The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune. IN ANOTHER missive (Tribune, March 22), Mr Dupuch suggests we take our country back. He does not tell us how to do that, or what/who we are taking back from or even what do with it if we figure out the hows, whys and what fors. He also says I suggested that had he "and others, supported the proposed Constitutional Amendment that proposed an 'independent' boundaries commission to draw election boundaries, we would not have the problem of 'gerrymandering'.". Suffice it to say I did not say that but had we voted for it we would have had an Independent Boundaries Commission, something Mr Dupuch is on record as supporting. He had argued at one point that one had to vote for all, or against all of the proposals in the Constitutional Amendment process, but apologised for his error and agreed that one could vote for or against each item. Now he thinks that this is irrelevant as the Prime Minister might appoint his cronies, or as he puts it, to allow this would be like "whistling past the graveyard". We can quibble over who would have appointed whom, but that's a moot point now as the proposals were rejected and provides a perfect opportunity for Mr Dupuch to offer solutions to this generational problem. Of course, humans are involved in these processes and things will go wrong, but it doesn't help present and future Bahamians to continue to cloud issues of public policy this way. Rather than continuing to set up these straw men, I remain hopeful that Mr Dupuch will give us some guidance to the questions below: * What would you do to improve the formation/selection of boundaries? * Other than what is Constitutionally mandated would you put the formula into law or leave it to discretion? * Would you make the review committee independent or leave it the way it is? The FNM tried to do so with the defeated Constitutional changes they attempted and the PLP had a committee recommend the same thing, yet nothing was done. * Justice Stephen Isaacs was quoted in the press as saying the process was fair. Should we dismiss this? It appears his suggestion is that voters keep voting politicians out of office in an effort to improve the delineation of constituency boundaries but there must be a better way? RICK LOWE www.weblogbahamas.com March 20, 2012