Do not chide yourself if this news has passed you by, but in six days’ time the people of the Bahamas go to the polls. It is an election that seems to matter a great deal to them, or at least it matters in a way that we who have a jaded palate for democracy would find very striking, and, in many ways, humbling.
The Bahamian electoral system is the one bequeathed to them by their British former colonial masters, a first-past-the-post poll to decide who wins a seat in the House of Representatives (there are 38 constituencies, and a registered electorate of 172,000). Universal suffrage came to the Bahamas only in 1967, and democracy is something they cherish in the way anyone would a gift so recently bestowed.
The Bahamian electoral system is the one bequeathed to them by their British former colonial masters, a first-past-the-post poll to decide who wins a seat in the House of Representatives (there are 38 constituencies, and a registered electorate of 172,000). Universal suffrage came to the Bahamas only in 1967, and democracy is something they cherish in the way anyone would a gift so recently bestowed.
By: Simon Kelner
Source: The Independent
