The Tribune

By DIANE PHILLIPS

IN five years, the Bahamian Parliament will be 300 years old, one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere. (Virginia General Assembly established in 1619 was actually the first, but, unlike The Bahamas, did not remain as a consistent drumbeat of national lawmakers). 

By any standard, turning 300 is a heck of a milestone. No doubt it will be celebrated with lots of flag-waving. There will be a national church service, likely a contest for an original song, Junkanoo tributes at Boxing Day and New Year’s parades. Probably, safe to add, the calendar will include lectures and a series of guest speakers on the topic of governance at the Public Policy Institute at UB.

All that is good and well, an economic boost good for cultural reinforcement not to mention retail sales, light manufacturing and possibly another acceptable burden on an already overburdened national debt, but who can reject the idea of a 300-year-old anniversary, especially when no one else in half the world can lay claim to such a feat? We won’t begrudge a single penny spent.

But all the flag-waving and parades and days that we wear the national colours will be meaningless unless we ask ourselves what have we learned and how can we put it to good use? How can we 300 years on make the kind of life-altering difference that Governor Woodes Rogers made when he convened the first Parliament three centuries ago?

First, let’s start with what prompted the creation of a body of lawmakers. It wasn’t as if Woodes Rogers, a privateer and adventurer who sailed the globe and, among other feats, rescued the stranded sailor who gave rise to the legend of Robinson Crusoe, woke up one morning and decided to form a body of men to meet and make law. He was sent to bring order to the colony that had been overtaken by bandits.

Think about this – the Parliament we will celebrate was created by a privateer ordered by the king to bring law and order to an island overrun by pirates.

In the latest book in the trilogy by historian Tellis Bethel, the former commodore of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, the tale of how The Bahamas went from a state of total lawlessness dominated by pirates whose brutality and greed knew no bounds to a place of law and order with commerce restored and one of the oldest Parliaments in history is filled with heroics and demands.

Rogers rose to the task, ordering the unruly hard-drinking, cussing, sword-swinging, cloak and dagger men and women to listen up or face the consequences. They had three choices - turn themselves and their booty in and go straight, get out of the islands and never return or keep raiding boats and houses and the few businesses that were left and take their chances on getting hanged. That’s a simplification but the shocking part is that several took option three and led the movement of what not to do by being hung, setting an example of what not to do as they swung by the neck in the town square.

And thus law and order was born in The Bahamas.

But how much have we really learned?

Three hundred years ago, pirates with their stranglehold on the islands nearly destroyed The Bahamas. Today, we don’t need pirates. We are doing all the destruction we can all by ourselves. We watch as communities get torn apart and we fail to recognise how important being part of something bigger than ourselves is.

Today, we watch as historic buildings crumble taking irreplaceable history with them because we still do not recognise demolition by neglect as a crime and we fail to preserve the built environment. Today, we allow overdevelopment instead of careful stewardship even in the most fragile of places like the Exuma cays. Today, we permit overfishing and under-preservation. Today, we watch as our conch, crawfish and fish stocks grow ever closer to depletion. Today, we allow dredging that will erode coastlines, make us even more vulnerable to violent storms and by the way, kill sea turtles and other species along with a way to make room for what? Another dock?

Today, we boast of the world’s largest seagrass bed and allow visiting fishing boats and local fishers to trample the resource of blue carbon credits that only two years ago we were promised could help us bring down our national debt and make The Bahamas a resource-rich hero for the world to admire.

Today, we spend millions on health care and fail to face the uncomfortable truth that we are a nation of obesity. Today, we build residential communities with 24-hour security and iron gates to keep crime outside while it is happening under own noses and within our own bedrooms. Today, we watch as family life erodes and values our ancestors once held dear fade into an abyss, as irrelevant as a rotary dial phone.

We have every reason to mark 300 years as a Parliamentary leader and five years to find the reasons to celebrate.