The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I am concerned that the Government has abdicated its responsibility for the Constitutional Referendum to remove all forms of discrimination against women from our National Constitution.

The people of The Bahamas elected the PLP to govern. We did not elect Sean McWeeney or the Constitutional Reform Commission to make decisions that are rightly the decision of Government.

How does the Minister of National Security believe it acceptable for him to come to Parliament and report to his colleagues and to the Bahamian people that the decision on whether or not the Constitutional Bills will be amended or whether the actual Constitutional Referendum will be postponed depends on what the Constitutional Commission has to say? The Commission submitted its Report to the Government last year. It is now long past the time when the Government should have acted on this long overdue matter.

What is becoming increasingly clear to the women of The Bahamas is that the PLP do not support equality for women. Forty years ago, the PLP voted against equality for men and women under our Constitution during the Independence Conference in London. Twelve years ago in 2002, they wilfully undermined the process to correct their historic 1973 mistaken on this issue by campaigning to defeat the Constitutional Referendum that would have removed all discrimination against women from our Constitution. And now, they tell us that an appointed Constitutional Reform Committee will determine what we will vote on and if or when we will vote.

This should be a very simple exercise. What needs to be established is that all Bahamians, male and female, married or single have the same rights with respect to the transfer of nationality to our children and the award of immigration status to our foreign born spouses.

This matter is being made to appear to be complicated either because of gross incompetence and or the stubborn unwillingness in the PLP Government to make women equal to men in our Constitution. And the Government is holding on to its outmoded discriminatory position against women at a time when the PLP Cabinet includes some who are entitled to dual nationality and others who have foreign born wives who benefit from the current provisions of the constitution and who have children with dual nationality.

This has long been the case for PLP Parliamentarians and Cabinet Ministers, including several of the framers of the Constitution, including sitting senior members of Perry Christie’s Cabinet today and including the chairman of the present Constitutional Reform Commission who before the likes of Ryan Pinder, had to renounce his American citizenship to accept an appointment in the Cabinet of Sir Lynden Pindling.

This has made one thing very clear to me, Perry Christie and his Government do not have the wellbeing of Bahamian women and their families on their agenda.

It is now long past the time for Perry Christie to take a stand on issues important to women. And it is time for the Leader of the Opposition to stop allowing Perry Christie to hoodwink him on this issue. Minnis must now stand up strongly for the FNM time-honoured principles of equality of Bahamian women and men.

MARGARET COOPER

Nassau,

September 4, 2014