Contribution to the Debate on Constitutional Equality

Loretta Butler TurnerMP for Long Island

6 August 2014

We are Fellow Citizens

Mr. Speaker:

In his farewell remarks only a few weeks ago, former Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes, a champion of democracy and a fierce advocate for equality stated:

“Though I now prepare to demit office, I hope to continue to serve, God willing, in the capacity that has always meant the most to me – as a fellow citizen of The Bahamas.”

Though having attained the highest office in our country, Sir Arthur noted that the title of “fellow citizen of The Bahamas” meant the most to him.

What does it mean to be a fellow citizen with full equality? We debated that question in 1972 on the eve of our independence. We debated it again in 2002. The answer to this question is at the heart of what we debate once again, this day, in August 2014, a full 40 years later.

What we are debating is this: whether to allow all Bahamian parent-citizens, regardless of race, creed or sex to pass on -- as a fundamental right -- citizenship to all of their children regardless of the circumstances of their birth.

1

Most fundamentally, this is a debate about fairness and justice and full equality under our Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

How many years more Lord, must we wander in this desert?

How many more years in the valley before we reach higher and common ground as one people, regardless of race, creed or gender?

Mr. Speaker: Much of human history and Bahamian history is the struggle of

individuals and groups to attain full citizenship, especially certain racial groups and women, two groups so often excluded from full equality and constitutional protection.

In the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies which fought a war to achieve independence, these inspiring words immortalize the call for equality:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Despite these noble words, people of African descent and women were not allowed certain rights. It would take centuries of struggle, a civil war, an Emancipation Proclamation and even more struggle for African Americans to cash the promissory note of equality and freedom proclaimed at the dawn of an independent United States.

Both in the United States and in South Africa, there were

devious and dishonest strategies of, “separate, but equal”. Through Jim Crow laws and other instruments of racism in the US black

2

people were subjected to all manner of cruelty and deprivation, while being told that they were equal.

There is a clear principle which puts a lie to those claims. It is the same clear principle which guides the debate that we are having today: When it comes to equality there is no such thing as separate but equal. Either we are fully integrated and equally entitled, or we are not.

That is as true of the question of racial equality as it is of gender equality! The struggle for racial and gender equality are inseparable. They constitute a single tapestry of equality, which is never fully woven or complete, until all citizens, black and white, men and women are fully equal in our Constitution.

This was the abiding principle for which the Free National Movement fought at the Constitutional Conference in London in 1972.

It is the principle for which we have fought the good fight since independence, often at great cost; and though we paid a price for our convictions, the greater price was paid, and is being paid, by generations of Bahamian women.

And it is a principle for which we are now fighting and will continue to fight, regardless of the cost.

Sadly, it is a principle which the party bearing the name progressive and liberal fought against at the 1972 Conference, and has fought against for decades.

In more recent times, the side opposite, under the current prime minister, put politics ahead of justice, fairness and equality.

It is shameful and disgraceful that the party which endlessly boasts of its contributions to the struggle for majority rule

3

campaigned against full equality for women in 2002, which was always a major plank in the struggle for majority rule as far back as the 1960s.

This is akin to the PLP being against the right of women to vote. If we are to be equals in our land, we must share all of the same rights, bar none. There should be no half measures and half stepping.

Mr. Speaker:

To be a fellow-citizen means that we all enjoy the same rights and privileges. If one group enjoys more rights and privileges than another, then we remain in the days of so-called separate, but equal.

It is unfair, it is unjust, it is unethical for some citizens of a country to be less equal than the others, whether in terms of race, creed or gender.

Mr. Speaker:

In our own land, the First Emancipation freed slaves. Though these slaves and their descendants were equal in name, they remained separate and unequal.

It took the Second Emancipation of Majority Rule to redeem and make full the promise of that First Emancipation, liberating the mass of Bahamians from racial, economic and social injustice.

In the struggle for majority rule, we got rid of the property vote which gave wealthier people multiple votes. Women became enfranchised. This is what equality looks like: Each citizen, no matter their race, gender or economic status, all have a single vote. There is no separate but equal when it comes to voting.

And yet, Mr. Speaker, half a century after women attained the right to vote, nearly 50 years after majority rule, and 41 years as a free

4

and independent nation, half of our citizens are still not fully equal under the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

The full promise of majority rule does not yet exist for Bahamian women. The struggle for women to fully enjoy the promise of majority rule continues.

We have unfinished business. Though we now enjoy full racial equality, full equality is still not here for Bahamian women.

This is not an issue simply for Bahamian women. The larger struggle is men and women joining hands and voices to ensure that our daughters and sisters can claim full equality as fellow citizens.

Mr. Speaker:

Voting against full equality for women is akin to voting against majority rule and voting to maintain one racial group as superior to another. The question is that simple, despite all the side arguments and distractions, and the prejudice of some.

Whatever the particular questions for this referendum, which we need to debate, the basic question is clear: Do you believe in and want equality for men and women? Yes or no.

A young Bahamian man asked me a very wise question and then made a profound and simple statement.

He asked me if most women in the world have this right that his wife, his mother and sisters don’t have in The Bahamas. I told him that only a handful of countries still treat their women in this regard as does presently The Bahamas.

Then this young man in his 20s said he didn’t understand why there is a debate about women being equal to men. He said that was

5

something like someone debating whether as a black man he is equal to a white man.

Mr. Speaker:

This referendum is about confronting and striking down discrimination. Just as those who fought for majority rule confronted prejudice and discrimination and warnings of dire consequences back then, it is our time to confront and strike down discrimination today.

I wish to be as clear as possible. One cannot be for majority rule, yet vote against full equality for women, which is what the side opposite has done for decades.

Under the leadership of the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, the FNM decided to try again to give Bahamian women full constitutional equality. That was in 2002.

The PLP voted for it in this parliament. The vote was 39 to 1. They voted for it in here.

Then, in a stunning about-face, they went out to the country and vigorously campaigned against.

Imagine that! They voted yes and then they told the people to vote no!

They shifted with the wind! They went with the flow! They abandoned their principles!

It just goes to show, Mr. Speaker, that you can have progressive in your name, but if you don’t have it in your heart, it means nothing.

We often hear the lame excuse from the side opposite that they voted against equality because of the process.

6

A similar argument was used by members of Congress in the US who voted against the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions from slavery.

The same argument was used in South Africa by some who wanted the continuation of minority rule and apartheid.

The process excuse cannot – should not -- be used to justify failure to liberate any class of people from bondage or inequality.

What kind of process does a slave need before his master stops whipping him?

This talk of process was always a smoke screen by the side opposite to mask their naked political opportunism.

This talk of process was clearly a smoke screen, especially in light of how poor is the current process. For our part, back in 2002, the FNM sought and initially found consensus when it proposed a referendum on constitutional equality.

Last week the government was prepared to have a very short House debate to amend the Constitution, one of the more momentous actions that can be taken by Parliament.

While the side opposite was motivated to oppose equality because of their abiding lust for power, this side has remained progressive and principled in our struggle for equality.

Mr. Speaker:

Instead of believing what an individual or group says, it’s more important to watch what they do or fail to do.

Except for the very brief period Dame Dr. Johnson served in an early cabinet of Sir Lynden Pindling, not a single woman sat in the cabinet of The Bahamas for the next 24 years, even as women were making progress around the world.

7

The PLP failed to run a woman in a winnable seat in the House of Assembly until 1987, even though they had plenty of safe seats. The advancement of women at the very heart of government was not important to the party.

They finally ran a woman in a winnable seat in 1987, after the FNM successfully ran Janet Bostwick in 1982.

It was not until the FNM came to office in 1992 that women were appointed to the some of the more senior posts in government. It is the FNM that caused the appointment of the first female Governor General, Dame Ivy Dumont.

In comparing the record of the FNM and the PLP in the advancement of Bahamian women, there is little favourable comparison. While their record is shoddy and spotty, the FNM’s record is consistent and comprehensive.

Mr. Speaker:

You may think that I belabour the past, but I do so because the actions of the past have not only been about lost opportunities. Those actions have sowed doubt, confusion and disillusionment in the public’s mind and have put at risk what we are about today.

It would be tempting for some to oppose this referendum as revenge or payback for the PLP’s shameful and disgraceful behaviour in 2002. But such payback would be an insult and an assault on the best interests of Bahamian women.

Some wish to payback this government for refusing to abide by the results of the gaming referendum, which the prime minister so solemnly promised.

8

It might be tempting. But it would be wrong. The two issues are separate. More importantly, this referendum is about fairness and making our sisters and our daughters full fellow citizens along with our brothers and our sons. This referendum should not be about pettiness and payback.

The time to payback this faltering, disastrous and incompetent government and prime minister is coming. But now is not the time.

Bahamians should not allow themselves to be dragged down low because of the past misdeeds and swamp of opportunism of the side opposite.

Instead, let us lift up our heads to the rising sun of equality and justice, even as the sun begins to set on this bankrupt government.

The FNM could quite easily play the politics of prejudice and division. But this is not who we are. We are better than that, and when it comes to full equality for all our citizens, we are much, much better than the side opposite.

The torch has stood for freedom from the inception of the FNM, when a brave band of dissidents broke with the side opposite in order to ensure our freedom and survival as a democracy.

Without those generations of freedom fighters our democracy would be in great peril.

It is telling that the majority of those who formed that first majority rule government eventually left the PLP, to be joined by others like Hubert Ingraham, and if I may add my witness, by myself.

One of those who left was the late Edmund Moxey, who passed away in the last fortnight. Edmund Moxey left like many others, because he yearned to be free and because he had a dream and a vision which others sought to destroy because they could not control him.

9

The documentary of his life and struggle, including the dream of Jumbey Village, can be summed up as, “I Am a Man”. In essence, he was claiming his right as a full fellow citizen.

Mr. Speaker:

For those Bahamians, including younger Bahamians, born after the attainment of majority rule, they have the awesome opportunity to confirm and to fulfil the promise of majority rule by securing equality for Bahamian women.

History offers few such decisive moments. If we get it wrong today, it may be another generation before such an opportunity arises again.

I say to young Bahamian men and women, do not be fooled by those outdated voices and 18th and 19th century mentalities and going back even further, who seek to confuse on this issues in order to maintain ancient prejudices.

In this 21st century, we should join the nations of the world in having full equality for women.

One cannot truly celebrate the legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela and still vote to keep Bahamian women as unequal.

Undoubtedly King and Mandela would be on the side of Bahamian women being fully equal to men, as the women in their countries enjoy the right we will vote on in the upcoming referendum.

I hear some voices, way behind the times, who are opposed to full equality. They claim to love women. Yet those claims ring hollow.

10

It is not surprising that those who feel that they have a right to beat up and abuse women want to deny women their full constitutional rights.

To demonstrate full love and respect for women is to believe that they are fully and equally fellow citizens.

If those who find it amusing to talk of battering women, wish to begin to redeem themselves in the eyes of history and in the eyes of the many thousands of Bahamian women and men they have offended, let them now lift their voices in support of full equality.

If they fail to do so, indeed, if they campaign against equality, their contemporaries and history will judge them harshly, will judge them for who they really are.

Mr. Speaker:

There will be more time to debate specific language. But today, we need to be clear on the principles which should govern this debate.

We must get the principles correct. We must begin at the beginning. First, we are all made in the image and likeness of God. There is a radical dignity of the human person.

Following on this, there is no separate but equal. Equality and freedom are indivisible. There cannot be different degrees of freedom and equality for different groups.

We find repugnant that idea that some countries treated individuals as three-quarters of a person. We find the idea of any sort of apartheid, of treating others as less than equal, as repugnant.

Freedom is indivisible. The fullness of freedom means freedom for all of God’s sons and daughters, equally, wonderfully made in the image and likeness of our Creator.

11

Mr. Speaker

I confess some mixed emotions as I speak in support of amending our Constitution to enable the full equality of women.

I am happy that we will debate removing the last vestiges of constitutional discrimination against Bahamian women.

I am just a little sad that we have had to wait so long and that so many people were treated unfairly and were made to suffer because one of their parents was born female instead of male.

Still, in supporting the amending of the constitution I have several initial and fundamental concerns.

The Prime Minister stated that certain legislation will not be retroactive. This runs afoul of the principle of full equality. It is yet another variation of separate but equal.

We should not have a situation where past cases of inequality must still be adjudicated by a minister and the cabinet, instead of an automatic right under the supreme law of the land.

This would create at least two classes of individuals and would still rely on the discretion of the government of the day.

We know from our own history how ministerial and cabinet discretion or indiscretion have been used to victimize families and to deny citizenship to political opponents or those who simply did not actively support the government of the day.

Another concern, Mr. Speaker, is that there is a need for simplification. If the questions and the process are too complicated, this will lead to confusion.

There is a clear need to debate and find consensus on what simpler question or questions may be asked.

12

I am encouraged that quite a number of individuals and groups are reviewing the questions proposed by the government. This is a critical part of the process.

But the process must also include a comprehensive, well-thought-out public education campaign which may include televised town hall meetings, but also print material, television advertising, public rallies, a door-to-door campaign, social media and other public education efforts.

If we are to achieve full equality for Bahamian women, we will have to wage an effective campaign of education. If the government fails to do so, it may mean the difference between defeat and victory for Bahamian women.

Having poisoned the referendum process beginning in 2002 and then failing to abide by the results of the gaming referendum, the success or failure of this referendum will be laid at the feet of this government and this prime minister.

I remind the House that the editor of one of the leading daily newspapers noted some years ago that the Prime Minister bragged that he had the stuff it takes to get a referendum on the equality of women passed.

That ship has sailed. The only way this referendum will pass is with the help of the FNM and others. The prime minister is so unpopular and mistrusted that he may not even be able to get a referendum passed that would create a national holiday every week of the year.

Still, if it fails, it will be largely because of how the PLP has poisoned the referendum process and because of the unpopularity of this government and the prime minister.

Mr. Speaker:

13

There is considerable ground to be made up, indeed decades for which the PLP must make up.

The side opposite opposed full equality in 1972. They did so again 30 years later in 2002. They promised relief to Bahamian women in their 2002 to 2007 term. They again failed the women of the country. They rescheduled this referendum several times over just the past two and half-years or so.

Instead of making equality their first priority in terms of a referendum, they chose to put the interests of a few ahead of the interests of scores of Bahamian women.

On this issue this prime minister has not been a drum major for justice and equality. Instead he stood on the wrong side of history when the trumpet for equality sounded. He stood alongside those who manned the barricades against progress.

The prime minister could have stood up to certain forces in 2002 and side instead with the cause of equality. His support would have helped to carry the day.

Instead cowardice and gross opportunism were the order of the day.

Years later the prime minister claimed that Bahamian women were not really hurt by the failure of the referendum and women being able to constitutionally pass on a certain right of citizenship.

What a callous and uncaring remark to make. The possibility of some sort of redemption will not come easy. But if there is any possibility, there is much work to be done by the side opposite.

14

One of the greatest honours to the struggle of the women suffragettes was always the ability of political parties to ignore party lines to secure voting rights for women as fellow citizens.

In honour of the suffragettes the Free National Movement will observe no party lines in order to secure the greater common good.

Mr. Speaker:

I have feelings of great pride today because the party to which I belong, the Free National Movement, has always been on the right side of this issue, on the right side of history.

It’s not true, as some people like to generalize, that politicians will not do the right thing if it’s unpopular, that they will shift with the wind and go with the flow, that they will abandon their principles rather than risk losing votes.

Well, that might be true of some politicians, but happily not all.

I am proud that when Bahamian politicians gathered in London to negotiate our Constitution, I am proud that even then, the FNM delegates stood up for equality for women in all things, including citizenship.

There were only four of them: Sir Arthur Foulkes and Sir Orville Turnquest -- who are still with us -- and the late beloved Sir Kendal Isaacs and Norman Solomon. May history never forget them.

I am proud that our leaders and our party wanted to take this giant progressive step, in spite of the prevailing negative attitudes of the time.

Mr. Speaker:

The great classical singer Marion Anderson who grew up in South Philadelphia in the United States was told by the world-famous

15

Italian conductor Toscanini that, “Yours is a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years.” Anderson died in 1993 at the age of 96.

In 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution denied her permission to sing before an integrated audience at Constitutional Hall in Washington D.C.

With the help of Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marion Anderson sang before 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. would later voice his awe-inspiring dream of full equality in which fellow citizens, black and white, men and women would share equal rights.

That splendid day, Anderson sang, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee”, the anthem that the great Aretha Franklin sang at the first inaugural of President Barack Obama in 2009.

Marion Anderson, who grew up as a poor, black woman, sang of freedom and liberty and equality and justice. The lyrics are at once American and universal.

Let us make the meditations of Marion Anderson’s heart and lips our own. Let us offer them as our own meditation as we recall the Bahamaland that we love so passionately, all of whose citizens should be entitled to the fullness of liberty and equality.

“Let music swell the breeze,And ring from all the treesSweet freedom's song;Let mortal tongues awake;Let all that breathe partake;Let rocks their silence break,The sound prolong.

“Our fathers' God to Thee,Author of liberty,

16

To Thee we sing.Long may our land be bright,With freedom's holy light,Protect us by Thy might,Great God our King.

For whom does the freedom bell ring? Its sweet melody rings, it tolls, for all of us, no matter the circumstances of our birth.

In those inimitable words of generations of freedom fighters from Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela to Cecil Wallace Whitfield and Warren Levarity, from Mary Ingraham and Eugenia Lockhart to Arthur Foulkes and Edmund Moxey to Janet Bostwick and, on behalf of countless Bahamian men and women, especially the good people of Long Island and my fellow citizens:

Let freedom ring!

Let freedom ring!

Let freedom ring!

God bless us as One Bahamas. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

________

17