First published in The Tribune on Monday, June 16, 2008 under the byline, Young Man's View.
IN an attempt to score cheap political points, Paul Moss’s and Fayne Thompson’s opportunistic protest in condemnation of the European Partnership Agreement (two weeks ago) by parading puppet-like, unapprised straw vendors throughout Rawson Square appears to have been nothing short of a discomfiting rouse.
Mr Moss, the political busybody and leader of the activist group Bahamians Agitating for a Referendum on Free Trade (BARF), appears to have directed a disastrous demonstration centered on a group of less affluent, rowdy protestors who appeared to be thoroughly ignorant to the issues.
As I watched the side-splitting, awkward ZNS segment featuring these protestors, I cringed as one demonstrator after another obliviously suggested that Parliamentarians would be using monies to “over-educate their children” or that they would be pushing up grass while their children would be eating flowers (whatever that means or has to do with the EPA is beyond me).
The so-called picket-line appears to have been a wretched handful of clueless straw vendors, who seemed incapable of defending their opposition to the EPA though they repeatedly bellowed “no EPA” and waved homemade placards.
Oddly enough, while those apparently uninformed straw vendors are expressing fears about foreigners coming from Europe to compete with them, they are disregarding the Haitian and Jamaican immigrants already operating in the straw/flea market.
The EPA, which is set to be signed between the European Union and the Bahamas/Cariforum countries, is an accord which succeeds the Cotonou Agreement that governed trade between the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the EU.
It appears that the EPA is designed to increase access to markets and services.
Like many discerning Bahamians, I am also questioning the extent to which the EPA allows for European companies to compete and the commercial sectors that will be opened to European competition.
To carry out a countrywide mission to inform Bahamians about the EPA, Minister of State for Finance Zhivargo Laing must seek to effectively engage the populace in a public education programme/dialogue, particularly to avoid further misleading misinformed or uniformed Bahamians. Even today, the average Bahamian can hardly discuss, to any appreciable extent, what the EPA entails!
On June 12 and 13, Mr Moss and a BARF delegation were scheduled to demonstrate against this economic partnership agreement in Trinidad and Tobago, however I’m wondering if he also took that group of irate straw vendors on his Caribbean expedition?
Although former Bahamas Christian Council (BCC) president Bishop William Thompson’s ‘in-your-face’ scorching of National Security Minister Tommy Turnquest bears some merit, especially since the presentation of promised strategic crime fighting is yet to appear, why didn’t he speak similarly when serious crimes was spiralling out of control under the PLP, and more specifically, former National Security minister Cynthia ‘Mother’ Pratt? Is this an out-and-out case of political favoritism?
While some of the Bishop’s charges are meritorious, his recent speech at the National Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention can be interpreted as a misuse of the pulpit, a political staging ground.
Dressed in his priestly garb, Bishop Thompson seemed like a disingenuous politico who was sermonising and peddling a politically biased speech which would have been more forceful if he had taken the same stance under the former government instead of remaining conspicuously mute in the face of distasteful scandals and allegations of outright corruption. The Bishop should also speak to the growing number of morally bankrupt, religious hawkers being dragged before the courts for “tiefin”, rape, fraud and various other felonious acts.
Has Mr Thompson just realized that serious crime has increased or that legal immigrants and their Bahamas-born children who apply and are deserving of citizenship should be naturalized?
Why hasn’t the Bishop addressed the indiscretions of public officials, infidelity between pastors and parishioners and the predatory attempts of some pastors to fleece congregants and exploit their vulnerable, credulous parishioners?
Frankly, the clergyman’s pontification suggests a degree of hypocrisy and an indefensible double standard since he was tight-lipped as BCC president when the PLP was in power.
Sadly, Bishop Thompson has strayed from the impetus to speak ‘what thus says the Lord’ to delving in the political arena.
Instead of engaging in cockeyed political posturing, leaders in our society—particularly the church—should employ hands-on tactics in the fight to reduce crime, poverty and other social ills through outreach programmes and social initiatives, and assist in developing better citizens.
When religious and civic leaders send signals to an impressionable society that they are seemingly selective in addressing social ills/issues based upon political leanings, their divisive actions lend to an atmosphere of chaos.
Is there any wonder why many Bahamians only attend churches for funerals these days?
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