At long last January 10 has been designated as a holiday to celebrate majority rule, an accomplishment for which the Christie administration is to be congratulated and which was appropriately marked by a public signing of the act.
As an aside, it may have made sense for the government to remove the Whit Monday holiday as it introduced the new holiday.
The path towards the creation of the new holiday has been characterized by many fits and starts, and by political machinations, mostly by the PLP, and myopia by the FNM.
Whereas the PLP tended to treat majority rule as the near sole accomplishment of the party, some in the FNM leadership tended to display a curious ambivalence or indifference to the celebration of January 10, 1967.
Majority rule was the accomplishment of a movement that initially found voice within the PLP, energized by the ideas and advocacy of the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA) spearheaded by men like Arthur A. Foulkes, Warren J. Levarity, Jeffrey Thompson and Eugene Newry.
Soon after the attainment of majority rule, central players in the movement split into two major political parties, with the majority of the men who made up the first majority rule government eventually leaving the PLP to form the FNM.
Initially there was the celebrated Dissident Eight and other less well-known individuals who broke from the burgeoning corruption, abandonment of core promises, and the cult of personality coagulating around Sir Lynden Pindling. They were later joined by many others, including Hubert Ingraham.
Of the departure of the Dissident Eight, Paul Adderley, then leader of the National Democratic Party (NDP), suggested in his party's paper The Observer that essentially the PLP had lost its soul after those dissidents left the party.
That soul included a robust commitment to certain democratic goals which the PLP stymied for a quarter of a century and other goals the party has yet to realize.
As early as 1967, Minister of Out Island Affairs Warren Levarity offered a White Paper on Local Government. It was never to be under the PLP. Local government arrived later during the FNM's first term in office.
Monopoly
For 25 long years PLP governments maintained an iron-fisted monopoly on the broadcast media. This year (2013) marks the 20th year of the FNM's freeing of the broadcast media from state control.
Having been denied office and democratic fair play because of the United Bahamian Party's (UBP) diabolical gerrymandering, the PLP failed to push for an independent boundaries commission during Sir Lynden's 25-year reign.
When the FNM proposed a constitutional amendment that would have created such a commission, the PLP helped to defeat it in the name of "process".
Imagine the howls of derision and of injustice an early PLP would have hurled at the UBP had that party employed the language of "process" to block the creation of an independent boundaries commission.
It is the same self-serving claptrap the PLP mobilized to defeat an amendment enabling the children of certain Bahamian women to automatically attain Bahamian citizenship at birth.
Approaching 35 years of non-consecutive PLP rule, the party that endlessly thumps its chest for the role it played in attaining majority rule has yet to advance full constitutional rights for Bahamian women.
The FNM sought to prevent this injustice at the 1972 Independence Conference, an injustice the PLP elected to maintain for 25 years and counting, which brings us to the foundation of what we celebrate on Majority Rule Day.
That foundation is a celebration of freedom and democracy and a second emancipation for black Bahamians. We can no more ignore the first emancipation than we can the second, out of so-called sensitivity to white Bahamians, as if slavery and the subjugation of the majority of Bahamians should be ignored.
In a circular read to students on Majority Rule Day this year, Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes offered: "On the 10th of January 1967 the will of the majority of Bahamians was freely expressed in a general election based on universal adult suffrage where all men and women of adult age, regardless of property qualifications could vote to determine who would govern them."
Template
On January 10, 1967 the Bahamian people ushered in a new era and a template for democratic change. Amidst increasing calls for violence to end the intolerable rule of a racist oligarchy, the Bahamian people demonstrated a commitment to peaceful and democratic change; a commitment now deeply entrenched in our political culture.
A dear friend tells the story of a colleague visiting from the U.K. during a Bahamian general election, awed at the passion of Bahamians for politics as well as how peaceful are our political transitions.
The visitor marvelled at the consistency of the Bahamian democracy, transitioning from the PLP's initial 25-year rule to 10 years under the FNM and back to the PLP, then ousted after five years, all done peacefully with ballots, and with scant incidents of violence.
This history can be traced in large measure to January 10, 1967, which was a triumph of the right to vote for a party of one's choice, a lesson for both the UBP and the PLP. In the case of the latter, the subsequent lesson was that majority rule did not simply mean the attainment of the right to vote PLP.
In his circular to students in January, Sir Arthur articulated the fuller celebration of majority rule: "That event removed the last psychological shackles from the minds of many; it shattered false notions of superiority or inferiority; it initiated the fulfilment of the promise of universal access to education; it created the foundation upon which to build a society with opportunity for all; it unleashed the hitherto brutally, suppressed but powerful entrepreneurial instincts of a people."
He continued: "It freed many Bahamians from the fear of one another because of differences of color or ethnic origin; it opened the possibility of fully sharing and nationalizing a rich and diverse cultural heritage; and it held forth the promise of a new kind of political culture in which no Bahamian would ever again be made to suffer for exercising his or her right to free association."
There could not be the possibility of racial equality and reconciliation or of one Bahamas without January 10, something Sir Durward Knowles and others have noted.
Triumph
PLPs and FNMs, black and white Bahamians, all share the triumph of democracy and freedom that is January 10. Both the PLP and the FNM fulfilled various promises of majority rule.
Unfortunately, some in the leadership of the FNM responded to the celebration of majority rule with ambivalence. The FNM had as much a right and a responsibility to create a Majority Rule Day holiday as did the PLP, but disappointingly never rose to the occasion during three terms in office.
Given the founders of the FNM, the party's subsequent history and progressive accomplishments, it was historically myopic for the FNM not to have been the party to create a majority rule holiday. Not only would it have been good politics. It could have been an extraordinary teachable moment for the country.
The FNM could have played a major role in interpreting for younger generations a fuller meaning of majority rule, a greater appreciation of the history surrounding this accomplishment, as well as a broader understanding of a shared patriotism instead of the often truncated and narrower nationalism preached by the PLP.
The ambivalence and indifference of some in the FNM towards the celebration of majority rule proved disappointing not only because it played into the hands of the PLP and its well-honed politics of nationalism.
As disappointing, the ambivalence was another example of the too often defensive posture of the FNM when it comes to celebrating its extraordinary legacy inclusive of the decades before it came to office.
It was FNMs who launched the One Bahamas initiative. And it was the FNM that ensured democratic rule because its founders quickly returned to opposition for another quarter century in order to secure democratic values and convictions that are at the heart of the celebration of majority rule.
To his credit Opposition Leader Dr. Hubert Minnis, partly urged on by his Deputy Loretta Butler-Turner, took part in this year's majority rule celebrations.
The FNM allowed the PLP to beat it to the punch in the creation of the new holiday. Yet, moving forward, the party must be less ambivalent or indifferent to a seminal event in the nation's history, an event for which its founders were equally responsible and a legacy to which FNMs and PLPs and Bahamians of other or no party affiliations are equally heir.
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