The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

The current scenario being played out between the Prime Minister and Messrs Andre Rollins, Renward Wells and Gregory Moss has been suggested as a political meltdown for the PLP but others see it as a discomfort and discontent by young Bahamians with the Westminster style of government.

The constitution of the Bahamas like that of other former British colonies, was crafted by British civil servants who expected their clients to return to their respective territories and behave like proper western-oriented gentlemen, wigs and mace and all.

It really didn’t work out that way. It took dozens of coups and counter coups in several African countries before many of them settled into anything resembling workable democracies, and in our own region nationhood settled on something that looked more like cult worship of “founding fathers”, than it did representative democracy.

The imported Westminster style government has not served the Bahamas well. Westminster government was born in England where it had 600 years to develop and entrench traditions based on morality and gentlemen’s convention. It is fortified by a parliament of 650 MPs from which a Cabinet of 23 is chosen. Ninety per cent of English MPs never see ministerial appointment and many have no ambitions.

Accordingly, they take representation seriously and often block their own government’s legislative policy.

In the Bahamas, a ministerial post is the Holy Grail, and the ultimate reward if one follows the party line.

The few backbenchers left in parliament are all ministers in waiting, so they never oppose. The result is that we don’t have representation of the people. We have representation of the party as Mr Rollins found out to his dismay.

The result is what some call a benign dictatorship or naked dictatorship like Mugabe in Zimbabwe. The prime minister appoints ministers in his sole discretion, and approves everything else about how the government runs, including appointments to public boards and commissions. The prime minister heads the boundaries commission, dispenses public land and has the final call on when and how general elections will take place.

Once appointed, a minister can run amok, doing and saying anything, no matter how preposterous or injurious to the public good. There is no censure or ostracism and you can even get re-elected like Shane Gibson.

In Britain, a minister who finds himself in public embarrassment resigns as a matter of honour. In the Bahamas, we hang on or “stench” like the old people used to say.

Whatever else we may think of Hubert Alexander Ingraham, he was the first Bahamian politician who had the nerve to address the deficiencies in our constitution and our form of government with the first referendum in 2002, the same referendum that our current prime minister pledged to support and later campaigned against. Lest we forget, Mr Ingraham also ended government’s monopoly on broadcasting, and he started the process to end government ownership of essential services and corporations.

In his latest reincarnation, Prime Minister Perry Christie is turning the clock back to the politics of the seventies and eighties, politics that call for choice government perks and positions for party supporters and hangers on, padding the government with retirees and if we believe Andre Rollins, practising parliamentary victimisation.

In his first term in office, Mr Christie boasted of attracting $20bn in investments which must have included the now defunct Ginn project in West End and the I Project in Mayaguana, projects which were predicated on large grants of land supposedly held in trust for the Bahamian people.

If Bahamian politics could be compared to major league baseball, the Prime Minister would be heading a team in need of a hit. For him, it’s like the home team being down 3 to 0 in the bottom of the seventh. His team can’t get on.

The US State Department said in its latest country report that the present administration lacks efficiency, transparency and accountability in its business dealings.

The Gaming Bill, which is designed to make the illegal web shop gambling legal, is in trouble and seeming lacks the support of the banking sector that see it as dangerous to our banking system.
 The PM’s watered down referendum legislation is in serious trouble and may not have the support of all members of his party in the House. He sought and received the unanimity of the leader of the opposition, Hubert Minnis, who raised objections to the complicated language in the bill as first presented in the House by the Member for Englerston.

It may not be enough to get the bills passed and if it goes to referendum, there is no guarantee of success. Some of it may have to do with the Gambling referendum that Mr Christie later said wasn’t really a referendum.

Dr Minnis is a relative novice to politics compared to the PM’s 40-year record in the House, but in the past three months he has checkmated the PM at every turn. The Wells-Rollins-Moss scenario is a serious threat to Mr Christie’s leadership, and although cornered by Dr Minnis on the Stellar/land fills waste to energy misstatements and misinformation, the PM has yet to answer.

He might be unable to because the answers may be too damaging to his personal character and style of leadership, a style of leadership that this new generation of Bahamian voters are getting tired of and are instead, looking to a new generation of politicians like Dr Minnis. The PM thought he had a lock on the new generation in the persons of Wells, Moss and Rollins, but Rollins and Moss found it just may be impossible to change the PLP style of politics, while Mr Wells is hanging tough and hoping it will all go away.

Dr Minnis had the unenviable task of rebuilding the Free National Movement in the wake of a devastating defeat at the polls just over two and a half years ago.

He has been doing it slowly and surely, with a committed, reasoned approach to politics and government.

He is pulling the disparate FNM voices together, who person to person, have more depth, character and commitment than half the Ministers in the PM’s cabinet.

Mr Christie is getting tired and tiresome and while he parties and socialises in Vegas, the society is slowly slipping into financial, political and social anarchy. People are scared and are looking for a new voice of reason and Dr Minnis might just be that voice. He wants to widen democracy. While the PM wants to retake BTC, Dr Minnis wants to free up even more government controlled corporations. He wants the referendum to go further and include provisions for a Teachers Commission, a Land Commission, fixed dates for parliamentary elections, an independent boundaries commission, term limits for Prime Ministers, a Land Commission, a transparent Judicial Commission, a Commission on Government Contracts, and an independent Attorney General and Prosecutor.

Despite his loquaciousness, the PM could not even begin to have these discussions at the stage of his career, and this is why the Bahamian people need a new way of looking at politics.

M THOMPSON

Nassau,

August 29, 2014.