The Tribune

“To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one’s ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity,” wrote Alain de Botton, a Swiss writer, philosopher, and television presenter.

Speaking to a journalism class at the College of the Bahamas on Thursday, it was clear that when Prime Minister Christie picks up his newspaper he is confronted by “journalists who are political scribes (who) aggregate to themselves a level of arrogance that stupefies (him) because they presume to make decisions for people”.

He criticised journalists who found his political style wanting and have called for his resignation.

“Bahamians do not write their stories and we have to keep on encouraging,” he claimed — we don’t know to whom or to what he was referring in this claim, because if Bahamians don’t write their stories we don’t know who does. “You are journalists,” he reminded them. “You are supposed to be writing and talking about how to get this country to know its journey. Many journalists don’t have the time for it. It’s better to say ‘well, Christie should resign.’ Well resign my foot!

“When I was going around Centreville,” he continued, “eight consecutive elections, none of them were there. When I was talking to the people who vote for me, none of the journalists were there with me. When I promised them I am going to do my best to help them, none of them were there. Their judgment as to whether I’m doing my best, to hell with them! It’s the people with the power, people whose aspirations are for a better way of life for themselves, and their children. You have the right to believe what you believe, to write what you believe. I must respect you for that. But respect me for what I’m trying to do.”

Mr Christie has banished us to a rather heated place to purge our sins – we hope he hasn’t sent a message on as to how hot to stoke the flames.

But seriously, we are as interested in the welfare of this country as he is. We can’t forget that we are in this boat together, and if the boat of State has lost its way in uncharted waters, we are all doomed.

In our opinion, The Bahamas went off course a long time ago. The Tribune has been sounding the alarm for at least three generations. It is now time to call a halt. There are important and fundamental issues that have gone unsettled for too long. They must be settled now. They are issues and attitudes that have been repeated over many years. And because they have become the practice behind closed doors, there are those who want it swept aside so that we can jog along as we have done in the past. Today we say NO. It is time to examine the wrongdoing, and make it clear that it is not to be allowed repetition by any future government.

We all want a better country. To achieve that goal we have to demand zero tolerance of wrongdoing. And what better place to start than at the top. Our leaders are the ones who have to set the example. And we, as a people, have to stop making excuses for them.

The Bahamas — like all of Britain’s colonies and Dominions – inherited the Westminster system of government, but unfortunately our history is not long enough to have absorbed the conventions, practices and precedents that every Briton has inherited as a part of who they are and where they fit into that system. Magna Carta, signed by King John in 1215 on the field of Runnymede in Surrey, limited his powers as a monarch and opened the way for the formation of a strong parliament. Magna Carta was the precursor to the principle of the rule of law. It became the basis of the rights of British citizens. This is what we inherited. This is what we abused.

When a minister misleads the Mother of Parliaments, without an argument he knows the only course of action that is open to him. He walks the plank. No excuses.

Another strict convention has constructed a high wall between the executive and the judiciary. No one breaches that wall without consequences. Again, no excuses. But to recall the tales of former Chief Magistrate Wilton Hercules, as told to the late Sir Etienne Dupuch in their early morning walks on Cayman Island’s Five Mile beach, interference with the judiciary during the Pindling government was the order of the day. Magistrate Hercules was noted as a strict, no nonsense magistrate. If you did the crime, you did the time, was his rule. He did not care who you were. During the Pindling era, this rule did not settle well with PLP politicians if one of their constituents stood in the dock before him. In retirement, Magistrate Hercules told of his bitter resentment.

But the worst pronouncement to seal the fate of this country was the day that former PLP cabinet minister Philip Bethel stood on a public platform and declared that “God gave this country to the PLP”. And another minister of the Pindling cabinet declared that he was “only checking for the PLPs”.

For the 25 years that the “all for me baby” crowd was in power, The Bahamas and Bahamians were divided. The bitterness flowed over into the FNM administrative years and created problems for former prime minister Hubert Ingraham, who believed that a government office or public contract should go to the best person — man or woman – qualified ­to handle the assignment. Many Bahamians who were kept in the wilderness for so many years felt that it was now the FNM’s turn. From the day, the PLP entered the arena, politics ruled the day and mediocrity dragged this country down.

No wonder the banks and other businesses are quietly folding their tents and creeping away. Investors cannot be expected to tolerate third world standards — a country that had so much going for it has priced itself out of the market and in the main has failed to promote its best talents. Too much has been allowed to go on behind closed doors and too many public contracts have failed to go to public tender — bidding by invitation only. No wonder taxpayers’ money has been wasted.

Prime Minister Christie has promised to produce a Freedom of Information Act. It can’t come soon enough. We just hope it will not be crippled by too many important records being labelled as exempt from public scrutiny.

But despite Mr Christie’s anguished “go to hell” cry, we must remind him of the words of Thomas Jefferson who remarked: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”