The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

TALL Pines MP Leslie Miller asserted yesterday that he was not surprised by the overwhelming rejection of the equality referendum, attributing its failure to the electorate’s inability to see the constitutional changes as beneficial to their lives.

Despite this, Mr Miller said he doubted the referendum’s outcome would affect the Progressive Liberal Party’s chances of winning the May 2017 general election.

He further contended that the failure of Tuesday’s vote was hinged on “too many negative things coming into play” at the wrong time, as he pointed to the public calls for equality from “those funny bunnies”.

He was referring to Bahamas Transgender Intersex United’s (BTIU) launch of its multi-level equality campaign, “Bahamian Trans Lives Matter”, in late April.

The group said it sought to secure equal rights for transgender Bahamians at the height of debate about the gender equality referendum.

He said this “infuriated” many Bahamians and caused them to second guess the government’s motive behind the push of question four.

This question asked voters to eliminate discrimination based on sex in the Constitution by inserting the word “sex” into Article 26.

“It didn’t surprise me at all (that it failed), nope,” Mr Miller told The Tribune yesterday. “I told my colleagues that I was deeply concerned about the sentiments expressed by my constituents. People are hurting and they were mad as hell that the government was talking about a referendum.

“A lot of the voters felt that there was nothing in this referendum for them. They saw this referendum as being for the upper crust and as being for the educated.

“There was nothing in it for them, is what they felt. Yes they might have very well married a foreigner or they might have had a baby for a Jamaican or whatever foreigner (but) that didn’t sway them in the least. They just were not concerned about it and those who voted, voted their conscience and their conscience told them vote ‘no’ to change the Constitution.”

He continued: “At this time when Bahamians are really in a stressful financial state and otherwise they just didn’t have the patience or the will to even consider making any changes.”

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Perry Christie said he was personally “disappointed” with the referendum’s outcome, saying he had hoped that the country would have voted ‘yes’, therefore lifting The Bahamas to an historic level.

Admitting that his administration has a “history” after going against the overwhelming ‘no’ votes of the 2013 gaming referendum, Mr Christie said the government now had to look at the implications of this decision and also examine other factors that may have contributed to the failure of Tuesday’s referendum.

However he insisted that the results of the referendum in his view were not an expression of a lack of confidence in the government.

Mr Christie told reporters that the government made every effort to ensure that the process was bi-partisan and transparent.

Earlier, the prime minister told parliamentarians that the voice of the people had sounded in the land. He said this needed to be respected and would be.