The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

During the course of the proceedings in the House of Assembly on Wednesday the 21st October, the Hon Loretta Butler-Turner, the Member for Long Island, sought to address the House with regard to the situation in Long Island following the destruction caused by Hurricane Joaquin, but the Honourable Speaker refused to grant her permission to do so.

Apart from any other consideration, it would seem that at a time of national crisis, when the Government seeks to speak of one Bahamas and the need to support each other whatever our political colours, intervention by the Member for Long Island would have been welcomed. Instead, the Government sought to stymie any further discussion of the matter and expects the public to be satisfied with its whitewash version of its and various agencies’ handling of the build up to the hurricane and its aftermath.

There is no doubt that if the Government was interested in hearing the comments of the Member for Long Island, they would have welcomed her interjection.

There is little doubt that the Speaker could have entertained the comments of Mrs Butler-Turner, but it seems apparent to the general public, and indeed to many members of the House, that the very response of the Speaker to Mrs Butler-Turner suggested that he was being influenced in his deliberations presumably by members of the Government to prevent her from speaking.

In response to Mrs Butler-Turner’s suggestion that it was undemocratic to prevent her from speaking, the Speaker said, “You’re correct”.

There may be several interpretations of what the Speaker intended to mean by his words, “You’re correct” but to many it suggested that the Speaker agreed with the Member and was of the view that it was indeed undemocratic to prevent her from speaking. If this is a correct interpretation, then it begs the question whether the Speaker was pressured into adopting this position or whether the Speaker adopted this position on his own. In either instance, it would be a sad day in the history of Bahamian Parliamentary proceedings.

At a time when the country, and in particular the people of Long Island and the entire Southern Bahamas is going through a crisis of such proportions, this is no time to attempt to hide behind Parliamentary procedure and suggest that no member of Parliament other than Ministers, none of whose constituencies were affected, were entitled to speak to the nation while a member, whose constituency was severely impacted, cannot speak because this was the slot in the Parliamentary proceedings for Ministers only to make contributions.

It is noted that the Member for MICAL was not present during the sitting and in the realisation that his constituency was, like that of the Member for Long Island, severely impacted, one wonders whether his absence was intentional, bearing in mind that if he was present, he would have, no doubt, felt compelled to speak and if he had, this would be further evidence of the undemocratic nature of the proceeding if, again, the Member for Long Island would have been unable to speak.

Something is clearly wrong with this picture.

RICHARD LIGHTBOURN, MP

Montagu,

October 22, 2015.