ON THE
CONSTIUTIONAL AMENDMENTS
THE SENATE
23 JANUARY
2002
Mister
President, I am pleased to be the lead speaker for the Opposition in this
place on these proposed amendments to the constitution.The
official position of the party will be put by the Leader of the Opposition
in this place.But it is my role
to explain some of the nuances of what the Government proposes to do, and
what I believe is being thought out in the population about what the Government
proposes.
As
you know, I have been personally involved in advocacy for constitutional
change for almost two decades.But
I find myself resenting the circumstances under which we have been brought
here, and the method by which we are being asked to deal with this very
serious matter.The fact is I had
no say in the constitution that I now have.Another
generation of Bahamian politicians and British politicians decided that
for me.It is now time, after nearly
a generation of working with the present constitution to review and amend
if necessary.And I say if necessary.I
believe that it is necessary.But
the changes that are proposed in my view are not fundamental changes.There
is nothing that this Government proposes to do by way of constitutional
amendment that cannot be accomplished by ordinary legislation.
If
I am correct in that view, and this I my personal view, one has to ask
oneself the question, why is this being done?The
answer is: politics and more politics.What
you have is a desperate Government, whose leader is on the ropes, who believes
that his fortunes are waning and in order to save his hide, he is trying
to trick the country by the use of these amendments to the constitution.
The
biggest trick is to try to fool the people of the country that he is really
interested in equality of the sexes.The
Prime Minister does not believe in equality of the sexes any more than
in the man in the moon.What he sees
is the political value in making people think that he believes in equality
of the sexes.And so he will try
to use women and women’s issues to defeat his political enemies.The
constitution of The Bahamas in Article 13 already gives Parliament the
power.
Mr.
President that means that anyone who does not presently come under the
provisions of this constitution can be provided by Parliament with the
right to acquire citizenship by an ordinary act of Parliament.Article
13 of the Constitution says as follows: “Parliament may by law make
provision for the acquisition of citizenship of The Bahamas by persons
who do not become citizens of The Bahamas by virtue of the provisions of
this Chapter”.So if the Prime
Minister and his Government wanted to help eliminate the problem of the
perceived inequality of women and their access to citizenship and their
children, when the FNM came to power they could have passed a simple act
of Parliament to provide for citizenship for these persons affected.Amendment
number ten and amendment number one can both be done by simple acts of
Parliament.
If
the Government really wanted to engage in fundamental change, it would
take the bull by the horns and explain to the people of the country why
it is necessary for the citizenship laws of the country to be changed to
two simple formulations: anyone born in The Bahamas is a citizen of The
Bahamas and anyone whose parents are Bahamian whether born in or out of
wedlock is Bahamian.That would
put an end to all of these tortuous formulations about who and who is not
a citizen of The Bahamas.I spoke
last week of a potent national security problem of thousands of almost
stateless and undocumented persons in this country who have a claim to
Bahamian citizenship but can’t get it, and sit here seething with resentment
and frustration.And we can’t kick
them out of the country.But as long
as they are not fully embraced by the society, we do not get the opportunity
to use fully their talents.And I
said last week that to do what I suggest is very unpopular.And
so all the more that this is a position that must be arrived at by consensus,
not rammed down people’s throats.It
must be patiently explained and both those who are for and against it must
have the opportunity to discuss it and we ought to have the fullest regard
for what the implications of such a change will be.
That
cannot be done before a general election is due.The
House must stand dissolved by 14 April.And
the unseemly haste with which this matter is being addressed by the Government
is a disgraceful display of brazen power and an unethical abuse of power.
I
think Arthur Hanna, the former Deputy Prime Minister, perhaps stated the
position of many when he said, yesterday on the radio, that he did not
read the content of these bills, he did not intend to and he did not need
to.He told the country, I don’t
do nonsense.And I say amen to that.
Let
there be no mistake that this new PLP supports the right of equal access
by women to all that this country offers.There
can be no discrimination against anyone because of their gender.The
point one has to ask is whether this expensive exercise is necessary in
order to do so.The point is that
most of the mischief about which the FNM complained when they came to office
has been cured by administrative action.And
the Government has produced no evidence that this is still a problem in
The Bahamas.
That
is why this can be nothing more than an election trick.One
remembers the 1997 General Election when the Prime Minister and his Government
ran the largest deficit in the history of this country, a deficit of 137
million dollars, in order to win the 1997 General Election.At
least on that occasion, they did not directly use the Treasury to pay for
their campaign trips because they had the business community solidly against
the PLP and solidly in their favour.So
together with their friends in the expatriate business community, the FNM
was able to raise five million dollars in order to run the last election
and use the public treasury to bump public works in an unseemly manner.But
this time, they must be having a problem with their benefactors and now
they want to reach right into the treasury in order to conduct and pay
for their political campaign.
What
better way to do it than to have a referendum so close to a General Election.The
distinction is then blurred.The
Government’s funds can be used to fly Ministers up and down the country
and their supporters.They will
be campaigning for the referendum but what they will be really doing is
using public monies to tell you to vote FNM.This
is unfair, unprincipled and cynical.This
is a travesty, a freak show in which we are all being asked to participate.
The
Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Perry Christie has put the party’s position
on a firm footing.He is concerned
about the process.The background
to his concern is as follows.In
his discussions with the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister indicated that
there would be no advances of constitutional amendments unless there was
agreement between the parliamentary parties.In
other words, the Prime Minister indicated to the Leader of the Opposition
that there would be no referendum if the parties disagreed on what was
to be amended.That is clearly the
case, Dr. Bernard Nottage has serious reservations about the proposed Boundaries
Commission, and I know that we have expressed concerns to the Prime Minister
about whether there is a need for a Director of Public Prosecutions.The
amendment seems useless, since it largely leaves the Attorney General's
powers intact.
But
beyond that, it is my personal opinion that there is no need to change
the powers of the Attorney General.It
is my view that as attractive as this business is about giving the power
of prosecutions to a public servant with tenure, we must think carefully.We
have only to think about the independent prosecutor that went after the
former American President William Clinton with a vengeance, wreaking havoc
in his path without any restraint, and who could not be removed for most
purposes.There was no accountability.At
least the Attorney General as it now stands has to face an election every
five years, and also removal if he is appointed in the Senate.He
is also accountable to Parliament.To
whom will the Director of Public Prosecutions be accountable?A
Director Of Public Prosecutions cannot be removed except for cause.
And
this is a peculiar position for me to take; having regard to my present
circumstances, where, in what I believe is a purely political and spiteful
act, the present Attorney General has decided to appeal the matter of the
dismissal of the conviction of my brother Matthew Mitchell.It
is a pure act of political spite, but I think that making the responsibility
that of the Director of Public Prosecutions would not make any difference
in the matter.
And
also because Mr. President you will know that during the past year, I made
the point that I was concerned about whether or not the Attorney General
that we have is competent for the job.Here
was a man who did not know that you do not have to amend the constitution
in order to change the Privy Council as the final Court of Appeal for The
Bahamas.And then would not admit
that he did not know.
Then
I watched him on television from Long Island yesterday at Ellen’s Inn and
he was saying how he was surprised when Lord Steyn told him that the fundamental
rights provisions in our constitution Articles 15 to 27 were not invented
by the framers of the Bahamas constitution but were transposed from the
European Convention on Human Rights.I
thought to myself where is this fellow living?All
one has to do it to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the
European Convention on Human Rights both of which precede this constitution
and you will see that what appears in both of those documents is almost
word for word in the Bahamian constitution.
And
as I have always said, these fundamental rights provisions are not exhaustive
of all the rights that we believe that human beings have.Some
believe that the right to housing and the right to employment and the right
to education ought to be included in these fundamental provisions.I
would like to see the right to vote entrenched in the constitution for
all persons above the age of 18.Parliament
can abolish the right to vote as it now stands.But
when are we going to discuss what we want to have in the constitution,
and not have some arbitrary provisions simply picked upon by a power mad
politician who sees his time running out and just wants to have it his
way?
There
is a history to all of this.In 1987,
you will remember that the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition,
I and a number of other persons had left the PLP, following the report
of the Commission of Inquiry into Drug Smuggling in The Bahamas.I
thought then that the Prime Minister and Mr. Christie had both been unfairly
treated by the PLP and I supported them following their expulsion.In
Mr. Ingraham's case, I engaged a number of my colleagues in Freeport, Grand
Bahama to form an ad hoc group call the Public Interest Workshop.In
1988, we held the Sir Milo Butler Lectures on the Constitution over the
span of a week.The speakers at that
time were myself, Fred Smith, Harvey Tynes Q.C., Maurice Glinton, Attorney-at-Law;
Dr Rodney Smith, an educator and psychologist. The final night was the
Honourable AD. Hanna. The venue was the Foster Pestaina Hall at Christ
the King.Edward St. George of the
Grand Bahama Port Authority sought to intervene with the church to get
the lectures stopped.The now Dr.
Gilbert Morris was a young student and he was one of the organizers of
the lectures.It was perhaps his
initial foray into public life.It
was shortly after I met him.
We
sold 1200 copies of the Bahamas Constitution that week at the price of
three dollars per copy.Today the
document costs fifteen dollars. And so it is not available to all Bahamians.I
have a copy of the German Government's Basic Law here in my hand and it
is available from the German Parliament free of charge, so that every citizen
of the Federal Republic of Germany can get a copy of the document.
Following
that successful series of lectures, we moved to Abaco, to Cat Island, to
Exuma, and to Bimini.Hubert Ingraham
became the final speaker on most nights.And
we did that because we believed that he believed in a process.But
sadly he has let us all down.The
idea was to help people understand the document they were being governed
by and the rules of law including the conventions of the constitution and
why a Prime Minister ought to step down in certain circumstances, even
though it was not in the written law.Sadly,
he has missed that lesson as well.
In
1997 when the Government announced that it was going to advance constitutional
reform, several civic minded individuals amongst them Alfred Sears, attorney
at law, Raynard Rigby, attorney at Law, if I am not mistaken Senator Darron
Cash and Felix Bethel of the College of The Bahamas all convened a series
of workshops and seminars throughout New Providence on the constitution
and how it might be changed.
The
Government studiously ignored the seminars and the findings that emanated
from them.Today as they present
these changes, they have not said how they came to these particular amendments,
and as I say there is nothing involving fundamental change in these proposals.All
you would call this is tinkering.
What
The Prime Minister and his colleagues propose is treacherous and unnecessary.Mr.
Ingraham has turned his back on all the work done by younger Bahamians
than he, persons who have studied these problems, studiously ignored them
and now seeks to impose his petty choices on the next generation.He
has got to be kidding.
If
we are to have meaningful constitutional change, then there must be a properly
appointed Commission.In my view
that Commission ought to be a Committee of the whole of both Houses of
Parliament.Both Houses of Parliament
would then appoint a blue ribbon panel of persons without regard to party
political affiliation.They would
have the responsibility of canvassing the country and making recommendations
to the all party Committee.A report
would be adopted by that Committee and from that the Government would deduce
a green paper.
The
green paper would be circulated throughout the country.Once
there is the necessary feedback from the public, the Government would then
publish a white paper with its final proposal and then the draughtsmen
would go to work.Following upon
the passage of any of the Bills in Parliament, then there must be a full
and a proper campaign of explanation to the public and - this is the important
thing - with public monies provided for both the positive view and all
the opposition views to be heard across the country.
That
is what the Leader of the Opposition said when he spoke to the bills last
week, and he set up the basis upon which the PLP would say to its supporters
do not participate in this process or just vote no.
This
process is not fair.It clearly is
not fair.And as for me, when I get
into the ballot box, I will be voting no.
And
I am certain that the position is the correct one to take at this time,
even as we support some of the ideas contained in the bills.But
last week, we just witnessed a shocking example of the ineptness of this
Government when their own side was not aware that in the House of Assembly
the Minister of Foreign Affairs Janet Bostwick wanted the Inheritance Bill
amended so that the property of a married couple cannot be claimed by the
children born out of wedlock of the man in the marriage.But
they made that mistake last week, and the Bahamian people will have to
live with their mistake, unless the PLP when it comes to office repeals
or amends it.And so having made
mistake after mistake in their drafting of bills, what makes us think that
this exercise will be any different?
I
will discuss each of these bills in turn.I
have already said what my views are on the question of citizenship.This
is a matter that can be cured by the statute law. There is no need to put
this country through an expensive exercise in a referendum when Parliament
can simply pass a law to deal with it.Furthermore,
if this Government were not so lazy and inefficient, all the applications
that it has now before it should have been dealt with.But
the Government comes here with no statistics to tell us how many people
are going to be affected by their policies.
And
then within amendment Bill number one, there is the call for the inclusion
of gender in Article 26 so that discriminatory will include the word gender.But
even that is unnecessary since Article 15 of the Constitution says that
everyone is entitled regardless of amongst other things sex to the protections
of the fundamental rights provisions of the constitution.So
what is the necessity for that?One
wonders why the Government wants to continue to allow discrimination in
gaming against Bahamians, so that Bahamians are not allowed to gamble legally
in our casinos.The constitution
was for that discrimination and that should be eliminated.It
is a relic of the past.
Amendment
Number two seeks to establish a Parliamentary Commissioner’s office to
run elections.And Amendment number
seven seeks to entrench the Parliamentary Commissioner.Again,
I believe that these are matters that can be done by statute, and further
the Government is not in a position to say whether or not it has been able
to meet the objections of Dr. Bernard Nottage with regard to the Independent
Boundaries Commission and how the appointment of the Parliamentary Commissioner
ought to be done.
Amendment
number three seeks to change the functions of the Attorney General.I
have already spoken to that.Amendment
number four seeks to create the constitutionally protected office of Director
of Public Prosecutions.I have already
spoken to that.
Amendment
five of the Constitution seeks to create a Teachers Service Commission
and Amendment six seeks to entrench that Commission.This
is a Commission that the Leader of the Opposition has called for and to
that extent I agree with it.But
am always cautious about supporting new Commissions in this country when
we don’t have people to manage the existing Commissions and the existing
Commissions do not increase efficiency, nor do they work on a timely basis,
nor do we have the resources to man and maintain the existing Commissions.
So
I ask myself how is this new Commission going to solve that problem and
what are the problems anyway.I note,
however that the Bahama Union of Teachers supports the Commission.
Amendment
number eight seeks to create a new Boundaries Commission.This
is a Commission that will have no politicians, but it is one that the Leader
of the Coalition for Democratic reform has a difficulty supporting.
Amendment
number nine seeks to extend the retirement age of Judges of the Supreme
Court and the Court of Appeal. Most people generally agree that it was
a mistake to include the retirement ages of Judges in the Constitution.And
I do not personally see why that mistake is being repeated.If
there is going to be such an amendment that amendment should be to allow
for Parliament to prescribe the age of Judges by a simple act so that if
we want to increase the retirement age of Judges again, we don't have to
come back to Parliament to do so.
But
I have a more fundamental objection.The
objection is this.This amendment
if it passes should not affect any Judge that is now sitting.Otherwise
the Government will be guilty of the same accusation that we made against
the former President of the Court of Appeal and Chief Justice Joaquim Gonsalves
Sabola who shamefully and improperly accepted citizenship from the Government
of The Bahamas while sitting as a Judge of the Court.It
was nothing short of a naked gift to a sitting Judge, a gift to a Judge
who was adjudicating two cases in which the Government was involved.And
in both cases, he ruled in favour of the Government.
In
the present situation is it not possible for the argument to be made that
in allowing the retirement age of Judges to be extended for sitting Judges
that it is the Government again giving a benefit to sitting Judges all
of whom now have cases of one kind or another in which the Crown is involved.
Further,
this is an appropriate time to point out that the method of appointing
Judges in the constitution is not appropriate.And
that there need to be fundamental changes made in the way the process is
done.It is too secretive and too
much influenced by the executive.The
Attorney General was trying the other day the best he could to convince
people in this country that the Courts are not subverted by the Government.He
convinced no one.
The
Chief Justice made a statement that the political directorate has never
interfered with the Courts of the country.And
yet we have on the record the shameful act of naked interference by this
Government when in 1993, the Minister for Justice Janet Bostwick stopped
a Judge from coming into The Bahamas and from doing his job.That
Judge resigned and in his letter of resignation, he accused the Government
of guess what: interfering with this job as a Judge.
But
what we thought was interesting was that the Chief Justice, while saying
that the politicians never interfered with the Judiciary, gave a litany
of complaints about the physical state of the Courts that showed that in
that respect the Government was subverting the Courts.The
facilities for Magistrates are appalling.They
are shameful.What Magistrates need
to do is go on strike as they did in Trinidad to bring this travesty to
a halt.
The
public is not well served by it.And
some Magistrates complain that some Magistrates are more equal than others.For
example the Magistrate in Abaco has a house and a car.No
other Magistrate has that privilege.
And
the public fares not better.There
are constant postponements.There
is a backlog of cases still.There
is lack of courtesy by Judges for persons who appear before them.The
Court of Appeal is the most egregious offender in this regard.I
wonder what is going on.It’s as
if normally civil people are transformed by power into persons with a lack
of civility.And it is clear that
both of us have jobs to do.There
is no reason to do the jobs with incivility.
In
the Supreme Court and in the Court of Appeal we must be concerned about
the quality of the Judges and the decisions that they make. We have no
idea of the antecedents of Judges; what their decisions are.In
fact, judges have come to this jurisdiction without any previous experience
at all.And in applying the law they
are because of their lack of experience overly technical in their approach
to the law, and the result is that formality takes precedent over substance
and justice is denied to scores of people in this country.
My
personal view is that this ought to be rectified by giving the Senate a
say in the appointment of Judges in the way that it is done in the United
States.So that we will get to question
these people before the public and find out their views with regard to
justice and specific legal issues.What
we need to find out is whether these people actually appreciate the real
life problems of people.
It
may be that there needs to be special judicial training to teach restraint
of temperament, how to have a fair hearing in a court room and not to interfere
with counsel when they are trying to present their client’s case.
I
also believe that there needs to be an Office of Court Administration.This
office would be responsible for the administration of the Courts.The
Chief Justice would get an annual budget that cannot be reduced by Parliament
or the Cabinet.But the important
thing is that the Court would run its own funds.Again,
I was surprised to hear the Chief Justice say that he was opposed to this
but I cannot imagine why.Nevertheless,
I think that it is a good thing and it would prevent the situation that
happened a few years ago where the Cabinet had to make a decision about
whether Judges, including the then Chief Justice would travel on an overseas
trip.
As
I said Mr. President, the public suffers because of the inadequacy of our
judicial system.Nowhere is this
more apparent than in the domestic courts, we have women, mainly women
pile up week after week seeking to enforce maintenance orders against their
recalcitrant husbands or boyfriends who do not want to support their children.If
the Prime Minister had any real feeling for women and not just for cynical
political sloganeering he might do something to improve the domestic courts.But
those courts will be left when he leaves, the same way that he met them
and probably worse.And so his tenure
in that regard has been a complete waste.
And
in the Family Islands, I just experienced a situation here as attorneys
were to report to Long Island to represent clients, and the circuit magistrate
could not appear because of death in her family.Except,
no one contacted the lawyers to tell them.What
happens then is that lawyers travel to Long Island for the day, and their
fee has to be paid.In one case
a charter had to be paid for, only for the lawyer not to have anything
to do but adjourn the case.Surely
that can be improved.
And
to me the Courts are most important.Because
it is perhaps the only place that we have seen the brute force of the state
and the anarchy of an impatient people.The
rule of law is important because it is the way for the poor and the dispossessed
to use moral force to ensure that justice is done.And
wherever justice is done, then there is a triumph for our country.
That
is what this Government did not seem to understand when the Prime Minister
went trekking around the United States and Europe like a grovelling mendicant
with his cap in his hand last year and sold this country down the drain
by passing a series of financial services bills.Those
bills have cost scores of jobs in the country, and have threatened to ruin
our way of life by imposing an over regulated banking industry and by invading
the privacy of the individual.Privacy
is protected by the constitution.It
is one of the fundamentally protected freedoms, and yet last year, this
Parliament led by the Prime Minister gave in to outside pressure that was
more apparent than real and subverted the right to privacy in this country.
The
Courts must have judges who believe in their hearts and souls in the rights
of the individual and that those rights have primacy over the rights of
the state.Speaking to University
Professors at the University of the West Indies many of them have come
to the conclusion that the Judges in our countries do not see the Judiciary
as a separate branch of the Government but rather as an arm of the Executive,
that they are there to keep the population in line for and on behalf of
the Government for the time being in power.I
do not believe this and will always speak to it until the idea is eradicated
from the consciousness of the country and from the Judiciary.
Last
week, I was speaking to my newsagent who runs a small newspaper stall in
the Columbus Arcade.And he was lamenting
that the Government unilaterally changed the course of the road, Bay Street,
and as a result of that decision, the fall off in his business has been
dramatic.No doubt other businesspersons
may feel the same way or have experienced the same thing.But
when the decision was made to change the road, did anyone ask the businesspeople?Did
anyone care what they had to say?
We
have only to read about the modus operandi of this Government when we see
how they treated the Employers Confederation by introducing labour Bills
that will increase their costs in a bad economy by over thirty percent.No
consultation, just do it because election time is near.And
the Labour Unions are not satisfied either.The
PLP’s leader has said that the hallmark of his term of office will be consultation
and a collegial style of Government.One
biggety man can’t know everything.
Bill
ten; I have already spoken to about citizenship.That
Bill is entirely unnecessary, since it can be done with the statute law,
and so that too should not be supported.
I
have spoken to the fact that in my personal view if the constitution is
to change, I am not interested in tinkering.There
needs to be real change.I am personally
in favour of a republic with a Presidency with powers similar to that of
France.I am personally in favour
of an elected Senate on the basis of proportional representation with a
five percent threshold.That would
mean that any party that could get over five percent of the vote nationwide
would get to have members sit in this place.I
would increase the number of Senators from 16 to 20.
I
believe that there ought to be a right of recall in the constitution for
Members of Parliament who do not perform their jobs.It
should allow the constituents in certain circumstances to petition for
the recall of their Member of Parliament.I
suspect that the people of Fox Hill would employ it today against the present
member who paid no attention to the constituency for five years but is
now in a mad scramble to put up lights, clear down bush and pave roads
trying to impress the people of Fox Hill that she has their back.But
a right of recall would have solved the problem of the Fox Hill constituents
a long time ago.
None
of the proposals that I would like to put forward will have an opportunity
to be discussed in this exercise.This
is just one man’s agenda, trying to get The Bahamas to dance to his tune.And
I don’t know why I should have to learn this dance.
The
FNM’s present Leadership seeks often to lay the blame for what presently
exists in this constitution at the feet of the Progressive Liberal Party.I
suppose in one sense that might be true since the FNM opposed sovereignty
for The Bahamas.But that did not
stop them from embracing all of the powers of an Independent Bahamas once
it had been obtained and they were in power.
But
in the truest sense, the PLP cannot take the blame alone for this, if blame
is indeed the word.The fact is that
the Constitutional talks in the United Kingdom in 1972 produced a unanimous
report.All the delegates, the FNM,
the PLP and the British signed the report.The
British were of course anxious to get out of having to accept any more
persons as citizens of their country than they had to following our independence
but in the end the FNM and the PLP signed onto what we have today.That
includes the provisions on women.
The
provisions on women while they may seem archaic today, one generation ago
were not out of line with the practices of the day, and in fact in international
law is in many cases still the practice of the day.That
practice was that in matters of domestic law, the wife and children take
their domicile, residence and nationality from the husband and not the
other way around.So there was nothing
unusual about the practice.
Social
and legal norms have changed, and in most cases what has happened is that
countries now recognize in law that a wife can have her own domicile separate
and apart from her husband, her own, residence and her own nationality.And
many countries grant the right to husbands to obtain the right to work
and the right of citizenship in the wife’s country.So
I think that there is no quarrel there.But
the question here is mainly whether you need a referendum to do so.The
answer to that is clearly not.
The
FNM was so agreeable on these citizenship matters.These
were the last matters to be agreed by the 1972 conference.The
conference was coming to an end just before Christmas of 1972 and the FNM
delegates were afraid that they would not get reservations to go home for
Christmas, so they left the PLP delegation to settle the final details
on citizenship but they signed off on the report.The
report was therefore unanimous.So
no FNM can complain about what they did in 1972 and about what exists in
the 1973 constitution.Both sides
agreed with what we have.
But
of all these freedoms that are protected in this constitution apart from
the right to life, I believe those that have to do with freedom of conscience
and freedom of information are extremely important and of course freedom
of speech.And in this connection,
the Parliament is the highest forum for freedom of speech.And
last week Bradley Roberts exercised that freedom.Cry
foul said the Prime Minister.He
is going to deal with Bradley Roberts.I
can’t imagine what the Prime Minister is talking about dealing with Bradley
Roberts.He certainly can’t beat
him in a physical fight so what on earth could he be talking about?
But
it is interesting to hear the man scream: ‘he called me a traitor’, he
says.‘I am patriot he says’.Poor
Prime Minister.This can’t be the
same Prime Minister who used his right of freedom of speech to attack an
expatriate banker.To attack the
Tribune as a front for Bay Street.And
to call various and sundry lawyers and bankers crooks.Who
came up to Fox Hill and called me a murderer, also a capital crime.The
shoe is now on the other foot.Can’t
say that I’m sorry at all.Now you
know how it feels.
And
yet freedom of speech does come with responsibilities and certain restrictions,
though not many.But one of them
applies to public servants and their right to engage in a political polemic
with politicians.The other day,
I was shocked to hear the administrator of one of our hospitals attack
a Member of Parliament in the most personal terms.And
then the Comptroller of Customs held a press conference last week in which
he attacked a junior member of his staff, even in the face of a court ruling
to the contrary of everything that he said.The
Comptroller was trying to revisit a court case that he lost at every stage
right on up to the Privy Council.It
seemed in flagrant violation of one of the conventions of the constitution.
And
just before that he had intervened in a political and policy matter by
suggesting that the customs exemptions ought to be eliminated for Bahamians
travelling to the US.Now either
we are going to agree to keep the conventions in place or we are going
to get rid of them.That convention
was put in place for good reason one assumes by the British.A
civil servant cannot to engage in a polemic with a politician.It
is one he is sure to lose.And what
it does is it isolates the civil servant from criticism as well, so long
as he follows the rule.
Mr.
President, these amendments are dubious at best.These
are merely ideas for consideration.But
the question is given the mischief that we want to cure is this a matter
that we really need to take this country through the expense of a referendum?I
know that many people that I have spoken to are already saying they will
vote no.All Parliamentarians have
to consider carefully this process.
The
Senate is finely balanced today.We
will require 12 of the 16 votes in order to pass six of these bills.That
means when we come to the passing of the bill, the final stage, the count
must be at least 12.This must be
not the majority of those here but the majority of all the members.Senators
therefore as a review body have a special responsibility to think seriously
before they vote in favour of these bills.
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