“Africa doesn’t need strong men — it needs strong institutions.” — President Barack Obama, Address to Ghanaian Parliament, July 11, 2009
It’s been two years now, and there’s been all kind of noise in the public sphere about Bahamian party politics and who bears responsibility for the difficult times we have faced for most of that time, and who will deal most effectively with the difficult times we will face. Most of the time I leave the discussions and the debates about personalities (which is most of what the discussion addresses, even now, mid-term) and political party up to politicized pundits. There’s enough noise out there, and it really hasn’t done us any good.
And it seems to me that every moment we spend focussing on small tings — like which colour tie the majority of the members of parliament wear, or which initials we can attach to the administration (and what is the difference, anyway, in real terms?), or whether Perry Christie or Hubert Ingraham is better cut out to lead The Bahamas through the twenty-first century (the answer, of course, is neither — both men were shaped irretrievably by the third quarter of the twentieth and neither has demonstrated the ability to recognize the current environment we face and find ways that are relevant to today to meet its challenges) — is time wasted. Our whole political campaign in 2007 was an exercise in time-wasting; because I believe with all my heart that, like Africa, what The Bahamas needs is not strong men, but strong institutions.
Yesterday was independence day here in The Bahamas. Normally I write that title with capital letters, like a proper noun; but today I’m not capitalizing the first letter of the date because I don’t think we truly understand the challenges and responsibilities of being independent. Too many of our leaders, no matter what party to which they apparently pledge allegiance (which, for too many of them, changes with a dizzying flourish anyway), do not value our independence, but prefer rather to wait for strong men from elsewhere to solve our difficult problems. Development by dependence is the model they appear to prefer. It’s so much easier, after all, isn’t it, to allow a monolithic investor to come in and provide short-term happiness. But the hollowness that results in our own society hurts us all. For instance, while Atlantis was employing thousands in the 1990s and early 2000s, our own institutions were growing weaker and weaker and more and more irrelevant, and no strong-man leader had the guts (or the vision) to tackle that fact. The result? We have, if we’re lucky, perhaps five more years of functionality within our public entities. We’re already beginning to see the crumbling of public services — from our inability to handle the renewal of passports to the apparent impossibility, despite hundreds of millions being spent in borrowed money on road improvements, to keep our traffic lights working. And the answer does not easily lie in privatization; governments have responsibilities to all their citizens, and one of those responsibilities is to ensure that the smallest and weakest of their citizens is not placed in a position of vulnerability to rapacious private enterprises which have no allegiance to their clients beyond the amount of money they make from them.
Our problem? Like Africa and many other post-colonial regions of the world, our focus has for far too long been on electing strong men instead of demanding strong institutions for ourselves. We have not built our nation in any way that can be guaranteed to last into the future. And our debate continues to ignore that fact.
So my hat’s off to Barack Obama today. Let us take heed from those countries around us who have invested in strong men at the cost of building strong institutions. Let us learn from those nations where for years and years good government continued even when the leaders of those countries were people whose names have been easily and quickly forgotten because the institutions that governed those nations were stronger than the individual weaknesses. And let us recognize that there is value in creating and maintaining the institutions that we need.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear Nico:
Trust you are well.
I hope that Mr. Obama remembers all these fine words about institutions and over taxation etc when he gets back on his home soil.
I found this comment by you intriguing:
“…and one of those responsibilities is to ensure that the smallest and weakest of their citizens is not placed in a position of vulnerability to rapacious private enterprises which have no allegiance to their clients beyond the amount of money they make from them.”
It’s funny, but from where I sit we make every effort to satisfy the customer to keep them coming back.
We’ve never sat in a meeting to say, “let’s see now, how can we take advantage of our clients today?”
All the best,
Rick
I thought that might get a comment from you, Rick.
I wasn’t thinking so much about enterprises that provide people with services that they have the power of choice over, like your business; I was thinking about the things that government provides, that we accept as being necessary aids for modern life, like the provision of running water and electricity and roads and telephone service and national transportation systems and so on — things that have hitherto been provided by public or publicly owned institutions and which are currently being considered for privatization.
The problem I have with privatization is that privately owned companies are accountable to no wider constituencies than their shareholders, and that to become a shareholder in most private companies you have to have the means to invest in them. Sizeable numbers of people are left out. The track record of far too many private companies when dealing with people to whom they have no accountability is, well, no accountability. The selling off of British Rail remains the glaring example of how privatization made a formerly efficient public transportation system a pretty silly institution. I remain skeptical about the value of private enterprise in every situation.
“Means to invest”?
The example I use is the investment club I am involved with.
I would never have had shares if I did not invest through a group.
Without putting away that little bit each month I could not participate and one day own something or leave something for my kids.
It does take time though.
We often wish to forget the journey to get the “means”, we think they fell out of the sky or the like.
Your example may be fine for the employed, the able-bodied, the of-age, the healthy, the mortgage-free, the already set-in-life. What about those people who have trouble meeting the everyday ordinary requirements of life (and there are plenty of them out there)?Should they be disadvantaged because they don’t have enough disposable income to invest, group or no group? Governments don’t have the luxury of rejecting them, unlike private companies. As inefficient as governments are, that’s the good thing about them — they are responsible for us all, not just for the ones who already have a measure of financial independence.
You might be surprised that I am not mortgage free as you imply. But I still make every effort to save.
One would not expect the unemployed to be in a position to save, but any worker can save. It’s a matter of priorities.
Pension plan or cell phone.
Health insurance or fancy rims?
Etc.
Savings has to start at some point.
I forget the numbers, but if you put $20 a week away for a new born baby, it is surprising how much that adds up to when they finish high school.
I only wish I was in the financial position people think I’m in.
Same here.
Missed you!
You’re right of course, but even judicious planning does not eradicate poverty altogether, or provide everyone with disposable income enough to make them worthy of consideration by corporate culture.
And the possession of assets is far too ephemeral a thing to guarantee corporate regard forever. Even the best-off individual, health insurance or no, can have savings wiped out by a critical or chronic illness, and fall off the corporate radar.
One of the strengths of democracy is the right to demand strong institutions that can provide support for all citizens, regardless of their situation (and after all, that’s what I started this post to talk about). WE DON’T HAVE THEM. All we have are individuals bent on shoring up their petty fiefdoms while at the same time shirking the responsibility that their office lays upon them — ensuring that all of their citizens have basic access to basic support, no matter what their status in life.
Oh, and in automobile retail your hands may be relatively clean. If you were in the insurance business, however…
Thanks Nico:
Yes, my sisters step son with Downs cant get insurance so we know what it’s like.
But we (our family) don’t assume the state, or other people have an obligation to him.
That’s where we differ.
Governments, or what they have become, are failed concepts. They are simply too big, nor can they fulfill all our wants or desires. Heck they can’t even properly fulfill our Constitutional Rights.
However, few of us take that into consideration when we keep requesting that they do more.
I don’t get it.
Is there any wonder they are a shambles?
Check this video out: http://www.weblogbahamas.com/blog_bahamas/2009/07/james-bartholomew-the-welfare-state-were-in.html
Rick