The Tribune

A FEW days ago a person commented that they didn’t understand all the fuss being made about constitutional changes to give women equal rights in their marriage if after all these years none of them ever raised their voices in protest to get it for themselves.

This person was obviously too young to remember the PLP years and what a frightened society we lived in. The change in our government with the departure of the Pindling regime and the 1992 transition to the Ingraham government was dramatic. At least for us at The Tribune the change could be seen almost overnight.

It started with Bahamians for the first time in 25 years being able to speak their mind. We noticed it almost immediately in the Letters to the Editor column. In the Pindling years, very few letters were signed. And even the unsigned ones were surreptitiously brought to the office and put into the hands of only one person — ours.

We recall one day when a police officer was sent to The Tribune to try to get the identity of a Freeport man who was supposed to be the author of a letter published in The Tribune. Of course, we refused to give it. Suddenly, whether by accident or on purpose the officer’s file slipped from his knees onto the floor. There spread out before us were files, immediately informing us which office had sent him to make the inquiries. A certain PLP politician was targeting this poor man — a foreign resident in Freeport. The man they were after had not written the offending letter. In fact, he had never written a letter to The Tribune either for publication or to pass on information. We told the police officer that they had the wrong man. The officer, who we knew well, believed us. However, we don’t known if the highly placed politician believed him, because we sent back a special message to the politician with a one-way ticket to – we leave it to our readers to guess the destination.

We recall a Nassau woman’s home being stoned one night because she was suspected of writing a letter to our paper condemning the PLP. She was not the author of any letter published in The Tribune, but she suffered in frightened silence.

We recall the day that a young John Marquis — in later years he became The Tribune’s managing editor — was invited to speak at the East Nassau Rotary Club. He was the guest at the club of the late Sir Etienne Dupuch, then the publisher of this newspaper of which John was a young reporter in his twenties. John gave a fine speech, thanked Rotarians for listening to him, and bid them a sad farewell. He was returning to England he told them because he could no longer “live in a frightened society”.

Several PLP often boasted that their government had cancelled his permit and kicked him out. Here at The Tribune, we never gave the PLP government that satisfaction. John Marquis left at a time of his own choosing and years later when full democracy had returned to the Bahamas, he returned in his retiring years as managing editor.

The Ingraham government gave Bahamians the greatest gift of all — privately owned radio stations. At last the people had a voice and they were no longer frightened to use it. Just listen to some of the talk shows — today Bahamians are saying just what they think, and some are very expressive about their thoughts. The curb-bit is off.

In those days, this was indeed a frightened society. It is one of the reasons that the drug trade flourished. Bahamians did not know who they could trust. They didn’t know which police officer they could go to with information about drug handlers, and so they came to The Tribune. It was left to us to protect their identity while at the same time making certain that the information got into the right hands.

In the meantime, Immigration was used as the silent tool of victimisation. It was behind closed doors, and hidden from public comment that if you did not toe the party line you were marked for exclusion from the body politic. No one was ever allowed to forget that “God gave the Bahamas to the PLP”.

A trip to Inagua would be enlightening of what happened back then — even down to the third generation they can tell the tale — in many cases they are even more bitter than their forebears who were forced to bear their sufferings in silence.

The PLP MP for Inagua during the Pindling era would threaten Bahamian women that if they did not vote for his ticket his government would deport their husbands — in the case of Inaguans, the husbands were usually from Turks Island.

Families were forced to separate with many of the marriages failing as a result.

Before the 2002 election, the Ingraham government tried by referendum to give Bahamian women the rights that they had been denied. We all know what happened. After the PLP approved and voted for the amendments in the House, Mr Christie’s government changed the referendum into an election campaign and encouraged Bahamians — even uninformed women — to vote against it. A woman’s right to equality was lost, but Mr Christie won his election.

And now, the Christie government is attempting to repair the damage. However, it is having a hard time because after the fiasco of 2002 it is no longer trusted.

The proposals for the November 6 referendum are:

Bill 1 - a child born outside the Bahamas would become a citizen at birth if either the mother or father is a Bahamian citizen by birth.

Bill 2 - The foreign spouse of a Bahamian citizen would obtain citizenship subject to satisfying existing national security and public policy considerations and guarding against a marriage of convenience.

Bill 3 - A Bahamian father of a child born out of wedlock would be able to pass his citizenship to that child subject to legal proof that he is the father.

Bill 4 - Has now been amended to read that it is unlawful to discriminate based on sex and “sex” would be defined as meaning male or female.

It is the fourth Bill that, despite its further amendment, still seems to be the stumbling block, because some have been convinced that this will eventually lead to same sex marriage.

Rather than scuttling the whole exercise, we suggest that Bill 4 be eliminated. The other three will solve the pressure on Bahamian families. After all s. 26 (3) of the Constitution takes care of the problem by defining discrimination.

“Discrimination,” it says, “means affording different treatment to different persons attributable wholly or mainly to their respective descriptions by race, place of origin, political opinion, or creed …”

If they cannot be discriminated against because of their place of origin then regardless of sex they qualify for citizenship. In other words neither a foreign women nor a foreign man can be discriminated against, because they are foreign. It is their foreignness that cannot be discriminated against, nothing to do with their sex.

Problem solved — let’s get on with the referendum!

In 1997, a statement made by Mr Christie, then PLP leader, over radio 100 JAMZ that the PLP was a party that never victimised non-supporters so stirred emotions throughout the Bahamas, that Bahamians came forward anxious to tell their stories. The unpleasant memories that many Bahamian women and their spouses suffered in silence they wanted recorded. We published them in this column. They were enough to bring tears to the eyes.

For the unenlightened, we are considering the republication of those articles so that Bahamians of today will understand the importance of voting “yes” on the November 6 referendum.