While in opposition, just a few short months ago, the Free National Movement (FNM) suggested they would downgrade The Bahamas Embassy in Cuba to a representative office. The discussion at the time suggested an embassy there was a waste of money and a representative office would do just fine.
The position seems to have changed now that the FNM have regained control of the Government of The Bahamas.
When asked by your not so humble blogger at the recent Bahamas Chamber of Commerce meet the Minister Conference if The Bahamas would downgrade the embassy in Cuba, Mr. Brent Symonette, Acting Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs responded that the Embassy will remain open because:
...there are benefits to our relationship with Cuba; we have a tremendous number of Bahamians that go there...we have quite a number (of persons) incarcerated in Cuba and we have an increase in trade in Cuba. That necessitates keeping the embassy in Cuba. (The Tribune, Saturday, July 21, 2007.)
Well informed sources tell me that a representative office can conduct the same day to day business that the embassy does today. The only difference is an Embassy is of a higher "stature" in the scheme of things so it lends more credence to the government of the host country.
As I commented when I posed the question about downgrading the embassy; The Bahamas has a democratic history of over 250 years so why give credence to a dictator like Castro in his final hour? Our support should be for the people of Cuba when his regime falls and the country moves toward freedom and democracy. Not to help prop Castro up.
As Friederich von Hayek pointed out in his wonderful book, The Road To Serfdom, "Collectivism is Slavery". So by extension, our embassy provides tacit support for the tyrannical regime in Cuba.
I do think it is important to trade with Cuba as a way to help the Cuban people up from oppression at the hands of Castro and his henchmen that support his regime, like the outgoing Cuban Ambassador to The Bahamas Felix Wilson et al.
Mind you, I believe that trade should ensure the people get the dollars and not the Cuban regime. As I found out from the Cuban Foreign Minister when he visited the Chamber of Commerce to promote business in Cuba several years back, employers there do not pay their workers directly. They must pay the state and the state gives the workers their paltry salary. (I'm told accountant's earn no more than $15 per month and a labourer $5 per month).
Unfortunately, many so called "progressives" in our society and region do not see the correlation between Castro's failed economic policies and why so many people flee that country, at the risk of losing their lives. They think it's great that the socialist dream continues in spite of the hardships the Cuban people have to bear. Unfortunately their ideology gets in the way of the reality on the ground in Cuba.
To spend $300,000 a year or more to have an embassy in Cuba, when a representative office will do, thereby lending tacit support to a tyrannical regime is unconscionable, and frankly it should be offensive to all freedom loving Bahamians.
