The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I read with interest a Nassau Guardian editorial titled, “Carnival continues, as it should”, dated May 4, 2018, and thought I should respond to two glaringly false claims made therein. Time does not allow me to respond to more.

First, while making what is clearly a bad case for the continuation of carnival, the editorial writer makes a false claim that “the road march dancing is the same you’d see at any party hosted by young Caribbean people”.

Further, he wrote that “those who think otherwise do not get out enough”.

While all of the parties hosted by young Caribbean people that the editorial writer attended may very well have had the same dancing as displayed on the carnival road march, the editorial writer is in no position to universalise because he has not attended all parties hosted by all young Caribbean people. There are parties hosted by young Caribbean people that do not reflect anything close to road march dancing; I and others attended some. So, perhaps it’s the editorial writer who needs to get out more and experience parties hosted by young Caribbean people where debauchery, vulgarity, and lewdity, all of which are signature marks of the carnival road march, are absent.

Connected to that false claim, I believe the editorial writer also makes a false comparison. I’m tentative on this point because the parties hosted by young Caribbean people that the editorial writer attended may very well have had women wearing G-strings and thongs and nothing more than patches on the nipples of their breasts, and they may have been wining and jiggling and twerking and jerking their bare bottoms on the genitals of men (conduct typically engaged in during carnival road marches). But I doubt it.

At best, it seems more reasonable that even if the style of dancing at those parties matched road march dancing, the women at those parties wore clothes. So, to compare dancing in both contexts is a false comparison, all in a futile attempt to make what happens in carnival seem normal.

The second false claim the editorial writer makes is that in The Bahamas we live in a secular democratic society. While I agree with the editorial writer that we live in a democratic society, I strongly disagree that our democracy is of a secular kind. According to the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, the word “secular” means “not having any connection with religion”. Clearly, The Bahamas has a very strong connection with the Christian religion, so I’m at a loss as to how the editorial writer can make the false claim that we are a secular democratic society.

Officially, the best evidence of the kind of democracy we have is found in our constitution, and the word secular is not even mentioned there. On the other hand, the preamble to our constitution states that we as a people recognise that the preservation of our freedom will be guaranteed by an abiding respect for Christian values, among other things. Secularism is not listed among those other things.

Further, the preamble to our constitution states that we recognise the supremacy of God and that we agree for the articles of our constitution to provide for the indivisible unity and creation under God of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas. I have no doubt that the editorial writer knows the content of our constitution’s preamble. Why then does he ignore it and say that we live in a secular democratic society?

Many people are surprised to learn that, in The Bahamas, the observation of worship and the teaching of religion in government-maintained schools are mandated by law. The Education Act requires that “the school day in every maintained school shall begin with collective worship on the part of all pupils in attendance at the school” and that “religious instruction shall be given in every maintained school” (Section 17). In addition, every session of Parliament opens with Christian prayers, and the same is true for virtually every official function or meeting in government ministries and departments, and on government appointed boards.

So why does the editorial writer make the false claim that we live in a secular democratic society? Could it be that he is expressing his wish rather than making a claim? Perhaps in a future editorial, he should tell us. And at the same time, he should tell us if he has seen people attend parties hosted by young Caribbean people dressed like those who go to the carnival road march (especially the females).

PASTOR CEDRIC MOSS

Nassau,

May 15, 2018