Time to decide

Tue, Jun 7th 2016, 11:19 AM


Prime Minister Perry Christie speaks to supporters of the YES Bahamas campaign following a prayer rally Rawson Square yesterday.

Fifty-eight days have passed since Prime Minister Perry Christie announced that the second constitutional referendum in an independent Bahamas will take place today.

In the weeks that followed that announcement, the debate has been spirited.

Voters have heard from the 'vote yes' camp.

They have heard from the 'vote no' camp.

There is nothing left to say; nothing left to argue.

Today is a day of decisions.

At the launch of the YES Bahamas campaign on April 10, the prime minister attempted to set the tone of the debate that would ensue.

"I want to be clear, these bills do not propose radical changes. Instead, this is about making sure that the supreme law of the land reflects our values and our commitment to fairness," Christie said.

But while the government and YES Bahamas insisted that today's referendum is really about a simple question -- 'Do you believe that men and women should be equal under Bahamian law?' -- in many circles, suspicion and mistrust toward the Christie administration gave way to fierce opposition to the measures.

The country has heard from leading jurists, religious leaders, founding fathers and Bahamians from all walks of life.

One of the leading voices in the national discourse has been Dame Joan Sawyer, the former president of the Court of Appeal.

She has branded the bills before the electorate for a decision "unnecessary".

Since her declaration in April that the referendum is "a waste of time", she has become an important figure for the vote no camp, which recognizes the significance of Dame Joan's voice in the debate.

The government and YES Bahamas have tried to counter her arguments, as have others whose voices are also well respected in the legal and national arenas.

On April 30, former Chief Justice Sir Michael Barnett said two key Privy Council decisions do not support Dame Joan's claim that issues in the referendum do not arise because "there are two provisions in the constitution that deal with discrimination".

Sir Michael intends to vote yes on all questions today.

"I absolutely support the referendum," he said.

"I will be voting yes on the proposed bills, and I believe that the provisions are necessary."

On April 26, Lynn Holowesko, the former president of the Senate and co-chair of YES Bahamas, said she was disappointed in Dame Joan's comments.

"For her to make such a callous and uninformed comment about an event so significant in our country's development is extremely surprising and very difficult to understand," Holowesko said.

"It is surprising that a woman of her intellect, whose profession is to make decisions based on facts and the law, would so willingly undermine her credentials by doing neither."

Holowesko's appointment as co-chair was a strategic move by the prime minister, who had hoped that the bipartisan effort that got the four constitutional amendment bills through Parliament in March would hold.

But the bipartisan push Christie had hoped for was diminished by multiple public statements from Opposition Leader Dr. Hubert Minnis, who, while saying he intends to vote yes, has accused the government of mishandling the referendum process.

When the bills passed in the House of Assembly, Minnis pledged that the opposition would not withdraw its support. However, he has not urged a 'yes' vote in public.

Instead, he has asked Bahamians to vote their conscience, and has said the government has failed to demonstrate its commitment to equality as it has refused to fund the vote no campaign.

'Vote no push'
There have been several groups advocating a no vote.

The most prominent is the 'Save Our Bahamas' group, formed in April by several prominent pastors, who are urging a no vote on question four and asking voters to vote their conscience on the remaining three questions.

The group's members include Pastor Mario Moxey of Bahamas Harvest Church, Pastor Lyall Bethel of Grace Community Church, Rev. Alfred Stewart of New Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church and popular talk show host Kevin "Minister K" Harris.

They had asked the government for "seed funding" of $100,000 to assist the vote no campaign in delivering its message.

They lobbied unsuccessfully for a fifth bill, which would provide for a constitutional provision defining marriage as being between a man (who was born male) and a woman (who was born female).

Repeatedly during the debate, the prime minister has had to defend the actions of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) in 2002 when it was the opposition.

When the Ingraham administration introduced similar measures in 2002, the PLP supported them in Parliament but campaigned against them in public. The referendum failed.

Christie insists that the opposition was based on the fact that the PLP learned, after the passage of the bills, that the church had serious issues with the process. The party also was against the process, he said.

"We were on the side of the church," Christie has said.

The actions of the PLP 14 years ago and the decision by the Christie administration to ignore the results of the 2013 referendum have fuelled mistrust among some voters.

The church, meanwhile, remains divided.

The heads of the Baptist, Catholic and Anglican communities in The Bahamas, among other religious leaders, have all come out in support of the bills.

Bishop Neil Ellis, senior pastor at Mount Tabor Church, said in April it would be "unacceptable and un-Christ-like" to deny Bahamians' rights by voting against any of the questions.

"I believe, my brothers and sisters, that these bills would finally bring The Bahamas in position with most of the rest of the world," Ellis said.

Views on the referendum and equal rights came from every conceivable angle.

On April 26, the debate took a new turn when members of the transgender community spoke at a press conference, saying they too need to be treated like members of any group, with dignity and respect.

Their decision to come before the cameras -- something that does not happen often in The Bahamas -- added to fears that the government has a "hidden agenda"; that bill four, in particular, would lead to same-sex marriage; and that the bill would primarily benefit LGBT people.

The government denied this on several occasions.

Most recently, the prime minister said it was "crazy" for anyone to suggest -- as Dame Joan has -- that he has advocated an LGBT agenda.

The bills are just not about that, he said again in a press statement on Sunday night during which time he made a final push for a yes vote.

Historic
Bill one seeks to enable a child born outside The Bahamas to become a citizen at birth if either his or her mother or father is a citizen of The Bahamas by birth.

Bill two seeks to enable a foreign man married to a Bahamian woman to secure the same access to Bahamian citizenship that a foreign woman married to a Bahamian man enjoys.

Bill three would allow an unmarried Bahamian man to pass on his citizenship to his child born to a foreign mother subject to legal proof that he is the father.

Bill four would make it unconstitutional to discriminate based on sex.

There is no other Bahamian story today that will likely capture national and international attention on the scale of this referendum.

And the world is indeed watching.

Last week, the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Women, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) all commended The Bahamas on the referendum, stating that the move will "promote gender equality in citizenship matters under the constitution of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas".

"If passed, these amendments will ensure that Bahamian mothers and fathers have equal rights to transmit nationality to their children, and that Bahamian women are able to confer their nationality to their non-Bahamian spouses on the same basis as Bahamian men," their statement read.

"The changes would also enshrine the principle of equal rights among women and men in the constitution."

After all that has been said, it is now up to the voters to deliver their verdict.

If they vote in favor of the amendments, that would be historic. It would be the first time any changes have been made to the independence constitution.

If they vote against the amendments, their decision would be binding. The discriminatory provisions would remain unchanged.

Candia Dames, Guardian Managing Editor

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