The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

AD Hanna had a unique way of communicating as much by what he didn’t say as by his actual well-chosen words.

The muscles around his eyes and mouth – the very ones that cause laughter – were in simultaneous motion when he spoke. He used his quick wit to charm and his infectious hiccup style laughter to disarm.

Midge, as his friends called him, went out of his way to convey an impression that can be summarised as “don’t mind me I ain’t nobody”.

But oftentimes he was the most important body in the room. He cracked jokes to diminish his opponents’ argument and his most brutal cuts were delivered with such self-deprecating humour that you hardly knew it was you he had just eviscerated.

When I met Mr Hanna decades ago, he was more interested in finding out about me than I expected. I gave him the equivalent of my name, rank and serial number and with just those answers he proceeded to tell me about two generations of my family on both sides.

He had an encyclopedic memory and recited the classics and Greek philosophy as smoothly and passionately as he retold the early days of campaigning for majority rule.

Mr. Hanna was a true believer who, together with his wife Beryl, never wavered in his commitment to a core ideology summarized by two establishing resolutions. Government must work for all the people and there is nothing a Bahamian can’t do if given the education, the opportunity and a level playing field.

While many of us still don’t understand that the organising principle around which the PLP was formed is a commitment to progressive ideas, Hanna was the drum major who kept Sir Lynden Pindling and his colleagues in the party focused on doing the things he called “what we come here for”. Here, of course, meant into power as a government.

To Hanna that was a sacred oath to correct the vast economic inequality between the wealthy merchant class and the poor working class. The foundation for any government is now as then, education, healthcare and economic opportunity.

It is no wonder that he became the first Minister of Education in the PLP government. He built schools throughout the country from primary to tertiary though he would in typical fashion credit Doris Johnson, Carlton Francis, Rodney Bain and others.

He was a loyal deputy prime minister who served 40 years in parliament. His two cents worth was in every major decision taken by the PLP. Some of our greatest institutions and policies such as National Insurance and Bahamianization, have his fingerprints all over them.

He is best known as the Minister of Finance, capable of digesting complex economic formulae and giving them a folksy spin that the man in the street grasped instantly. Deficit spending got explained as robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Establishing the Defence Force to patrol our border (another Midgeonian idea) he explained away by saying if your neighbour’s house is on fire, wet yours.

Explaining why he always kept a dollar in his pocket, he said it was to buy a bag of peanuts because “the peanut boy got to eat too”.

Still, he was mind numbingly frugal. He would stop to pick up a discarded nut or bolt on the street believing that he could put it to good use maintaining his beloved boat. Or when his Cabinet-issued vehicle sustained minor damage that was not, in his mind, reason enough to get a new replacement.

Few Bahamians would ever know the joy and satisfaction of leaving this country much better than how they met it. Because of Mr Hanna we can, with pride, lift up our heads to the rising sun.

He didn’t win every battle, but he never lost his fighting spirit. His life’s work ought to be studied by state craft practitioners who want to serve, strategists who want to lead and dreamers who want to build.

Hanna resigned from a PLP Cabinet on principle following in the footsteps of the likes of Sir Arthur Foulkes and Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield. He was, perhaps, the only man in the PLP and the Cabinet Pindling regarded as untouchable.

It was surprising to some that this man, who espoused republican ideals, ended his career in the highest office in the land as the representative of a Monarch that he fought hard to separate from.

He taught a master class in nationalism when he explained that he served Elizabeth II in her role as Queen of The Bahamas and never for one day as Queen of England. His commitment to our Bahamian experiment meant being a servant to the Constitution even when it conflicted with his personal ideology.

We salute this happy warrior who has died at 93 and will remember him and his wife Beryl for giving their all to the noble cause.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

August 5, 2021