As a new year begins, Bahamians – like their counterparts around the world – will make any number of resolutions. Some of these will concern matters which are personal, such as resolving to lose weight; others will be more serious, such as those involving the importance of relationships with neighbours, family and friends. At a more public level of concern business, civic and governmental leadership will make resolutions concerning their respective affairs. Everyone will resolve to do better, even as they hope for better. Our continuing resolve is to do our best to provide the public media services of the highest order.
Convinced as we are that citizenship is best when it is constructive, we are convinced that this nation’s rate and pace of economic, social and cultural growth would be greatly enhanced if more Bahamians would consider it their duty to heed the moral equivalent of a Macedonian Call. Were they to come over and help build the Bahamian Nation, in whatever sphere they work, everyone would be better off. Put otherwise, what we are calling for is an end to be put to relationships which are divisive and destructive.
If Bahamians at all levels of this society were to take seriously the idea that The Commonwealth of The Bahamas is a property they own, they would put more effort towards protecting and preserving it. In practical terms, this would mean that Bahamians would not allow their neighbourhoods and communities to be overrun by gangsters, criminals and other social predators. And by the same token, if business, civic and governmental leaders were to buy deeply into this idea concerning the importance of constructive citizenship, fewer of them would resort to underhanded tactics, shenanigans and other slick dealings. Instead, they would be of good report in their lives and work.
Translated onto the political scene, this idea of constructive citizenship calls on politicians of all stripes to be focused in their mission; decent in their deliberations; fair to their opposition; and at all times committed to doing their best on behalf of the Bahamian Nation. Undergirding this ethos of constructive citizenship would be an acceptance on the part of lawmakers, that their call to service is a call to a tour of duty on behalf of the Bahamian people.
Put more bluntly, we underscore the need for political leaders to abandon the idea that winning is everything. There is also a pressing need for politicians of all stripes, to cease and desist from the destructive habit of seeking to demonize their opposition. And for sure, since the political is only one aspect of a citizen’s social existence, politicians moreso than any other people should always keep politics out of other areas of social life, particularly those which seek to unite Bahamians. Ours is a plea that politics not be allowed to become the be-all and end-all in The Bahamas.
There is evidence to suggest that ‘politics’ has been allowed to seep into a number of Bahamian civic institutions, including a small number of churches. This is counter-productive to genuine development. Politics should come to a screeching halt at the church door. Those who enter should do so not as PLP’s FNM’s, CDR’s or any other lettered combination, but as penitents bent on worship to God, and service to mankind.
In the ultimate analysis, then, our call for Bahamians to resolve to become more constructive in their citizenship, speaks to our perception that Bahamians – in their majority – are far too laid back; far too dependent; far too fractious; far too fragmented and far too intolerant of each other. This dissipates the national will; weakens civil society and otherwise conspires to keep Bahamians focused on the downside of life, rather than on those matters which can bind them together in community.
A case in point is the distressingly low level of communications and negotiations between any number of labour leaders, the owners of certain business enterprises and rank and file workers. At times, each is clearly on a different page. Even now this absence of community and the attendant absence of constructive citizenship threatens to wreak havoc on the Bahamian economy.
Our continuing hope is that Bahamians – in their majority – will wake to the reality that there is strength in unity. And that unity is the core ingredient in the notion ‘community’. If economic growth and social progress are to be sustained in The Bahamas, there is a pressing need for Bahamians to make the resolution that they will work together – under the rubric of the rule of law – to enhance the growth and development of The Bahamas, for all Bahamians.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
