The Tribune

Re:Will a Referendum on Gender Equality End the Bahamas?

EDITOR, The Tribune.

In 2002, the PLP government signed the Economic Partnership Agreement by which more than half a billion Europeans would get rights of entry into The Bahamas. The Bahamas government was given 17 years to bring in legislation to give effect to this treaty and make it enforceable at the local level. In 2008, the FNM government ratified the treaty making it a virtual certainty that it would eventually become part of Bahamian law.

The problem with the treaty is, however, that it creates a Constitutional crisis of sorts for the Bahamas. Article 1 of the Bahamian Constitution requires the Bahamas (now a nation of less than 400,000 people) “shall be a sovereign democratic state”. Of course, if more foreigners are ever given rights of entry to the Bahamas than there are Bahamians with the right to vote in existence, then Bahamian democracy would end and we would return to pre-1967 days.

Further, allowing foreigners to determine when they will outnumber us will also end our sovereignty. By Article 1, the end of either our sovereignty or our democracy marks the end of a Constitutional Bahamas.

Quite properly, to get around this problem the government in negotiating the treaty added a clause by which it reserved the right to regulate the flow of people through The Bahamas.

The problem is the Europeans added a further clause allowing corporations to have a right of entry to The Bahamas and Caricom nations generally. So there is no regulation on the flow of companies in the region. Further, the treaty provides that people associated with companies have a right to be in The Bahamas (and Caricom countries) for as many as three months. Thus, the regulating of people associated with companies (such as shareholders) is governed by the treaty, not our government.  As the treaty allows them three months in The Bahamas, it will be for the corporations to decide which three months their shareholders are in The Bahamas and even how many of them are in The Bahamas at any given time. This may, of course, be done by the Articles of Association of the company through the issuance of shares of certain classes, each class specifying when the holder has a right to be in The Bahamas each year, or in any other country in which the company has a physical presence. In short, the Economic Partnership Agreement has ended the Bahamas as a sovereign, democratic state as foreigners may now outnumber Bahamians in The Bahamas by the use of corporations irrespective of government’s wishes.

Although The Bahamas is arguably ended as a sovereign state, yet its people are still Bahamians. We remain Bahamian because we are defined not only as nationals of a state (called The Bahamas under Article 1 which can be amended at any time without referendum), but we are defined also by Articles 3 through 12 of the Constitution. These latter provisions define who we are as a people today just as they did from the birth of our nation in 1973 and unlike Article 1, they require a referendum if they are to be amended.   

Why did the founders of our nation leave the nation’s sovereignty and democracy unprotected, allowing Article 1 to be amended without referendum but entrenching the provisions which define the Bahamian? Is it because they were forced to do so? Or did they think that our identity as “Bahamian” is more important than both our sovereignty and our democracy? In the wake of the monumental changes sweeping the globe right now, shouldn’t any discussion on a referendum begin with our founders giving us some insight into their way of thinking when the Constitution was crafted?

Thanks to our nation’s fathers, no foreigner can by blacklisting or other threats get the Bahamian government to redefine the Bahamian. Only we the people can do that. But is such a change in our best interest at this time? What happens when a change in definition of “Bahamian” is made at a time when the country is no longer sovereign or is constitutionally non-existent? Are the resulting people truly Bahamian? 

The state called the Commonwealth of The Bahamas offends Article 1 of its own Constitution. It does not exist Constitutionally. Does a new Constitution, created by amendment when the nation is not sovereign have power to re-define the people?  That is highly doubtful. More likely, the Bahamian would be ended because he could no longer define himself either as a national of a state called the Bahamas (which no longer exists) or because the document which originally defined him is at an end due to amendment. Instead, a combination of peoples would have to decide if he truly were Bahamian because his sovereignty is being removed by a number of EU peoples. Thus, a referendum on this issue at this time marks, not the end of The Bahamas, but rather the end of the Bahamian people; at least until those foreigners who now share in our sovereignty join in determining what we should be newly called. What will that be you ask?  It hardly matters. True Bahamians being constitutionally gender specific (like Barbadians and Kiribatians) cannot be assimilated out of existence by superior numbers of constitutionally genderless people overrunning their country the way other nations can be. Remove, however, our gender from the constitution of 1973 as proposed in the referendum and when the Economic Partnership Agreement takes effect, Bahamians will cease to exist; assimilated out of existence by more than 500 million constitutionally genderless foreigners gaining rights to the Bahamas. And when that happens, will it really matter what they call us then?

ALONZO LOPEZ

Nassau,

May 19, 2015.