The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Leon Walter Young, better known to us as L W Young, was first elected to the House of Assembly in 1912, during the governorship of either Sir Gilbert Thomas Carter or Sir William Grey-Wilson. A carpenter and building contractor by profession, Young would serve in Parliament for the Eastern District of New Providence, from the aforementioned 1912 to 1942 – the year of the Burma Road Riots.

Like his contemporaries C C Sweeting, S C McPherson, R M Bailey and A F Adderley, Young was a prominent Black Bahamian that the White oligarchs viewed as the defacto leader of the Black population. Young passed away in 1962 - six years after the Magnificent Six of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) was elected to the House of Assembly and nine years after that party was formed by Sir Henry Taylor, Cyril Stevenson and William Cartwright. Adderley died in 1953, the year the PLP was established.

Had he lived long enough to see the formation of the United Bahamian Party in 1956, I believe Adderley would’ve supported that political organisation. As for Young, despite living during the first nine years of the PLP’s existence, I am not aware of any historical information that suggests that he supported that party or the youthful Sir Lynden Pindling.

Three years into his first tenure as MP, an issue arose concerning Young’s financial qualifications to sit in the House of Assembly. The narrative on the streets of Nassau was that Young was flat broke. According to Bahamianology, the Magistrate Court in November 1914 ruled that Young owed a plaintiff £11 2s. 9d. Young paid the judgment. He would also produce a Royal Bank of Canada cheque for £200 and a title deed for a plot of land on Shirley Street for the Committee on Qualifications that was formed by the White colonial administration in the House of Assembly. In 1915, £200 had the purchasing power of US$7,163.04 – a fortune during that time – and even today.

Members of the select committee included Robert Henry Curry (Andros); Ernest Lenkard Bowen (Southern District of New Providence); George Weech (City District) and Aubrey Kenneth Solomon (Abaco). This committee of White power brokers were not only tasked with probing the financial state of Young, but his nationality as well. It was established by the select committee that Young was still a British subject, despite unsuccessfully applying for American citizenship in South Florida.

The £200 cheque was ironclad proof that the Eastern District MP was financially solvent. That was 106 years ago. In over three weeks, Bahamians will be heading back to the polls to elect a new government.

On Nomination Day, candidates from the Free National Movement, PLP, fringe political parties and Independents will all be officially nominated, after depositing a paltry sum of $400. I believe, however, that this deposit is too small. It should be increased to at least $2,000.

In Australia, for example, candidates for the House of Representatives and the Senate must come up with a deposit of $2,000. In Hong Kong, candidates for geographical constituencies must deposit $50,000, while functional constituency candidates deposit $25,000. In order to recoup their deposits, Hong Kong candidates must get at least three percent of the valid votes cast.

For Bahamian candidates, they should also be required to produce a bank statement that says that they have a minimum of $10,000 in savings. They should also own, at the very least, a piece of property.

As Young was rigorously vetted by the colonial administration to ascertain his financial fitness for the House of Assembly, the same lofty standards should be applied to today’s candidates. What makes Young’s situation so unique by today’s standards is the fact that MPs back then were not paid. Young and his fellow MPs served freely, while today’s MPs are paid $28,000 annually.

I stand to be corrected, but I believe that MPs started receiving a stipend from the Treasury in the sixties. Back then, Bahamians who ran for high office had a source of income via a job or a business. You didn’t enter Parliament to earn a living.

Today, far too many are seeking to enter Parliament with ulterior motives. Some of the candidates have little to no savings at all; no job or even a plot of land. How can you campaign on fixing the Bahamian economy when you are chronically jobless and don’t even have a penny to your name?

How can you campaign on improving housing when you are chronically renting? How can you campaign on fiscal prudence when you are deep in debt? And how can you campaign on improving public transportation when you don’t even own a decent automobile?

If an individual candidate is flat broke, what will be the first thing he does once he is elected to the House of Assembly? Without a moral compass, he would obviously be looking to improve his financial situation instead of looking out for the interests of his constituents. Putting financially insolvent candidates in the House of Assembly is similar to unsupervised children in a candy store.

The time has come for Bahamian voters to demand that only accomplished Bahamians from the private sector are elected to Parliament. I believe that this would go a long way in reducing corruption. The White oligarchs in LW Young’s day obviously understood this.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport, Grand Bahama

August 25, 2021.