The Tribune

ISN’T it a shame that Prime Minister Perry Christie, who would have us believe that he and his party are primarily interested in people – particularly Bahamian people – has decided to hold a referendum on women’s rights mainly because of growing international concern about this country’s policies on women’s rights.

Apparently, the long suffering of so many Bahamian women has not moved him to take action because these policies are intrinsically wrong. Rather it has now become a matter of some urgency because foreigners are raising their eyebrows over the backseat that many women have been forced to take in their own country.

Mr Christie was referring to the constitutional provisions that discriminate against women who have married foreign men and the children of that marriage. Such a union denies the foreign spouse of a Bahamian woman the right to be registered as a Bahamian — a right granted under the Constitution to a Bahamian man whose wife is foreign. The children of a legitimate marriage between a Bahamian woman and a foreign man are not recognised as Bahamians. However — and this was and is the greatest insult of all — if the Bahamian woman had conceived her child out of wedlock with a foreigner, it would be fully Bahamian because it was illegitimate and would take its mother’s nationality.

It didn’t matter that the homes of Bahamian women were broken up when politicians — PLP we might emphasise — either denied or revoked the work permits of the foreign spouse, thus denying him the means to support his family. When the matter was debated in parliament in 2002 several politicians, including those who had served as ministers of Immigration, admitted knowing of citizenship applications being denied by no action being taken to process them or were “lost”, due to discriminatory practices. It was tragic the number of marriages that broke down under the strain; professional men who could not remain in the Bahamian matrimonial home because their wives were FNM — and so the family had to separate, or because of the years of strain, the marriage collapsed. The cruelty of the PLP administration was shocking. During the debate in parliament, then Prime Minister Ingraham pointed out that the supreme irony in the Bahamas’ constitutional and legal discrimination against women was that many of the men deciding the entitlement to Bahamian nationality, and many more of their friends and supporters, had foreign-born wives for whom Bahamian citizenship was secured quickly.

“It cannot escape mention,” he said during the debate, “that of the three persons first to be granted Bahamian citizenship in an independent Bahamas were the wives of two then cabinet ministers.”

Yes, the PLP were quite comfortable with the situation, because all was cosy in their unfair world, as long as they held the whip to keep many unfortunate citizens, who did not belong to their party, in line.

As an election was nearing, Mr Ingraham was anxious to correct this constitutional matter that weighed so heavily against Bahamian women.

The issue was taken to the House and the PLP joined the government in voting for all the amendments necessary to make a referendum on the matter possible. When the time came to campaign for the passage of the referendum, the PLP changed its mind. Yesterday, Mr Christie told reporters that his party opposed the “process” taken, not the content of the referendum. After 10 years he was still using “process” as justification for urging the electorate to vote against the referendum. It is true that this was what they were saying at the time of the referendum campaign — according to them Bahamians needed another year to decide whether Bahamian women should be treated as equal citizens. The question on which they were being asked to vote was simple. To suggest that another year was needed was an insult to the average intelligence. What exposed their dumbness, however, was that although they had debated the matter in the House, Mr Christie had voted on an issue that he later claimed he found misleading. The so-called misleading question was removed. The argument then turned to the unconstitutionality of the referendum because the question that had confused them had disappeared. The PLP had succeeded in making the electorate so suspicious of the referendum that it was lost.

A year later —on May 31, 2003—Mr Christie, by then Prime Minister, attended a wedding. After the wedding we had a casual conversation. He innocently asked a question that opened a hornet’s nest — to answer his question a reference had to be made to the defeated referendum.

Of course, he smilingly brushed it off in the usual suave Christie manner, with the promise that he would see the referendum through now that he was prime minister — adding a comment to the effect that the referendum was something that only he — not Mr Ingraham – could get through. That was nine years ago. For five of those nine years he was prime minister. However, not once during all of those five years did he think that the status of women sufficiently important to bring the matter up again.

But now that foreigners are on to it, he pretends concern. Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell announced in the House on Wednesday plans for a referendum to grant Bahamian women the same rights as Bahamian men to pass citizenship on to their children— this will bring the country “in line” with other western societies and see the end of formal gender discrimination, he said.

Asked when the referendum would be held, he refused to be pinned to a date, but said it would be before the end of the PLP’s term in office in 2017. Another five years of forgetfulness.

In our opinion the first delay and eventual defeat of the referendum had nothing to do with “process.” It was all political, a desire to defeat Mr Ingraham, and, as for Mr Christie, a large measure was hubris.