The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

As the governing party celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in The Bahamas, my thoughts and concerns are: Is the recognition and celebration purely of a universal and national import or, is this another “slick and scheming attempt” by the governing party to create and legitimise a social strata innate and hereditary to a select few and their descendants primarily, in an effort to advance their partisan objectives?  

I have not heard or read any historical fact(s) disseminated by the PLP or the FNM for that matter, as regards the history of women’s suffrage universally and regionally vis-à-vis The Bahamas.

Indeed, when one does hear something about it – i.e. women’s suffrage locally, it appears to represent them as heroines that the governing party proudly promotes.

In fact, one gets the impression that this select group of women were the only ones and all alone in their quest to gain voting rights for women.

Exactly where do we in The Bahamas stack up regarding this issue? How is it that we got it so much later than our Caribbean neighbours some of whom were led by the same colonial masters as we were?

Should this fact be cause for discussion and examination as we seek to build our country going forward or should it be simply an indictment on the governing party for their initial lack of resolve and/or ability to mobilise the former colony’s predominantly black and socio-economically disfranchised as it was back then, to eradicate what then had to be an issue many considered highly oppressive and offensive to all women?

For the record, did you know that in the United Kingdom (our former colonial masters), women were not prohibited from voting until the 1853 Reform Act and the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act? 1872 saw women’s suffrage become a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage and later, the more influential National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).

In 1918, following World War I, “the Representation of the People Act” was passed, enfranchising women over the age of 30 years who met minimum property qualifications. The Representation of the People Act of 1928 actually went further by extending the voting franchise to all women over the age of 21 years. It must be noted that, notwithstanding the forementioned, women in the United Kingdom had the franchise to vote in local government, on school boards, and also health authorities, from the late 19th century.

Are we to assume that we were not getting any mail from our “mother country” and the rest of Europe at the very least to inform us in the Bahama Islands as to the level of political and socio-economic reform taking place back then? Or did the leaders of colour not have the political testicular fortitude to push such an initiative?

Please, Mr Editor, do not get us wrong as it certainly is not our wish to discount the achievement of any woman/women in The Bahamas. Our concern is the lack of objective and factual debate and truth that seems to precede, reside within, and follow certain issues of national importance.

In this country, we seem to always get stuck in partisan gear. In Barbados, the franchise was granted from 1950; Cuba since 1934, Haiti in 1950, Jamaica between 1944/45, and, Trinidad and Tobago in 1946. Like good old Mr Gradgrind used to state to his pupils in Charles Dickens epic classic “Hard Times”, we must only teach the facts and nothing but the facts. So too, we are only concerned with the facts and let them benefit whom they will.

We are all too familiar and can recall quite vividly what happened to “Majority Rule Day”. I remember the Honourable J Henry Bostwick, QC (a gentleman whose legal and intellectual capacity I have enormous respect for), explain in no uncertain terms a few years ago while appearing as a guest on a radio talk show to discuss majority rule and its meaning for The Bahamas, that majority rule is not and should not be politicised as a PLP achievement. We agree with that stance and carry no brief for the kind gentleman nor any other individual or political party for that matter.

We know that the PLP was formed in 1953 (our dearly departed oldest brother was a member since inception and a stalwart councilor). We believe that during its initial years that the PLP may or may not have considered the enfranchisement to vote for women a singular cause to fight for. We know that the fact that they, the PLP won the popular vote when women first voted but still lost the election does not give them the singular right to use the women’s suffrage movement as a foundation from which to construct an additional pillar, in the garden of their legacy.

We ought to be about breaking down barriers of discrimination in whatever shape, form, or fashion they exist (inclusive of those prohibiting Bahamians from gambling at casinos in their own country), for the betterment of all – including the strangers in our land.

We ought not to be about redecorating and reproducing the scourges of a once not so long ago class-oriented society, by using the advantages that we supposedly gained on a national level, as opportunities to advance our partisan and personal agenda, while using subtlety and subterfuge to resurrect the same forms of elitism we once abhorred.

H DON KING

Nassau,

November 23, 2012.