In 1980, I became a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with a Master's Degree in Public Administration. It was an experience that profoundly changed my life as it pertained to my views about Government and its role. The School was amongst the first in the United States to apply the methods of business management to that of Government. But what it also taught was that no matter what rules you wrote or what laws you passed or what quantity analysis one prescribed, at the end of the day the business of Government is the business of people.

That seems to me an appropriate place to start in The Bahamas today which is according to various Government Ministers compelled to sell the public corporations to strategic foreign partners. Some core constituencies have yet to be convinced that they are right. The Government in trying to develop the public policy on this problem has not answered the critical question what exactly compels them to sell BaTelCo and BEC to foreign strategic partners. Put another way, why is the wealth of The Bahamas being given away at fire sale prices to foreign strategic partners? What exactly will these foreign strategic partners bring to the table that the persons who presently run BaTelCo cannot bring or do not have.

It is a fundamental tenet of public administration that you must bring your core constituencies along with the programme. If you do not, your policy will fail.

It is clear that the policy is headed toward severe dysfunction if not failure with the disgruntled workers out in the streets, protesting the policy.

Your letter of invitation to me asked me to discuss public administration in its constitutional context. On Sunday last,  I attended the annual thanksgiving service of the Elks of The Bahamas. They marched south on Kemp Road in full regalia. There was a marching band. There were no policemen in sight, and the march proceeded on an orderly basis without interruption to a successful conclusion. That simple act by the Elks, if the Commissioner of Police is to be believed, can be stopped by the authorities.

We should not take it for granted, given the current climate in The Bahamas.  Further, one has only to remember that after the 1942 riot parades of that kind and particularly junkanoo parades were banned as were public gatherings for fear that there would be another outbreak of violence. In those days there was no equivalent of the fundamental rights provisions of the constitution. And while we cannot say today for certain, a general ban of that kind would not stand constitutional muster. I say we cannot say for certain because we have a weak judiciary which is supported by an apathetic public and an intelligentsia that puts a higher premium on their version of order over the right to be free.

Articles 23, 24, 25 of the Constitution deal with the protection of  the right to free speech, freedom of assembly and association and freedom of movement. The public administrators that have to deal with these issues on a day to day basis are the police officers who are asked to regulate the parades which take place on our streets. The Commissioner of Police has a most unusual view of his power to regulate or administer the protection to speak freely, the protection to march freely, the protection to associate freely.

On two occasions during the most recent demonstrations the Commissioner of Police announced that he would not allow marches to take place in certain areas in The Bahamas. Presumably, he believed that there would be some breach of the peace because of the marches. The result was there was an unnecessary test of wills between the Trade Union Congress and its members on the one side and the Royal Bahamas Police Force on the other side.

You will not be surprised if tonight that I tell you that I am on the side of the demonstrators. And in this I am once again siding it appears with the minority. It appears that this society is so consumed by the idea of order that it is willing to throw away all those rights protected under the constitution in order to have order. So my reading from the newspaper columnists and from other comments from the public is that the demonstrators are to be blamed for causing chaos, not the police for trying to interfere with the right to assemble and march and protest. It is remarkable.

One columnist attacked the Unions, and said that they ought to behave reasonably and must have justifiable reasons for marching. That is simply hogwash. You do not have to have a justifiable reason or any reason at all to march. If you want to march, just march. If you want to speak, just speak.

The Commissioner of Police is dead wrong in his view of the law that he has some pre-emptive power to stop people from expressing their views simply because those views may be noisy or controversial. In this regard, the Commissioner is in danger of causing his office to be seen controlled by the politician sitting in the Churchill Building. He must be careful not to draw the Force into what is a political dispute.

And I believe that I am in a position to say this because I am an ardent defender of the independence of that office when Pindling was the Prime Minister and most recently when there were some indications that the present Government was putting pressure on the Commissioner.  I wrote a piece telling the Government: hands off the Commissioner. I do not then expect that individual to act in a manner which is contrary to the larger public interest of Bahamians by the way he administers the laws.

One columnist blamed the demonstrators for the disorder on Bay Street. The facts do not support that conclusion.  The facts are that the disorder was caused because the Commissioner of Police issued a foolish order to block the right of Bahamian citizens to freely march up Bay Street. There was no problem on the first march until the Commissioner ordered his men to put up barricades across Bay Street.

That caused the disorder, not the marchers.

On the Paradise Island Bridge, they accused the marchers of causing disorder. Wrong again. The bridge was not closed by the demonstrators. Those of us who watched from the sidelines watched the police close the bridge. And the bridge remained closed so long as the police decided that it would be closed. By order of the Commissioner, the police chose confrontation with a peaceful assembly by Bahamian citizens who have a right to march across that bridge if they want to do so. No breach of the peace was threatened until there was a confrontation by the police.

Now what is interesting about the situation at the Paradise Island Bridge is that you have heard big announcements about devolution of authority on the Force. But on that day, the officer in charge could not make the decision on the spot to allow the marchers across the bridge. He told the demonstrators that he had his orders. Given his rank that could only have come from one man. As a matter of fact, not even bail could be agreed for the men who were wrongly arrested on the scene by the officers in charge at the scene. That too had to be referred to the Commissioner.

Yet these tactics were defended by more than one newspaper columnist. And I use these newspaper columnists because they are three, well trained young men , only one of whom has come from a privileged background. Yet they have taken the traditional view that workers are trouble-makers once they use the method of protest to cause change in society.

These young men are in some way representative of the views of all too many of the new professional young persons who so quickly forget what side they are supposed to be on. It is clear for example that if the Burma Road riots did not happen in 1942, the social changes in the society that were needed would not have been addressed with urgency. It is clear that the constitutional reforms, indeed the labour legislation and the extension of the franchise to all adults in The Bahamas would not have happened if the General Strike of 1958 did not happen.

In fact The Tribune which opposes so vehemently the work of today's demonstrators ought to check the record of Sir Etienne Dupuch's crusade against racial discrimination. Pressure was brought on the legislature on the night of the vote by masses of demonstrators in and around the House of Assembly.

And so I want to say to you, yet another crop of students, and I hope I do not fail as I have failed before with a previous group to get you to understand, we must acknowledge in our hearts and minds that people have a right to speak without fear of victimization or reprisal; that they have the right to demonstrate and protest; that they have an unfettered right to join trade Unions or any other associations that they wish. The limitations are so few as to be non-existent. I want you as future policy makers to get it into your heads is that you will have power in your hands not to say no but to
find as many ways to say yes as you can.

All the Commissioner of Police has the right to do is to make sure that there is an orderly flow of traffic, and that one group does not run into another group.

No trade unionist or marcher ought to be ashamed of anything which they did during those marches. They were following in an honourable tradition of civil disobedience and civil activism. They are heroes, not villains. And the same people who criticize will also be the beneficiaries of the struggle of those workers. That is how it always works.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH INDEED.