By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C.,May 24, 2021 – I had to think long and hard before writing this commentary, given my penchant throughout my journalistic career to throw caution to the wind and be blunt in my criticism of some persons who have used politics to establish themselves as powerful and important individuals in The Bahamas.
One of the best kept secrets in The Bahamas is that politics is the most lucative profession in the country. It has created millionaires out of some persons who were absolute failures in various other jobs throughout their working careers.
But what is more blatantly obvious is that politicians in The Bahamas have access to the most lucrative benefits after they are no longer involved in politics. Even if they only serve one term in the House of Assembly, every month they can look forward to a cheque from the treasury being deposited in their accounts and are the recipients of extremely good health benefits.
I have been actively involved in Bahamian politics for almost 60 years, from shortly after I first met Sir Arthur Foulkes in 1960 when he was News Editor at The Nassau Daily Tribune and I joined the staff of The Tribune in 1960 as a trainee reporter.
Thanks to Sir Arthur and the late Sir Etienne Dupuch, at the time Editor and Publisher of The Tribune, I received a level of training in journalism comparable to persons who studied journalism at the most prestigious universities around the world.
As a Black man growing up in The Bahamas at a time when racism in the former British colony was as rank and raw as in the most racist areas of the Southern Unites States, where overt racism was enforced by law, my training in journalism exposed me to the valiant struggle being waged by Blacks in the United States for equal rights and full equality as human beings in a country that they did really did more to establish as a citadel of democracy than their white oppressors.
Because I started travelling to segregated Miami frequently in the late 1950s, I was exposed to the same level of racism that I was forced to live under when the Bay Street Boys – a group of minority white professionals and merchants — controlled politics in The Bahamas, and through friends in Miami I became involved in the Black Power Movement, which became my activist vehicle politically for fighting against racism in The Bahamas.
To this day, I am still convinced that the sage advice I received from Sir Arthur Foulkes when I worked with him at Bahamian Times, the PLP’s newspaper, after I left The Triune in 1965 is the reason why I did not end up in prison.
I took my commitment to the Black Power Movement seriously and I did some things that could have landed me in jail. In fact, when I created a disturbance at the Royal Victoria Hotel after the management brought in a South African manager and he fired some senior black staff members, I was arrested after I protested the management’s decision during a demonstration at the hotel, and if it were not for the fact that my case was heard by the late Magistrate Maxwell Thompson, who was sympathetic towards the PLP cause, I most certainly would have been sent to prison. Instead, Magistrate Thompson gave be a strong public reprimand.
My decision to risk going to prison for a cause in which I fully believed makes me now question whether the decisions I made back then are the reasons for my current dire financial situation as I struggle to avoid being evicted unless I make a substantial payment on the back rent that I owe before June 1, the date the D.C Superior Court Landlord/Tenant Court Judge set in his ruling on Wednesday, March 17, in favour of my landlord for me to pay the back rent that I owe.
Obviously, I shall not be in the positon to do so before June 1, which is the reason why I decided to write this commentary, further painfully exposing my frustration as to why the current government continues to refuse to utilize my services as one of the country’s leading journalists.
The last straw for me was reading a poorly written, mistake-laden press release yesterday (May 23) put out by Bahamas Information Services (BIS), which is supposed to be the government’s public relations agency.
The release was about His Excellency Sidney Collie, Bahamas Ambassador to the United States and Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States (OAS), making a courtesy call on Minister of Health Renward Wells on Friday, May 21.
The release makes this totally inaccurate assertion: “Ambassador Collie was on his first home visit since being appointed as Ambassador to the United States four years ago.”
Had the writer of this release done some basic research, he or she would have found out that Ambassador Collie led a delegation from the DC Chamber of Commerce on a trade mission to Nassau April 29 to May 2, 2019 that was well publicized.
Indeed, the then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Peter Turnquest gave a welcome address at a luncheon held in their honour.
This sort of mediocrity has been “par for the course” with the majority of the staff at BIS, which was formed by an act of Parliament in 1974 “to ensure effective communications between the government and the people of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.”
This is primarily because after the FNM won the 2017 general election, the new government appointed one of its political supporters with absolutely no experience in journalism to head BIS, and press releases – except those written by several well-trained journalists on the staff – have been very poorly written.
This is why I find it hard to understand why, given my record as one of The Bahamas’ leading journalists, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is adamantly refusing to implement a proposal I submitted almost three years ago to continue doing on a contractual basis what I did at the Embassy for four-plus years as Press, Cultural Affairs and Information Manager before the FNM became the government in May of 2017. I was informed by Ambassador Sidney Collie that a revised proposal for $2,000 a month had been approved and this was subsequently confirmed by Attorney General Carl Bethel, yet Foreign Affairs Minister Darren Henfield has continued to ignore my appeal for an update on the status of my proposal.
Meanwhile, in slightly more than a week, my eviction will be imminent unless I make a substantial payment on the back rent that I owe.
As a founding member of the FNM, I am now appealing to Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis to intercede on my behalf and prevent me from possibly becoming homeless in the next couple weeks by directing Foreign Affairs Minister Henfield to implement my proposal and make the initial payment retroactive for at least one year so that I can eliminate my back rent, given the fact that I have continued to cover Embassy-related events without compensation since my tenure at the embassy ended.
