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Bahamian Politics Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM


Canon Campbell: A National Cultural Commission Must Be Put in Place
By Rev. Canon S. Sebastian Campbell
Jan 8, 2015 - 6:08:42 PM

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Nassau, Bahamas - The following is a Press Statement from Rev. Canon S. Sebastian Campbell – National Heroes Committee Chairman regarding “Majority Rule”:

Happy Majority Rule, Bahamas.

Again we congratulate our Prime Minister for having the intestinal fortitude for doing the right thing, elevating January 10th, every year, to the ranks of a National holiday.

I thank all these who stood with the movement in keeping the campaign alive so that this would happen. However, the campaign is not complete. A National Cultural Commission must be put in place, as promised by the Prime Minister. Such a commission should be mandated to draw up a frame work for national celebration. Until that happens, it will only be viewed as another holiday for the beach or for travel. Such a valuable teaching tool must not be allowed to slip away from us. The national honours system both needs to be brought to parliament and passed into law. We must not continue to colonialization of the minds of our people with this enslaving honours system. Maybe the Queen Counsel designation can be Bahamianized within this effort. Thanks to both former and present governments for halting the colonial awards. We, of the Committee, hope they have gone forever.

Bahamian history must be mandated in our school system. The heroes of this quiet revolution is unknown to the average Bahamian child, how tragic! The heroes park, at Clifton and replicas throughout our islands, is an excellent topic for talk, talk, talk…. Another teaching tool must not be allowed to slip. We must entrench January 10th as we build on and celebrate the achievements of our heroes.

A National Cultural Commission has much work it can do. Presently there is no air of excitement that we are to celebrate the greatest day in our national development since the emancipation of slavery in 1834. In fact Majority rule day is the real emancipation day for the blacks, for it isn’t until now that blacks are realize their time worth and come to their fullest potential, to govern. It is also the emancipation of the whites, at least mentally. Now they know that the colour of their skin does not give them a god given right to be “lord over all they can survey” without January 10th 1967, then, 1 Aug. 1834 will be meaningless.

“The great significance of 1967”, wrote Sir Arthur Foulkes, “was that after years of struggle by many progressive persons and groups, the back of the old oligarchy was finally broken and real democracy came to the Bahamas. This was unique because many former colonies could boast of independence but not democracy, and older countries could hardly say exactly when they became democracies”.

Journalist, Fareed Zakaria argues in his book, “The future of Freedom” that at the beginning of the 20th century not a single country had what we would today consider a democracy: A government created by elections in which every adult citizen could vote.

Great Britain wasn’t there, for women could not vote. The United States had not yet extended the franchise to women and the black minority was still brutally oppressed by the white majority.

January 1967 was our watershed for democracy. The majority supported the party that represented the majority. In 1967, Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad, countries in our region, were already independent. What would be your interpretation of this?

The principle architects of the quiet revolution of 1967 envisioned a Bahamas where all citizens would have the right to join the political party of choice, without fear of victimization, where membership in a particular party did not bestow special privileges and entitlements on any citizen and where the right to dissent would be sacrosanct.

Radical discrimination was not given an instant fatal blow. In an interview with the Nassau Guardian that was held on January 11, 1967, Sir Lynden stressed that “The Progressive Liberal Party is for everyone. I hope the white population has realized this and have no fears” (Read the vision of Sir Lynden Pindling) Kevin Evans writes, “Yet despite this reassurance from the newly-minted premier, two former cabinet ministers of the UBP government left the country after the devastating loss to the PLP, Sir Stafford Sands and Donald E. D’Albenas. Both couldn’t bear the thought of living in a country governed by negroes.” To build a one Bahamas, Blacks and Whites must believe that our destiny is inextricably tied together. We still have far to go.

The message to our children even after years of a black majority government, local commissioner of police, church leaders, governor general, permanent secretaries and so on, that January 10, 1967 must be a hallmark that shouts out: “All for one, one for all”. We must attract white Bahamians to go shoulder to shoulder with black Bahamians on the police force, the defense force, to take leadership in junkanoo, to do road work, to climb on garbage trucks and not to continue this attitude that certain positions are not for them.

Majority Rule is impotent unless all Bahamians, Blacks and Whites can live as equals. It is useless until we accept it as the day of empowerment for every single Bahamian in Cat Island and Inagua. As it stands now, it being a day of empowerment where the ideal of one Bahamas should find currency is still a distant dream. Today we still have no one Bahamas. A younger generation has to mentally unshackle us so that we can get there. At least the exodus has started.

It can be argued that Majority Rule, 1967 is one of the most important days in our history. Without it, independence would still be a distant dream. It was a quiet bloodless revolution. It was a victory for all Bahamians. We must rescue Majority Rule from being seen as a PLP only celebration. Please join me in this quest for future years.

It’s only because of this important political move in 1967 that Bahamian history is forever changed and must be forever changing.


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