The Tribune

WE agree with former National Security Minister Tommy Turnquest that it is a “waste of time” — and we might add money — for the Boundaries Commission at this late date to consider increasing the constituencies for the 2017 general election.

Many of us recall the confusion and the last minute scramble in the 2007 election when Prime Minister Christie lost his first five-year term in office. There was much confusion in the lead up to that election as the parliamentary registrar’s office rushed to complete the voters register for the Boundaries Commission to decide on how to redraw the constituencies. Parliament’s five year term for automatic dissolution neared as parliamentarians complained about not knowing the location of their districts.

There were 49 seats in the House when the Ingraham government entered parliament in 1992. In 1997 Mr Ingraham had reduced the number to 40, with the Christie government increasing it to 41 after it came to power in 2002. Mr Ingraham had said at the time that it was the FNM’s ambition to reduce the number of House seats to 38, which is the minimum allowed under the constitution.

At the time, the PLP’s complaint was that the smaller number of House seats would be too much of a strain on MPs, whereas Mr Ingraham saw no problem in New Providence for them to service their constituencies as they all had cars, and they were covering one island.

However, there were transportation problems in the Family Islands with small settlements, many miles apart — in the old days requiring boats, donkeys, or “shank’s pony”, in other words long, hot walks by foot over scrub land to get to each of them.

In the early twenties, for example, Mayaguana, the most easterly of the Bahamas’ archipelago, which lies about 60 miles north of Inagua, was geographically in the Bahamas, but was not of it — in other words the small population had never voted. Mayaguana was the most isolated in the 700-island chain, of which only about 30 islands are inhabited.

It was the late Sir Etienne Dupuch, who was elected to the House in 1925 for the Inagua constituency who brought Mayaguana officially into The Bahamas.

In his second Inagua election, he chartered a boat, went to Mayaguana, loaded all the males onboard and sailed back to Inagua. There the men of Mayaguana cast their votes for the first time. Sir Etienne represented Inagua and Mayaguana from 1925 to 1942. And almost up to the time of his death in 1991, many of the children and grandchildren of those first voters still looked to him for advice when they came to Nassau.

Apparently, today’s Commission is considering splitting the MICAL constituency into two seats with Inagua and Mayaguana as one constituency, and Acklins, Crooked Island, and Long Cay, the other. This is the only constituency change that makes sense — again because of the distance between the islands.

In New Providence, where transportation is easy for an MP to service his constituency, further division with more seats does not make sense, unless, of course, gerrymandering is the object — which is usually what’s uppermost in a politician’s mind.

But with voting so slow, there is going to be a last minute scramble as there was in 2007 with candidates barely able to get a list of their constituents before it’s voting time.

According to the Parliamentary Registrar’s office there were 172,000 voters on the register for the May 2, 2012 election. By this time in 2011 there were already 134,00 voters registered. So far this year only 57,000 persons have registered.

Unless there is a tremendous increase in registration, there will be no boundaries for the commission to change or increase— if anything it could be justification for reducing the House seats to reach Mr Ingraham’s goal of 38.

It would certainly be less of a drain on the Treasury and make a great deal of sense.

As our Business Editor reported in May of this year, “the Christie administration has added $1.6 billion to The Bahamas’ national debt over the past three years, continuing to push it beyond the IMF’s so-called ‘danger threshold.’”

It certainly does not need to be sent into further free fall with the extra new seats which House Speaker Dr Kendal Major says the PLP are determined to add.

However, with such voter indifference, we agree with Mr Turnquest, who was a member of the Constituency Commission for the 2012 election, that the PLP’s projections are not strong enough to justify boundary changes in the absence of robust voter registration.

Justice Stephen Isaacs, vice-chairman of the Commission, is the sole independent voice on the commission. The public has only him to depend upon — being free of politics — to do what is in the best interest of the country.

The Treasury is under enough financial strain without adding the salaries of extra MP’s who — according to the indifference of the voters — will not only be unnecessary, but unwanted baggage.