Mister President, this is a difficult time. It is hard to know where to begin, because we are in a situation like the story of the Emperors New Clothes. Every one seems to be saying that the emperor has his clothes on and what beautiful clothes he has, when we all know better. In fact, the emperor is quite naked. He has on no clothes, and it is up to this Opposition party to say so.

In fact, Mister President, I have said it before, the Bahamian people got a pig in a poke in 1997. But some people, too many people in fact, are too busy partying. Too many people refuse to see the collapse just around the corner. Too many are too busy congratulating themselves on the little jobs that they have accomplished.

 
BAHAMASAIR

I listened closely to Senator Pauline Nairn as she twisted and turned in the wind in order to deliver a simple message that the Government of The Bahamas has failed miserably with Bahamasair. That Bahamasair is worse than it has ever been. And yes we do not blame the staff. I do not think that I remember it ever being the case that people have had up to twelve hour delays getting to their destinations. It seems to me that this is worse than even during the time with Flamingo Airlines.

The question is why is it that public opinion is unable to move the Government to do something about it. Plainly and simply, the airline has become an inconvenience. Calls for the resignation of the Chairman and the Minister have gone unanswered and unheeded. The airline continues to deteriorate, with all of the jets up to yesterday out of service. This causes tremendous problems for the traveling public, in a sea nation that requires travel by air as a necessity.

I believe that the public policy solution is this: we need the airline to serve The Bahamas. The best way to do this cheaply and equitably for the flying public is to farm the routes out in the way the mailboats service exists. The routes can be run by private persons, and subsidized by the Government. The jobs of airline employees will have to be protected in some manner, and the changes at the airline must be negotiated with the Unions at BAHAMASAIR to ensure that there is an orderly transfer of services. The situation, which exists today at BAHAMASAIR, is untenable and it is the Government, which must carry the blame. It is the Government, which must solve the problem.

 
FOX HILL

Mister President, the people of Fox Hill have an elected an FNM representative that has voiced nothing on their behalf about the closure of the Post office and the closure of the BaTelCo office. Not withstanding a fake letter to the press by someone who is a public servant who supports the representative but does not have the courage to sign his own name, which letter claims that people do not need the post office or BaTelCo in Fox Hill, nothing could be further from the truth.

There were at least a dozen people standing at the press conference which we held asking for the reopening of the BaTelCo office.

I am happy to say Mr. President that the public pressure, which we exerted from the PLP, has brought some results. The result comes in the form of a promise that the Post Office should be up and running again in Fox Hill within four weeks, the Ministry of Public Works permitting.

We have learned that the hold up is the Ministry of Works. This Ministry despite its Minister’s list of boasts in the other place is unable to perform Government works on time. Perhaps part of it is the unhappy situation which Bahamian workers find at the Ministry of Public Works where the Bahamian professionals are outnumbered and where the Bahamian professionals are blatantly discriminated against because of their nationality.

The point is the hold up at the post office is the Ministry of Works. The post office is to get bulletproof glass. The post office building needs painting and refurbishing. The Post Office Department has the funds but the Ministry of Public Works is not doing the work. Further, the Ministry of Public Works has not been able to complete the Elizabeth Estates post office. They may have to dismiss the contractor, the second one because the contractor under the Ministry’s supervision can not seem to get the post office finished. Similarly, there is a problem at the new Post Office being constructed in South Beach.

I am able to report that with regard to the Fox Hill post office, the Post Office is trying to negotiate with BaTelCo and BEC and ultimately

the Water and Sewerage Corporation to be able to collect their bills for those utility corporations for a fee as they do in other places in The Bahamas. That will be a great help to the people of Fox Hill.

While speaking about Fox Hill, I wish to ask the Minister of Education to look into the matter of the two schools, which serve the Fox Hill community. One is L.W. Young High School, the other is the Sandilands Primary School. Both institutions need to have proper Internet access. The L. W. Young School has Internet access but it is not generally available to the students as I understand it, and there is a shortage of computers. The Central Bank kindly donated a number of computers to the school but not nearly enough to serve the population. I am quite surprised that many students do not know how to access the Internet and how to use it services. In the schools that do have them, the Internet access is reserved for use by teachers only. This I imagine has to do with the cost of the service. But a student who enters the Harvard School of Government today has to bring with him a laptop with a video camera attachment as part of his required gear for school. The kids have to start learning as a matter of course how to use this material. I would urge that L. W. Young get fully equipped, and I would ask the Minister to ensure that Sandilands Primary gets Internet access with computers to allow the young ones to get the experience before they reach the junior high school.

Mister President, there must be a more efficient way to do this budget business of The Bahamas. I have said it before but here we have a budget of less than a billion dollars. The school board in New York city has a budget of eight billion dollars or more. Yet we tie up the resources of a whole Parliament for weeks on end jawboning about what is really a couple of dollar, and which has ultimately no impact on the world economy, and barely any impact on our own economy.

But I suppose it will not change during my tenure here, but I say it anyway.

 
ROSTON MILLER’S REMARKS

I want to thank Senator Roston Miller for what I described on my web site as a statesman’s address in this place two weeks ago. It gave some hope that at last some realism was coming to the other side, after

years and years of euphoria. I suppose the victory was so long in coming that euphoria is to be expected but some one has to take the long view.

I think that his remarks are relevant to this debate because as we go through a debate of this kind, it is clear that things are not different from when the PLP was in power. I served as reporter during those times and often spent until 5 a.m. in the House of Assembly waiting for a budget to be passed. The House still meets late into the night to do so, and this place may meet late into this night. So that much has not changed. And this morning, I got an e-mail from one of the reporters who covered this, and I have spoken to their editors, and the reporters are utterly bored with it all. It is all so tedious and slow.

The two points that Senator Miller made were that he thought that he should not have opposed independence because independence turned out to be a good thing for The Bahamas. He said that in the context of a more general point and that is that we all say things in politics which we may some times come to regret, which are some times excessive, but there are some things which are genuinely in the best interest of the country even though when in Opposition we oppose them . Further, I got the impression that he believed that the demonizing of the Government and the Opposition by one another was not in our best interest, since we all ultimately had to live here.

The second point which he made had to do with an extension of the first and that is the size of the Cabinet. I think most people agree that the size of the Cabinet was a slap in the face of the Bahamian people, but in one sense the Bahamian people have gotten what they deserved since they voted for what they have. That does not, however in my view absolve the Government and its leadership from a larger responsibility to the country, to so manage the country’s funds in a responsible way, notwithstanding that they have the raw power to do so.

I believe that Senator Roston Miler’s point was that some things are objectively right and wrong. This is a point which a man whom I admire Pope John Paul II tries to teach us: that there is objective right and wrong.

Permit me Mister President a reminiscence. Before the 1992 General Election campaign, I supported the removal of the PLP and believed that Sir Lynden Pindling’s tenure was up and that some other person ought to be given an opportunity to govern. I think that was the right decision, and the right place to be.

As a result of that support, I found myself in this place in 1992, and I served until 8 January 1997 when it was no longer possible to carry on as an independent member. And this is what I mean by an air of realism. Despite the propaganda that came from the side opposite, it ought to be recognized that at no time was I a member of the FNM. I supported their Government, but when I could not continue, ceased to support them and moved on. There was no hiding, it was done in the open and in the light of day.

 
FNM SELLING OUT THE COUNTRY

During that 1992 campaign, I remember a young woman who was a PLP, a Perry Christie supporter in Rolle Avenue coming up to me. She said now you have asked me to support the FNM in this election. And I will do so but let me ask you this, you all are not going to sell this country out to white people and foreigners. I assured her that this would be the case.

It was my belief that Hubert Ingraham having been trained within the bowels of the PLP was a sensible nationalist, and one who understood the feelings the African community in The Bahamas would seek without jingoism or racism to protect the interest of Bahamians.

Today, I am terribly disturbed about what is going on, because it seems to me that I have been proven wrong in so many ways. He has done his best to try and defend himself on that count. He has been on radio and television ad nauseam defending the point that he has not sold the country out to foreigners. But the evidence is there of it happening every day. The perception sticks like white on rice that Bahamians can not get the same advantages that those from the outside get, and that it is a better place for the person from the outside than for the Bahamian.

The Government has failed to tell us why they are compelled to sell BaTelCo to a strategic foreign partner. What exactly compels them do so. The Government gave the exclusive contract to Cable Bahamas a firm of foreigners, a virtual give away of a lucrative deal that Bahamians could have done. The Government has stymied the development in Eleuthera by refusing to grant concessions to a Bahamian group which sought similar concessions to those given to Sol Kerzner at Paradise Island, forcing to Bahamians to sell their property at a fire sale price, and virtually expropriating their property for a public purpose in Eleuthera.

What is also disheartening is that the Government of Mr. Ingraham seems to be deciding public policy by vendetta. Mr. Ingraham’s most famous vendetta was the one against this Senator and former Senator Franklin Wilson in the last General Election in which he changed the boundaries of the constituencies when it was determined that Senator Wilson and myself would be candidates for the PLP . Those constituencies were changed.

 
INGRAHAM DEMONIZING TRADE UNIONS

He is now pursuing a similar vendetta against trade union leaders who oppose him. Charles Rolle, the president of the BEC Union, and Huedley Moss of the Water and Sewerage Union are to be demonized and destroyed because they oppose Mr. Ingraham.

No one in their right mind and looking at the situation rationally could imagine that in the middle of a trade dispute between the Government and the BEC Union, with pressure coming from the TUC like never before and suddenly Charles Rolle, the leader of the Union gets arrested. He gets arrested at 2:45 a.m. in his home on 23 June one month after a threat is alleged to have been made. Further, he has been charged with the unlawful possession of firearm. Mr. Rolle has pleaded not guilty.

But Senator Miller in light of your remarks does this not all seem too familiar, this situation with Charles Rolle ? Don’t you remember the arrest of Randol Fawkes in 1955 was it for sedition when he accused then Magistrate Maxwell Thompson of speaking with the lips of Esau and the mouth of Jacob. The then colonial Government charged Sir Randol with sedition for uttering those words on the Southern Recreation grounds. The PLP brought in Vivian Blake Q.C. from Jamaica to defend Sir Randol and he was acquitted. But the Government I am sure knew that he would be acquitted. The point though was not to convict, the only point was to embarrass Sir Randol the labour movement by using the power of the state to stop the labour movement. But it did not work then and it will not work with Charles Rolle, because the movement is bigger than that.

Senator Miller will remember the cries of the Free National Movement against the Progressive Liberal Party’s administration when they first charged Rodney Moncur and Philip Miller six months after the words were uttered with sedition. The FNM charged that the Government was using the power of the state to criminalize its political opponents. The jury agreed with them and the two men were acquitted but not before they were embarrassed, harassed, made to sign in daily like common criminals at a police station. Senator Miller will also remember the charge brought against the late Lionel Dorsett for criminal libel in 1987 by the PLP administration, again using the power of the state to criminalize one’s political opponent. That too ended in acquittal but Lionel Dorsett never caught himself afterward. He was permanently and irrevocably scarred.

And yes Senator Miller I believe that we all ought to agree that some things were done wrong and should not have been done. And if we agree to that, the question is why does the situation with Charles Rolle loom so similar?

Why would the Government not think that the Union executives and members would think that with the arrest of their leader something is not rotten in the state of The Bahamas?

We see in Malaysia right this moment how the Prime Minster of that country had his former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance arrested because the Minister dared to oppose the Prime Minister. There the courts are completely under the thumb fop the Government and that man has been convicted and sent to prison for something which the international community and a wide cross section of the Malaysian people believe was a deliberate frame up. We must be careful how the law is used, how the police are used, and come to recognize what we may be doing.

So why would any Government not think that the citizens of The Bahamas today, the Union members would not think that this is Randol Fawkes, Philip Miller, Rodney Moncur and Lionel Dorsett all over again. And to add to the dimensions of the case, it is before a Scottish magistrate, a contract officer of the Government of The Bahamas. All very interesting.

That is why Mister President when the bills which are presently before the Parliament come up for a vote on extending the power of the police to hold people for 96 hours, I will be taking a strong stand against it. I will also be taking a strong stand against the involuntary taking of intimate body samples from persons who are still suspects and not charged.

George Robinson told me the story of how the police came into his home at 1 a.m. to search for firearms. He was showed a warrant. He allowed the search. He told them that he would be video taping the search. They told him, that this was not allowed. Mind you the man is in his own home. And then they told him that if he did not behave himself, again he is in his own home, they would exercise their powers to arrest him for forty-eight hours. This together with this Charles Rolle matter shows clearly what an abuse of power can take place when a society allows one of its agencies to have too much power.

 
ROAD TRAFFIC OFFICE AT AIRPORT

Mister President, the Government boasts throughout this budget address of the improvements which it has made in the infrastructure of The Bahamas, and I think that some things have been done which are interesting. But as we hear the sweet song of the hapless Minister of Finance, one wonders what the persons at the Department of Road Traffic who work at the International Airport think when they have to go into their office. I was shocked at the state of the office at airport. It is a little cubbyhole just to the east of the Royal Bank of Canada. So here we have a group of people who must ensure that our visitors get the proper transportation services at the airport, the first to greet our visitors and they have to work in a leaky, smelly dump, that suffers from a bug infestation. The officers report that they complained time and time and again but to no avail. The fact is it will probably take a work stoppage at the airport or a collapse of the building before something will be done about it.

 
THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS

Which brings me more generally to the labour situation in the country. It appears that labour is terribly unhappy. Just this morning the Union at the Airport Tower is saying that they will do every lawful to cause their problems to be solved. They were on the picket line yesterday. The Minister has responded by saying the Government will not act with a gun to its head. But just when is the Government going to act Mister Minister. The Government has been in negotiations with this Union for well into a year, and with or results.

The Prime Minister promised at the start of the year that the problems of the air traffic controllers would be addressed within six months. Nothing has happened. Instead for their good faith bargaining, the Prime Minister has hired 50 Defense Force officers to train as air traffic controllers, superseding those present controllers who were scheduled for training, so that he could have military people take over the airport in the case of a strike. The Union now knows that if it does not act now, it will have no leverage at all over the Government.

The Government recognized the Union but has told the Union it will not sign an industrial agreement because it does not sign industrial agreements with public sector unions. Yet the Prime Minister was seen several weeks ago purporting to sign two five year agreements, one with the Bahamas Union of Teachers, the other with the Bahamas Public Services Union.

The Air Traffic Controllers dispute is just the tip of the iceberg, because both BEC and the Water and Sewerage Union are fighting for new contracts. The Prime Minister is seeking to supercede the usual industrial relations process by unilaterally imposing a five-year contract on the BEC and Water and Sewerage workers. And of course, he is seeking to destroy Huedley Moss and Charles Rolle personally. The Prime Minister reminds me so much of Rudy Giuliani, the Mayor of New York City. They both practice the politics of vendetta.

That politics of vendetta is to be taken to its full extent with the Local Government election coming up on 30 June when A. Loftus Roker for daring to expose the fraud which local government has become , is to be eliminated from the body politic by the same Prime Minister who said that no unionist will serve in Parliament in his life time and on his watch.

 
POLICE VICTIMIZED

The Police are also workers, and you will be interested to know Mister President that the Policemen who participated in the march on Labour Day, have all been transferred to new posts. The transfers have come even though some of the persons received specialized training in particular areas, even though homicides are a serious problem, detectives have been transferred to do a constable’s work or to do clerical work. This is victimization of the highest order against police workers.

And of course the Police Association is led by a capable and diplomatic officer who has good ties with the Government, and so it is not a question of the Police Association being politically hostile to the Government, and still their reward for exercising the right of the Police Association is to be transferred to areas of the Force where their talents and capacities are not used at all or are under underutilized. The Government must ask the Commissioner to account for these acts of victimization and seek to reverse them where possible.
 

AGRICULTURE

Mister President, agriculture has collapsed under the FNM. The FNM took a policy position to severely limit the subsidies to family island agriculture which the PLP left in place in 1992. Successive Ministers of Agriculture under the FNM including the present one have put in place a limit of 9,000 dollars in purchases for farmers at the packing houses per person, per year. The result of that has been the total collapse of long standing farms in North Andros and in North Eleuthera and bitter complaints from those who limp along.

 Agricultural policy is a difficult one, and everywhere governments suffer from trying to deal with the problem of subsidizing agriculture. You may know Mister President that Agriculture is heavily subsidized in the United Sates which is the great espouser of the free market.

The Common Agricultural Policy exists in the European Union in order to keep the farmers in Europe on their feet. So agriculture because of the peculiar economics of it is subsidized the world over.

The difference in the philosophy of the PLP and the FNM is that we believe that it is important to help sustain communities in the family islands. One of the ways to do so was to support agriculture. We also believe that it is important to have an agricultural sector producing food for the country as a matter of national interest and security. Under the PLP, 20 per cent of our food was produced locally. Under the FNM that figure has declined to less than 10 per cent, and it is getting worse. The cap on payments at the packing house has been so serve that farmers simply cannot make it.

In other countries if you plan to remove a subsidy, you phase it out in such a way that the farmer has time to adjust, but also you put in place a marketing support programme which will help the farmer find other markets to replace the Government market. That has not been done, and the result is the collapse of local agriculture under the FNM.

Ask Mrs. Sammy Culmer at Sammy’s Place in Rock Sound how she is limited to only ten pounds of peppers per week at the packing house in Rock Sound. How there is so much that has to be wasted because even though she has found an alternative market in Harbour Island, there is still not enough to absorb what she produces.

I wish to address a matter regarding Junkanoo to the Minister responsible for Youth and Culture Senator Dumont. The individual Junkanoo Association is having a problem getting a response from the Ministry about the payment of prize money to the junior category of Junkanoo individuals. They were concerned that first the category of individual Junkanoo was being eliminated altogether. Then they got that resolved, they found out that the junior category had been eliminated last year and no prize money was provided for that category. There are three junior individuals. Their point is that prize money should be provided for them since they competed. No one told them in advance that the category had been eliminated. They have spoken to the Ministry and to the Committee. They asked me to write a letter on their behalf, and no response has been yet given to that letter. I would wish that the Minister inquire into this matter. I support their view that the youngsters need to be encouraged in the individual category, and their view that the prize money which can be provided would not be prohibitive. Therefore, I believe that this can satisfactorily be resolved by providing the prize money and restoring the category to Junkanoo.

 
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM

The Government has announced that it is going to form a Commission to look into the changes of the Constitution. I oppose the currently announced Chairman of that Commission even though we all agree that Constitutional changes need to take place.

I oppose him not for the obvious reason that some might think either related to his politics or his ethnicity. My objection is generational. My feeling is that Geoffrey Johnstone has had his opportunity to design The Bahamas in which we are living. He served in the Parliament. He was a Leader of the Opposition in 1967 up to the time that Cecil Wallace Whitfield formed the FNM. So it is now time for others of this generation and below to say how the country in which will live for another generation is going to be governed. That is my view. Too much of what is being planned for us is still being done by the same old hands. The circle needs to be widened, to broaden the base.

 
FOREIGN AFFAIRS

I listened carefully to what Senator Rutherford had to say. Foreign Affairs is my bailiwick. I listened to what she had to say about women and the constitution. You should know that the PLP was responsible for the tortuous formulations that you now find in the constitution on citizenship. In all my guises whether PLP, independent and now PLP again, I have opposed these citizenship provisions as tortuous and unworkable. I have proposed and will continue to support a broad change in the citizenship provisions, which are not limited to those matters that Senator Rutherford raised on gender issues.

My view is that citizenship should be a simple formulation and the constitution should be changed to reflect the following. All the present provisions on citizenship ought to replaced by the formula: if you are born in The Bahamas whether before or after independence, whether to a Bahamian parent or not, you are a citizen of The Bahamas. Secondly, if you are born abroad the child of any Bahamian citizen, no matter what the marital status or gender you are a Bahamian.

I am amongst those who also believe that stronger measures ought to be taken to ensure that those who are Creoles in this society are fully integrated into The Bahamas, and that means fully English literate. While, I recognize that being bi-lingual is an advantage, my own view is that the culture of The Bahamas ought to continue to be dominated by the English language.

I noted the comments of the Minister of Health about the Adolescent Health Area. I think that they do good work. I want to thank them and pay tribute to Mrs. Katurah Wright at L. W. Young for the work done at the L. W. Young School in trying to bring the violence under control in that school. I think that more ought to be provided for the kind of programmes which that unit now designs, and that they ought to have at their disposal, proper facilities and offices to carry out the work of the unit. My own feeling is that too often the unit is called in to do work after the fact instead of a preventative measure.

Mister President just a few comments on foreign affairs. I was happy to see that Senator Rutherford was able to enlighten us on what is going on at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since the Minister herself does not tell us. This Minister and her counterpart at the Ministry of Labour have a problem communicating with the Bahamian public.

I must say that the Minister of Labour has improved in her communication with this spokesman on Labour but still not enough in my view. The contact between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and this spokesman on foreign affairs is non-existent. And I have the impression that if looks could kill with her, I would be dead.

It comes back to the politics of vendetta which the Prime Minister practices and which has apparently infected some of his colleagues.

For the avoidance of doubt, please let all Government Ministers friends and foe alike know, if they care to know, and if they don’t’ well too bad, this is not about personalities. This is about public policy.

Senator Rutherford said much that was laudable, but again those words should have come from the mouth of the Minister. I smiled yesterday when the Senator talked about the mission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its role in maintaining formal relations between the Government of the Bahamas and other countries.

I smiled because I said the Minister of Foreign Affairs needs to establish formal relations with the Opposition, and maintain those relations before seeking to maintain and establish relations with outside parties. This is the one area in particular in which there ought as far as possible be unanimity of interest and a united face.

I am concerned as spokesman for foreign affairs that the Bahamas Government does not advise the Opposition on a regular basis what they doing for an on behalf of this country abroad. And I was delighted to learn after having spoken with Arthur Foulkes a former Shadow Foreign Minister that when Sir Clement Maynard was Foreign Minister he was invited to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a regular basis for a briefing on international developments and The Bahamas.

Senator Rutherford indicated something, which we welcome, and that is the addition of trade attaches of the Missions overseas. We believe that is good because trade and investment is what will move this country forward.

 
FTAA

This becomes more critical as we move forward in our discussion about joining the World Trade Organization and about joining the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas protocols. I believe that FTAA should properly be a foreign affairs function.

In this connection, I wish to make a point on the need to consult the Opposition on its views on this issue. I have explained the position to the leader of our party in this way. Not one representative of the Opposition was invited to speak at a recent conference on FTAA sponsored by the Organization of American States, the Bahamas Government and the Chamber of Commerce. No one bothered to consult the PLP.

And yet no matter what economic and trade agreements you make, politics can turn it all on it all on its head. We have only to see how jingoism and extreme nationalism turned the tide for Milosivec in Yugoslavia, with disastrous results for the world and that country and its people.

Suppose the PLP became extreme nationalists, it is easy to do. Suppose the PLP were to start whipping up race hysteria that’s easy to do. But we are a responsible group and that will not be done. The point is that the Government nor the Chamber nor the OAS has a clue what the PLP believes about FTAA. Suppose on FTAA our council’s position is that the PLP must when it comes to Government reverse everything that it finds on that issue. Now where will we be if the Government changes in 2002? The FNM can not be so arrogant and shortsighted on these issues.

There were only 2500 votes nationwide separating the PLP from the Government of the Bahamas in the last General Election. One crisis can turn the tide and the FNM can be gone. The strength of the FNM is more apparent than real. But sensible leaders don’t want to lose and appreciate that air of realism about which I spoke at the start. They govern so that they will be able to live in this country after they are no longer in the Government.

 
INGRAHAM AS THE EMPEROR JONES

Strange as it may seem, I exclude all FNMs from that except the Prime Minister who has been acting in the strangest manner. He has been acting like the Emperor Jones, that wonderful book by William Faulkner where a Black man from the US goes to the West Indies takes over an island republic and then turns contemptuous of the people he is leading. In the end he is destroyed by them.

I say that after hearing strange stories about his behavior in Freeport, sitting in a living room with a closed circuit television to hear complaints from Freeporters, then coming out at the end to tell the Freeport people that foreigners are coming to work in Freeport, and he does not want to hear anything about it.

 
CLIFTON CAY

And then there is the story of the privatization of BaTelCo ad the approval of the Clifton Cay project. Senator Wilchcombe touched on Clifton Cay yesterday. We are concerned as a party about the Government allowing foreign developers to inject themselves directly into a political debate in The Bahamas. The developers have become offensive by injecting themselves in this debate. This is a matter which should be left to the Bahamian people. It is about the land use of The Bahamas. Not even Sol Kerzner actually injected himself into a political debate in The Bahamas. The PLP is so concerned about this issue that a proposal is being drafted for the consideration of its National General Council which will go further than what is already approved. That proposal may recommend that as a matter of policy even approvals given by the FNM for this development will be revoked when the PLP attains office. The National General Council has already approved the position of the Leader of the Opposition that Clifton Cay should not be developed along the lines now suggested but should be developed as a national park.

The Prime Minister’s remarks on the matter in that other place were disingenuous, and were offensive. He tried to attack the patriotism of those who oppose the project. He does not have a monopoly on patriotism, and he and his Government ought to resile from their position on this matter.

 
LAND PRICE INFLATION

The Government must look at the wider issues, including the serious land price inflation that has occurred in this country as a direct result of scrapping the Immovable Properties Act. Clearly, we can not return to that legislation but the Government has gone too far the other way. As a matter of policy the PLP does not believe that the upward pressure which is being put on land in The Bahamas is in the best interests of Bahamas. It is pushing the price of lots in low cost subdivisions out of reach of ordinary people. It is further killing the middle class in this country. It is further skewing the obvious inequities in the wealth distribution of this country.

The Government must therefore reexamine is rush to approve Clifton Cay, and must redesign its land policy to deal with the land price inflation in the country.

 
CUBA & HAITI

Also on the question of foreign affairs, I wish to record here that we are concerned that proper procedures are not being followed to determine whether or not Haitian and Cuban immigrants coming to this country are genuine political refugees. The belief is that the protocol signed by the Bahamas Government may be in violation of the treaties on the status of refugees. It appears to provide for the repatriation of Cuban refugees without due process to determine whether or not they qualify for refugee status.

Further we call on the Cuban Government to take measures within its borders to allow for the free flow of persons in and out of their country, to democratize its institutions, including making provision for a free press and the free practice of religion. It is also the view that the United States ought to end the embargo against the Cuban Government in accordance with the declaration made by Caricom on this issue.

 
KALIK BEER TAX

Mister President, I talked about what appears to be an anti-Bahamian attitude by the Government. Their tax policy clearly shows that is the case.

I draw your attention to remarks by the Minister of Finance. These provide for an increase of 130 per cent in the tax on Kalik beer produced here in The Bahamas at Commonwealth Brewery. Let me say that I have no economic interest in CBL, although I was the public relations and marketing consultant for the set up of the brewery and for the design, production and initial marketing of Kalik.

Mr. President, the rise in taxes on the Brewery are a continuation of the politics of vendetta. Not the least because the Prime Minister was overheard saying within the precincts of the House and in the presence of that the Leader of the Opposition that Tiger ( Garret Finlayson, Brewery shareholder ) and Bradley Roberts another shareholder ) had made too much money and now they must pay.

And so the tax unless the Government carries out a review and changes its mind is to go up from 3 dollars per gallon to seven dollars per gallon. That means some 16 million dollars in additional charges per year for the brewery. No business at that size could absorb that kind of increase in costs in one year and survive.

Then to add insult to injury, the Prime Minister in his address in that other place tried to explain that the reason why the tax is going up is not because he wants to balance his budget so badly and is desperate for revenue, but because he cares for the working man and wants the price of beer to go down.

Now there’s a new law of economics. You do something which is going to cost more for the beer to be manufactured, but you say that this will drive the price down. We must all be fools, according to this Prime Minister, a real Emperor Jones indeed.

If the new tax continues, Kalik will be taxed at the rate of $13.15 per case, and Bacardi rum and locally produced vodka, which has 40 per cent alcohol vs. six per cent in Kalik, will pay $8.40 per case.

This is what I mean by anti-Bahamian. Who owns Bacardi? They are wonderful people. Who owns the Brewery? Bahamians have the majority in one, non-Bahamians in the other. Who is getting the better deal. Bacardi is obviously getting the better deal, and God bless them, but you cannot carry out the politics of vendetta, the Prime Minister cannot hate Bradley Roberts and the PLP that much that he will destroy the brewery, and rid the country of 500 direct and indirect jobs.

And the brewery are not the only ones who are crying. Caribbean Bottling Company needs help. The Government’s decision to tax empty bottle and cans, has hit the bottlers of Coke and Pepsi hard. The Caribbean Bottling Company is groaning under debt which it had to purchase to rid itself of the influence of its former owners on its affairs.

Some persons have reported a shortage of Coke occasionally in the market, now the Government will add according to one estimate one million and a half dollars to the cost of Caribbean Bottling. This may sink locally produced Coke. But again Bahamians own the company so we are not surprised, and the principals are also associated with the LP so again we are not surprised.

When the Brewery came to The Bahamas the PLP knew that it had to make a policy decision. If it wanted a manufacturing sector here there was a price one had to pay. That price was to make imported beer more expensive. Heineken told the PLP that they could produce the 300,000 cases of Heineken then consumed in The Bahamas ( 1984 ) on three days production in Amsterdam, pay the duty and ship it to The Bahamas and it would still be cheaper than producing it in The Bahamas.

Heineken wanted to be here for strategic reasons. They wanted to prevent any other big company from setting up here. The Government wanted the prestige of the Heineken investment and to help build up a manufacturing base, in its diversification efforts. The result was tariff protection by raising the price of the customs on imported beer, and maintaining a deferential of four dollars between the excise tax the locally produced beer would pay and the customs duty of four dollars.

They were also given a fifteen year exclusive license which expires this year, and which the brewery had no plans to renew. Now that is all threatened by the Government which designed a tax policy without consultation. You don’t tax an industry without getting some information from the industry about how the proposed tax will affect that industry.

The Prime Minister raised a red herring in the other place by suggesting that there was something sinister in the price of Kalik being available at a lower price in Publix in Miami. The Prime Minister neglected to say that there is no export tax on beer out of the Bahamas. So where the brewery has to pay a tax to sell the beer in The Bahamas, if its sends it to the States there is no tax that the brewery has to pay and so that tax is not added to the cost.

Further, it is being said by the defenders of the tax that the fact that Burns House is the exclusive distributor is wrong, that the hotels ought to be able to buy direct from the brewery. I remind Senators that the exclusive distributor for Ford cars in The Bahamas is Friendly Motors, for Cadillac its Nassau Motors, for Bacardi its Butler and Sands. This is normal in the trade. So there is nothing usual or sinister about that. In fact, if you try to buy a Cadillac from a distributor in Florida these days, they will probably tell you that if its for export they cannot sell it to you, you have to go to the authorized dealer in The Bahamas Nassau Motors. So Burns House having an exclusive deal is not immoral or unethical, and is in conformity with the usual business practices.

It is being said that this what the Prime Minister really wants. to get at, to break the Burns House distributorship. Well why does he not want to break the Butler and Sands deal with Bacardi. We can only guess that it’s the politics of vendetta.

 
HUTCHISON WHAMPOA FREEPORT

Mister President, I draw to your attention the Hutchison Whampoa deal in Freeport. Hutchison pays the Government of Panama 22.2 million dollars a year for ports( 2) concessions, pays ten per cent of gross revenues and ten per cent of the shares in the company are owned by the Government of Panama. The concession is for 25 years.

In The Bahamas the deal was nothing up front in The Bahamas and the Government gets 25 cents per container when it enters and when it goes out. In Bay Street the docks collect 240 dollars for each container passing through. That means Hutchison is making a killing in fees in Freeport. The deal is so good they are doubling the size in Freeport. Yet a Government that is looking for revenue plans to get it all from a small brewery owned by Bahamians instead of looking to people like Hutchison to find the revenue. The question is why these sweet deals for foreigners?

The question arises in the case of BaTelCo, where the Government is going to spend according to the Deputy Prime Minister 100 million dollars in order to sell BaTelCo. The Government must answer the question what exactly compels them to sell BaTelCo to a foreign partner? It does not make sense. The deal with Cable Bahamas smells to high heaven.

And so to get back to Senator Miller’s remarks, yes a lot is said during the cut and thrust of Opposition and I believe that you were making an appeal to act in good faith. But the cycle must be broken somewhere. What your party seems to be in danger of doing is leaving a legacy of vendetta, a legacy of bitterness in the mouths of so many people, whether you intend it or not. And we are amazed since we know so many of you on a personal basis, that the individuals in the party can not see the suffering around you. Dr. Bernard Nottage says it reminds him of the time just before the PLP lost office, they just cold not see that their time was up, from where they sat everything rosy. I suppose it is possible not to see.

No one wants for example to take this country through another Commission of Inquiry looking into the affairs of the last Prime Minister. And yet given what I have laid out here, and the inexplicable nature of it, the PLP whenever it wins power will have so much pressure to investigate Mr. Ingraham’s personal affairs by way of a Commission of Inquiry because of the mean way that the former Prime Minister Pindling treated, and also because so much seems inexplicable and of course once you have a Commission, the cycle of vendetta then begins again.

 
THE STORY OF OSWALD BROWN

It is something that the PLP tried to repent to Oswald Brown at the Nassau Guardian, who has his reporters under so much political pressure at the Guardian, trying to prevent them from joining the Union that yesterday one came to me and said she is quitting, that its like a great weight off her shoulders.

And I say that again not because of any personal animosity against Mr. Brown who I think is either stupid or misguided, but because a newspaper is an important instrument of public policy. Right now this Parliament has given the Nassau Guardian and newspapers duty free concessions for newsprint and put up tariffs on material imported printed abroad. The Guardian also prints the gazette.

Now that means that the constitutional protection which each of us has with our right to free expression applies to the Nassau Guardian. The Nassau Guardian nor its editor cannot without violating the constitution decide in advance who it is going to cover and not cover and The Bahamas Government by extension can not condone it, by continuing in contractual relations with them.

I say this because during the debate in that other place, the Prime Minister attacked the Leader of the Opposition by saying that he could not get on the front page of the newspaper. But we in the PLP are not surprised at this as far as the Guardian is concerned. The Leader of the Opposition was told by a source close to the Prime Minister that the Prime Minister in a meeting with the principals of the Guardian suggested that it would be a good idea to hire Oswald Brown at the Nassau Guardian to keep the PLP off the front page of the paper.

The Leader of the Opposition met with Mr. Brown and the publisher along with myself and Bradley Roberts, the question was put to both of them. They denied it, but the hostility has increased, and we have the impression that there is a deliberate effort by Mr. Brown to denigrate the PLP in this continuation of the politics of vendetta.

No doubt, the FNM may find it funny that this can happen. It may sound incredulous. But appeals to the owners of the paper, to the new General Manager, all have fallen on deaf ears, and the situation has become worse.

In my case, reporters have been calling for months insisting that there is a general ban on the use of my name in the Nassau Guardian by the directions of Mr. Brown. I did not believe them. Until, one day about three weeks ago, I issued a statement as Opposition spokesman on Labour. The statement never appeared in the newspaper, nor has any statement expect at a time when Mr. Brown is not in the country in its front section.

The reporter asked me if it would be possible to change my name as the spokesman to some other name or use PLP instead of my name because she had been instructed that my name is not to appear in the newspaper.

That too I laughed off. But last week, I was told that it has gone further. The reporters have all refused to their professional credit carry out the instruction of Mr. Brown. He became incensed and called them in. He told them that he had instructed them not to carry any item in the newspaper with my name in it. They protested and asked why. He became further incensed, and told them that the only time my name is to appear in the newspaper is if I commit suicide.

Well, one never renders evil for evil. But I am satisfied that this information is absolutely correct. It has been independently confirmed. I believe that is the intention of a man who wishes me physical harm, and I take it as such. Those comment border on the pathological and are the sign of someone who is insane and obviously needs to see someone and should not be running a daily newspaper of a country. Accordingly, I shall be taking the necessary legal steps to protect my rights in this country against the politics of hatred.

That my friend Honourable Senator Roston Miller is what is wrought by the politics of vendetta. We must all be careful that it does not get out of hand.

Thank you very much Mister President.