, no form of government can render us secure...”

We can anchor this virtue, by extending the freedoms we enjoy, equally, to all men and women in our society, by our vote.

The Bahamas Independence of 2014 coincides with some remarkable historical antecedents. That year marks almost fifty years after the death of Dr Martin Luther King Jr (4/4/68), one of the most influential global fighters for human equality. The year also marks, a little longer, the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and the Bahamian March to Freedom from 1956. Our national struggle for human equality was formed in the same crucible of the life and death struggle of Dr King, the United States Voting Rights Act and the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela.

It is shameful that the descendants of a race, forced to endure servitude and inequality for so long, we can find it possible to want to perpetuate inequality among ourselves. Surely male and female slaves suffered the indignities of slavery equally. Ought we not all work toward enjoying the rights of freedom equally? Why can we believe that someone’s enjoyments of basic human rights will diminishes us? To continue to perpetuate this legacy is so very sad.

Our honoured dead men and women heroes, memorialised in funerals, will not understand our resistance to the March of History.

Should we not honour the memory of history, with the fullest expression of the knowledge that we are all equal? Should we not participate and vote against the betrayal that would deny this basic right to all the women in our society?

The diaspora of my family is well established on its international lineage through Africa, America, Canada, The Bahamas, The United Kingdom, and Germany.

My parents and grandparents established the matter of equality early for me. My siblings (five sisters and two brothers) clearly demonstrated who led and who followed, but we were all equal. Our Nation is no different and we, who share its posterity, should honour our rich legacy of freedom fighters, both here and abroad, by bestowing the equality of birthright to Bahamian Women and Men when we vote on the coming Referendum.

HON EARL D DEVEAUX, JP

Nassau,

March 16, 2016.