WOMEN'S RIGHTS
But land policy is not the only area in which the PLP and Senator Maynard Gibson are historical throwbacks, disconnected from the small man or woman.  Women's rights are an area in which the Senator has featured prominently.  Indeed, she has spoken extensively, at home and abroad, of expanding protections for women.

But, when it came to supporting landmark legislation to enhance gender equality, the PLP and Senator Maynard Gibson did not live up to their speeches.  Ironically, the Senator failed to support legislative advancements which would have brought the Bahamas into greater accord with evolving international standards, even as she travelled abroad burnishing her feminist credentials.

Senator Maynard Gibson and the PLP opposed a constitutional change which would have granted women equality with men in terms of one's foreign born children automatically receiving Bahamian citizenship.  Then the PLP obfuscated on proposed domestic rape legislation, waiting to gauge the public mood.

Soon after failing to support the latter measure, Senator Maynard Gibson spoke at an International Women's Day Symposium.  She began her address, "The International Theme for International Women's Day 2010 is "Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress for All."   Really?   Then what about the right of a woman to protect herself from being raped by her own husband?

The Senator's fence-sitting was akin to a suffragist who after vigorously campaigning for years for a woman's right to vote, suggests at crunch time that more study is needed on the matter.

The Senator continued: "The question is, "in the 1st decade of the 21st century have [we] built on and multiplied progress or has the 20th century progress eroded"?  Some people have built on this progress.  But, in two of the early 21st century battles to multiply progress for Bahamian women, the PLP and Senator Maynard Gibson elected to bypass opportunities to advance that progress.

Moreover, Bahamians are on to the game of using so-called principled language to forsake other stated principles.  Senator Maynard Gibson says that, in principle, she supports many of the principles in the aforementioned legislation to expand women's rights.  But, what she cannot support, in principle, is the process.

Some historical licence may be in order.  One can imagine that before the cosseted and smug Marie Antoinette famously and cluelessly said let them eat cake, that she may have also said that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too.  This has basically been the Senator's stance on the aforementioned opportunities to expand gender equality.

History ultimately honours those who demonstrate the courage of their convictions during pivotal moments and who help to fashion majorities for change.  This is why the early PLP will always have an extraordinary place in the history books.

History looks less favourably on those who wait for a majority to form and then align themselves with the swelling tide.  This is why the current PLP may largely be relegated to an historical sidebar in the history books.

Today, despite the rhetoric of Senator Maynard Gibson and much of her party, the PLP's recent record on gender equality and land policy are more in the service of the status quo and selective interests than "the small man".  

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