The Tribune

By LARRY SMITH

My Country, Right or Wrong...

I subscribe to the view that true sovereignty begins with independent and critical thought – Prof Norman Girvan (1941-2014)

THE Tribune’s recent editorial on Fred Mitchell’s use of the jingoistic slogan “my country, right or wrong”, to demand loyalty to the political directorate was intriguing.

The phrase goes back to the American navy’s defeat of the Barbary pirates in the 19th century. The hero of that victory was a commander named Stephen Decatur, who in 1816 gave a toast with the words: “Our country…may she always be in the right.”

These words were later restated by US Senator Carl Schurz in 1872, who said: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”

Both original statements give a far different meaning to the one implied by Mitchell, who was employing a slogan used by the American Right to attack critics of the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

The comment by Norman Girvan quoted at the beginning of this article presents a more recent and localised counterpoint to this view. Girvan was a renowned Jamaican economist and politician who died recently at the age of 72.

He was promoting the restructuring of Caribbean economies for a more meaningful sovereignty. But his comment can also be applied to the behaviour of citizens, and their relationship to political authority, within each country.

As Girvan’s mentor, Professor Lloyd Best, famously declared in the 1970s, “You can’t lead your country to Independence wearing a waistcoat”.

Best was referring to the colonial mentality of the regional political class at the time, who (despite the hot West Indian sun) all dressed like Europeans.

But here we are, 41 years after independence, and our political and economic elites still wear their waistcoats and suits in the hot sun. And we still have a shortage of independent and critical thought – to the point where the minister of foreign affairs can denounce anyone who disagrees with his political line as a traitor.

And when you think about it – how many Bahamian public intellectuals can you name? And how many of them engage in actual independent thinking, speaking and writing to critically address national issues?

WTF Bahamian Moments (as in ‘Who’s The Fool?’)

BAMSI and BARTAD

The agriculture and marine science institute under construction in North Andros at a cost of nearly $30m is supposed to be affiliated to the College of the Bahamas in some way, But it has its own board of directors (as yet unidentified); a president - in the person of former agriculture director Godfrey Eneas; and a Jamaican consultant, whose credentials have been questioned.

According to COB chairman Alfred Sears, BAMSI’s objective is “to keep more tourist dollars in the Bahamas and to stimulate Bahamian entrepreneurship”. According to BIS, the goal is to operate a tutorial commercial farm and “demonstrate that the production of farm and fish products is financially and commercially self-sustainable.”

But that is about all we know of this project, which is being politically driven by Eneas and the prime minister. There is no published business plan that we can refer to. And there is nothing visible about BAMSI on the COB website.

In other words, there is a gross lack of transparency surrounding this project. All we have so far are photo opportunities and sound bites.

BAMSI is located roughly where the country’s first agriculture school was located. In 1973, this project (known as the Bahamas Agricultural Research, Training and Development Centre) was heralded as “the capstone of Bahamian agricultural self-sufficiency”, and funded by a $10m grant from the United States.

BARTAD had a herd of 300 Santa Gertrudis cattle, and a flock of 600 breeding sheep. The project included a 500-acre research farm, 16 model farms of up to 80 acres each, credit facilities, marketing support, and training programmes. Among the crops grown were soybeans, corn and sorghum, as well as citrus, avocados and mangoes.

But by the late 1980s – after the Americans left – the project had dwindled to nothing. Livestock was left to starve, and expensive equipment discarded to rust. The machine shop, training centre and other central facilities were abandoned. And government officials, including then agriculture minister Perry Christie, sought to cover up the failure.

Now, the same Perry Christie is driving BARTAD’s successor - BAMSI - with a similar lack of transparency.

Those Pesky BEC Bills

“We have an arrangement with BEC. I don’t think it’s anybody’s business.” said media boss Wendall Jones recently about his $100,000-plus debt to BEC.

And Chairman Leslie Miller (who also owes BEC hundreds of thousands) says his personal businesses must be kept open by public subsidy to protect jobs.

When you think about it, there is no way that a failing business can pay down hundreds of thousands in outstanding electricity bills. Any “deal” to do so is doomed to failure because the bills will keep mounting. It is an irreconcilable situation once it gets to that level.

Miller is not the only one (we know about Jones too), but he was made chairman of BEC - and that should never have happened. It is an obvious conflict of interest.

Let’s assume that Jones is staying current with his electricity bill (although no-one has confirmed that). Let’s also say he is paying down his huge receivable at the rate of $100 per month. It would take him almost a century to clear the debt – always assuming he doesn’t go into the hole any further.

This is not an “arrangement to pay off a debt”. It is payment on the “never-never”, as Punch editor Ivan Johnson said recently. It is, in fact, a political subsidy.

Meanwhile, the chairman of BEC condemns workers for ripping off the company – using practices he and other politicos agreed to over the years (Miller was BEC chairman in the late 1980s) – and rages that copper thieves are living off the rest of us.

According to knowledgeable sources, BEC has more than one group of protected customers. There is a “no cut-off list” that includes serving parliamentarians and other well-connected individuals. And there are “refer to” lists, which identify scores of sensitive accounts (including major hotels) that must be referred to senior managers before any disconnection.

The “refer to” lists are where most of the abuses occur – including reconnection of accounts without payment being made or a satisfactory payment plan being put in place.

In addition to political interference, a good portion of blame for these abuses rests with BEC itself. We understand that employees – who don’t have to put up any initial security deposit – are allowed to maintain delinquent accounts with impunity.

As someone said on Facebook, “the government seems to have an arrangement with truth and the rule of law,” although Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald insists that there is “nothing to hide’.

(Stay tuned for more WTF Bahamian Moments in future columns).

• What do you think? Send comments to larry@tribunemedia.net or visit www.bahamapundit.com.