Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell’s recent chastisement of the Opposition in the House for not taking the “Bahamian view” in the controversy over the Cuban dentists, has annoyed many Bahamians – particularly the young set.
Mr Mitchell has reached a stage in life – particularly now that he is Foreign Minister and has had to make decisions that have not always met with public approval – where he expects a true patriot to defend his country “right or wrong.”
He condemned Opposition members for not taking the “patriotic position of standing up for our country in the Cuban debate, but rather taking the “view, espoused by another country.”
Obviously, by not turning a blind eye to the 11 months it took government to reach a decision in the Cuban dentists’ crisis, the Opposition was unpatriotic for condemning government for almost a year of “dithering.” The Opposition’s position was that government had eventually arrived at the right decision, but had taken far too long to do so.
In this column on Monday we condemned the thought that to be a true patriot one had to blindly follow the dictum, “my country, right or wrong.” This is probably the same slavish idea that inspired the late Sir Lynden Pindling to encourage supporters at a public rally to blindly entrust their future to him. Meanwhile their path should be one of; “Don’t worry, be happy…” Thinking Bahamians know exactly where such folly got us. It is when Bahamians started to think that they started to make independent decisions, thus ending Sir Lynden’s 25-year reign in 1992.
A young man drew our attention to an item on Fred Mitchell’s website last week that condemned a young Bahamian writer who had apparently disappointed whoever writes copy for the website. The writers of the website review the newspapers and listen to the radio “to spot some new voice for reason, some voice of liberalism, some leader for the future out of the next generation of people who will support democratic liberalism.”
The writer continued: “It is almost now an old man’s lament that there are a few good men and women but even those seem to let us down from time to time.” Apparently, columnist Craig Butler was earmarked for the future. But, it would seem that Mr Butler has slipped from grace. He has at last shown that he is an independent thinker, with a mind that will not allow party-tinkering.
The website writer admits that often young Butler writes a good column. However: “He is supposed to be part of the PLP’s New Progressive Institute. Yet more often than not, he engages in what we think are gratuitous comments in Opposition to policies of the PLP, based on inaccuracies. The latest foray was this view that the Government’s position on the Cuban dentists was hogwash. He based this on his view that it did not have to take as long as it did to settle the matter, and the Bahamas simply capitulated to the U.S. lobby.
“We don’t expect such anti-intellectual claptrap from one with Craig Butler’s political antecedents – this is Milo Butler’s grandson after all.”
And so Craig Butler is to be forever chained to a past… a past that is to limit his future. In other words, he has no future unless he accepts the rallying cry: My party, right or wrong!
Mr Butler must remember that his grandfather refused to have his thoughts enchained. It is now his turn to stand up and defend his future.
Mr Butler should ask Mr Mitchell what he had in his mind on December 20, 1989 when Mr Mitchell took his usual protest platform under the fig tree in front of the Supreme Court and with his PDF colleagues burned the Bahamas’ constitution.
They were protesting because the disciplinary committee of the Bar Council was to investigate a charge of “improper conduct” brought against lawyer Mitchell for a statement he made critical of a Supreme Court judge during an August press conference under the same fig tree.
Mr Mitchell said that the Constitution’s ashes were to be sent to Prime Minister Pindling “as a reminder of how our country is being destroyed.”
Mr Mitchell’s generation set an example of protest. They now want to put a curb bit on today’s youth. It just won’t work.
Editorial from The Tribune
