The Tribune

IN an interview with the press following Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Dr Hubert Minnis’s Communication to the House of Assembly on the 2021/2022 National Budget, Speaker House Halson Moultrie publicly criticized the Budget.

It was an unprecedented and shocking development in a Westminster-based parliamentary democracy where a Speaker, the head of the lower chamber of parliament, is supposed to be neutral and impartial.

A veteran statesman who served in cabinet and parliament during a long and distinguished career in public life was also shocked by Mr Moultrie’s comments.

The former notes that he never heard nor is he aware of an example in The Bahamas or other Westminster-based democracies of a Speaker breaching parliamentary standards and conventions in this manner.

The bizarre irony is that while Speaker Moultrie styles himself as a defender of the system, he has brazenly lowered standards and trampled parliamentary traditions. One of his primary conceits is that he continues to confuse and/or conflate “impartial” and “independent”.

He has stated: “I’m an independent Speaker, I’m not attached to any political party, and I believe that is the way the Speaker should be.” The Speaker has gotten it terribly wrong.

Throughout parliamentary democracies in the Commonwealth and elsewhere and at Westminster in the United Kingdom, most Speakers are members of a particular party while acting impartially.

BRUISED EGO

Being “attached” to a political party does not obstruct one’s independence when serving as speaker. Mr Moultrie is confused. He has a problem with obvious facts, which either he does not comprehend or chooses to ignore to suit his ego.

An impartial Speaker at Westminster would not have commented on the budget. If he wanted to comment on the budget he should have resigned the speakership and returned to the bench where he would be free to engage in the thrust and parry of parliamentary debate.

Then there is Mr Moultrie’s delightful hypocrisy. He had no trouble belonging to the FNM during most of his speakership and would have run again for the party were he renominated.

But, ego bruised, he is now at war with the prime minister, whose private conversation with him he reportedly blabbed in public, another breach of convention, from the man who is masquerading as a guardian of the system.

Mr Moultrie’s gargantuan ego and pathological narcissism is such that he confuses his egotism with the office he holds, which are separate. He is an occupant of the office which is bigger than his ego. Donald Trump made the same classic mistake during his tenure as US President.

The Tribune reported on the jumble of inconsistencies, unintelligible inanities and intellectual gobbledygook of Mr Moultrie, who looks even more foolish as he mindlessly opines, fulminates and sputters.

Many are continuously gobsmacked by his lack of knowledge and understanding of his role. His statements in the House and in public are filled with more errors and nonsensical claims than the number of ruffled feathers in an ostentation of preening peacocks desperately wooing peahens.

For the benefit and enjoyment of readers, a peahen is “a female peafowl, which has drabber colours and a shorter tail than the male.”

Mr Moultrie stated: “The last Speaker that had control of this Parliament was Sir Clifford Darling in 1985. At that time the national debt was $500m. Now, since that control of Parliament has been evaporated by the executive branch, the national debt has grown to almost $10 billion.”

What does he mean by control? The Speaker is the presiding officer of the lower chamber, not a sort of benign dictator controlling matters. He or she is elected by the members of the House and is a servant of the chamber, who can be removed by the members.

His bizarre correlation or causation argument – one is unsure which of these arguments he is making – links who is Speaker to the national debt. The national debt and deficits have to do with the budget of the government of the day and the needs of the country.

Is Mr Moultrie seriously suggesting that if he were in greater control as an autocrat that he could control the national debt? Even by the standards of his ever ballooning ego this is concerning. He is in Donald Trump territory. This is not a compliment.

Notice his use of words like: “this Parliament” and “evaporated”. Hmmm? The words speak to his mindset. One imagines that former Speakers like the late Arlington Butler, Vernon Symonette and others would find Mr Moultrie’s antics, reasoning and language untenable and unbecoming of the Office.

Mr Moultrie casts himself as one of the more learned and brilliant parliamentarians and Speakers in our long parliamentary history. In truth, he is one of the more ill-informed. He may go down in history. But it will be as an example of how not to comport oneself as Speaker.

Mr Moultrie further stated: “We have three arms of government: the legislative branch is the first arm of government. You cannot be an executive unless you are elected in the House of Assembly or appointed in the Senate... The second arm is the executive branch.

“The Constitution calls for the legislative branch to have oversight of the activities of the executive branch and for obvious reasons, because if there’s no oversight, human nature being what it is, a man cannot be separated against himself.”

Thank you, Mr Speaker for the civics lesson, though the reference to “be separated from himself” is confusing. He is right that checks are needed in our system. We must also continue to mature with checks better observed by habit and convention.

But if he is committed to such checks he must be equally committed to acquitting himself judiciously and prudently.

One cannot with authority make the arguments for upholding the standards, conventions and traditions of our parliamentary system while breaching the standards, most especially if one is the Speaker of the House of Assembly.

MINDSET

Mr Moultrie also offered this disturbing and telling comment which reveals an outdated and colonial mindset that could easily come from someone with an unreconstructed racial antipathy toward people of colour:

“And it’s about time small, black, Third World nations understand the system that we have inherited and have adopted and abide by the tenets and conventions of those systems otherwise we will continue to have the kind of chaos, the kind of corruption and the kind of plunder that has been plaguing The Bahamas now for decades.”

Had a white colonial racist figure made such a comment many would be aghast. Coming from the Speaker this is appalling. Clearly he still has a colonial mindset incapable of deeply appreciating the legacy of those who helped to entrench a parliamentary system in our vibrant democracy.

Has Mr Moultrie seen the “chaos”, “corruption” and “plunder” plaguing first world, majority white states, including allegations of corruption against UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Tories. Has he been in hibernation during the Donald Trump imperium?

Moultrie also declared: “The country really needs an injection now of an independent voice in Parliament otherwise we’re going to continue to slip and the burden on the people will continue to increase.”

Here we go again with this conceit, which is a part of the need for a third party or argument, supposedly needed to improve our system. The Bahamian people seem to have settled on a two-party system as the best way to secure progress and political stability.

Some European democracies, France and Italy in particular, have endured periods of protracted instability because a multiplicity of parties and independents made it impossible for any government to remain in office for long.

At times in Italy the lifetime of a government was measured in months rather than years as successive coalitions fell apart.

Unlike Europe, where there are so many shades of political philosophy, Bahamians have apparently settled on a philosophical space with both major parties competing about which is best to occupy that space.

Contention is based mostly on issues of governance, integrity, competence and leadership. Since party politics came to the Bahamas in the 1950s there has been a succession of small political parties, all of which failed to gain a foothold in Parliament.

The only one with a philosophy that necessitated its existence was the Vanguard Nationalist Party which was way to left outside the settled space.

The failure of new parties to gain a foothold has nevertheless not discouraged them from sprouting up every election cycle. They have been mostly vanity parties with personalities seeking short-cuts to leadership and political power.

They never succeed but still they come and there is always the dependable chorus of encouragement from chronic third-party cheerleaders.

Some of the justifications for third parties are the alleged need for new blood in the Bahamian political arena and the need for more women in politics. But both the political parties represented in Parliament do not seem averse to either of these propositions.

What Moultrie has successfully taught us is not about the supposed need for independents or third parties in parliament. What is needed are intelligent, patriotic, well-meaning, mature parliamentarians who understand the genius of our system and who are open to growth.

Just as in large, majority white countries, our small black majority Bahamas must find the quality of people who will represent us with dignity and a certain humility.

We have enjoyed such representation in the past and will do so in the future if more Bahamians, including women, come forward. Among them might be a better representative for Nassau Village.