by Rick Lowe
Okay I admit it, I look forward to reading Bahamas Uncensored each week, but after the laughs I usually come away feeling sorry for them. They are very skilled at Machiavellian speak or they are out right racists.
This weeks "editorial" if you will, that could be written by Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell or his alter ego is peculiar.
Here is an excerpt:
"We have an application before the World Trade Organization (WTO) to become members of that body but the application has gone nowhere fast. When the Government last year sought to join the single market of Caricom in order to prepare the country for accession to WTO within a rules based system of trade, there was full scale revolt led by the same idle and retrograde merchant class that tried to keep the country from going independent in 1973 and before that had tried to subjugate the majority population prior to 1967. For the time being they were able to use the lack of knowledge amongst that majority on a very complex issue to derail what was the best move for the country. In the next five years, this is not a problem that will go away. It will get more complex the longer we delay. This retrograde class did a great injustice to our country."
This is an obvious attempt to blame the white merchant class for the failure of the government to secretly join CSME, an integration agreement, not merely a trade agreement, without legitimate discussion.
The people that objected rather strenuously were the pharmacists, doctors and lawyers - the professional class that Mr. Mitchell and his party lay claim to producing. The Nassau Institute and attorney Brian Moree were also quite vocal with their dissent.
It would be interesting to determine if the "merchant class" that the editorial referred to is comprised of mostly black business owners these days or it is still dominated by white people. Maybe these statistics are available somewhere?
One point that should not be over looked is that The Bahamas Government does not prevent international trade. In fact they encourage it as most of their revenue comes from import duties.
It is also rather peculiar that Bahamas Uncensored does not allow comments on their site. Are they afraid that too many people would disagree with them?
Racism is difficult to over come for black or white Bahamians, but the Machiavellian nature of these comments should not go unnoticed.
