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REMARKS
BY THE HON. FRED MITCHELL MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND THE PUBLIC
SERVICE
GRADUATION
FOR NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
CRYSTAL
PALACE
NASSAU
SUNDAY 31ST
OCTOBER 2004
It is my honour and privilege to have been asked to speak here
today. I wish to say that I
am pleased to have been asked to come and I know how it feels to have
finally accomplished this goal. I
remember very well my graduation from the John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University in 1980.
I felt that I could conquer the world.
It is a good feeling indeed.
Let me also thank the officials of Nova Southeastern University
for all the work that their institution is doing to assist The Bahamas
in the training of its people.
I want also at this time on behalf of the Government of The
Bahamas to congratulate all of the graduates who are here this afternoon
for the completion of their time at study.
The task you have now is to go out and commit your learning in a
way that brings about change in our country.
You must be agents of change, and not choke when the changes
stare us in the face.
A bit of house keeping. I
wish to apologize for the fact that I am unable to stay for the duration
of the ceremony this afternoon. I
have a constituent who is celebrating her 75th birthday at this same
hour and I am expected to bring remarks there, and there is a visiting
priest from St. Agnes Church in Miami at my own Church, St. Agnes in
Nassau, in whose visit I am also involved and so, other duties call.
Please let me assure that this is meant in no way to be
demeaning. I have the utmost respect for the hard work that has come to
fruition here. It is my
hope that while I am with you this afternoon that I will say something
that you will take away and remember.
In 1987, I was a resident of Grand Bahama and had an opportunity
to meet the head of the Lutheran Church in Grand Bahama, the church
owner of the Sunland School. He said to me something I never forgot, and that was that a
country had to invest in its intellectual capacity, if the country was
going to succeed.
Some years later, while in the classroom at Harvard’s Kennedy
School, an academic said that it had been discovered by a study done by
the Inter American Development Bank that the key to uplifting people
from poverty was investing in education.
That too I never forgot, and it is a lesson that I have taken
with me as a pubic policy maker in The Bahamas today.
The year is 2004 and I am a policy maker.
It is my job to bring my individual experiences, knowledge and
conscience to the day-to-day decision making in The Bahamas for the time
that I am allowed on the stage. I
am trying to use that knowledge to create a liberal democracy, in a
secular state, one that is pluralistic in its politics and
religion, and tolerant in its social views, with social and economic
mobility for its people. Within
that, there should be an abiding respect for the privacy of the
individual and his or her family and, in so far as is possible, a lack
of government regulation of the lives of people.
In speaking here today, I hope I am enlisting you in that army of
change.
My predecessors in office, in 1967, decided for the first time in
the history of the country that education should be the major budget
item. It has been that way
from that day to this. As a
Member of Parliament, I believe that what is most important is to seek
to get resources for the schools in my area.
I serve three schools: Sandilands Primary School, L.W. Young
Junior High and Dame Doris Johnson Senior High.
I am proud of the three schools.
I never lose an opportunity to ask for resources for these
schools. The children and young adults need as much help, comfort and
support as they can get. If
our education system is up to the mark then the quality of the lives of
our nation will be enhanced.
My parents believed in education. And I am sure that you can tell
stories similar to that of my generation where our parents were
artisans, handymen or craftsmen, labourers and domestics but they
believed that if their children went to school, that the lives of their
children would improve. Today,
we can say without fear of contradiction that the success story of The
Bahamas is present for all here to see.
Your lives have been enriched beyond the wildest dreams and
measures of your parents.
Now it is up to you to take it to the next stage.
The Bahamas of today demands faster, quicker, better.
That is what all of the talk about public sector reform is hoping
to accomplish: faster, quicker, better.
The quality of life of the country can be enhanced if we do
things, faster quicker and better.
The system needs a refit. I have said, as Public Service
Minister, that the systems that we now use for decision making and
execution are systems that were designed in the 19th century
for a country of just a few
thousand people. They do
not serve a world of 300,000 and five million tourists well at all.
And so again I am here today to enlist your support for the
faster, quicker and better way.
At the same time, however as we embrace modernity, there is a
need to remember who we are as a community.
Fox Hill, the constituency that I have the honour to represent,
contains within it the unique village of Fox Hill.
As you know, it is one of the few villages in the country of
freed African slaves. I
spend much of my time as representative saying especially to the
children at the Sandilands Primary School, established over one hundred
years ago for the education of freed African children, that theirs is a
precious heritage which they have to protect.
Part of that heritage is their social history, part of it is also
the trees. We are fighting
a battle today with developers who come in and tear down the tree cover
without any sense of the kind of area that they are in.
I resist with my utmost being the cutting down of the trees and
believe that it is the height of insensitivity by anyone who does so
without regard for the kind of community that we seek to build.
That does not mean that we do not have development but we must
sustainable development. And I say to all who come into Fox Hill that
you must get along with the community, the people who live there and
respect their traditions, ways and protect their environment in a
sustainable way.
That is the irony of the call for change.
It is a delicate balancing act of reaching for the future as
against protecting the traditions of the past.
We must do both. To do both we must know who we are and where we
have come from.
That is why there is such a reaction from Bahamians when
non-elected bodies like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) will come making demands that we must change our way
of life to accommodate international standards.
Remember my characterization of the Bahamian way of life as an
abiding belief in the privacy of the individual with an absence of
regulation. This way of
life is clearly under stress today as we note the terror of even the
simple experience of cashing a check or trying to board an airplane, the
intrusion in the private affairs of the individual in the name of
security. Clearly, persons
such as ourselves will be leaders in the field both in the public and
the private sector and it is up to you to try to strike the delicate
balance between the forces.
While it is clear that we must correct our way of life, it is
equally clear that we must embrace change and accommodate international
standards if our financial services sector is going to survive.
I read with some bemusement the other day, the column of a former
Minister of the Government in The Tribune last Thursday.
It appears he is confused by the policy of the Government on the
Caribbean Single Market and Economy.
I use bemusement advisedly because the decisions on CARICOM could
have been made but they were not and it is left to this dispensation to
do so. The irony of the
whole situation is that The Bahamas finds itself formally out of
CARICOM, while during the 1990s it worked so hard, said a former
Minister of the Government, to ensure that Haiti became a member.
CARICOM is for The Bahamas a strategic geopolitical alliance.
I find persuasive the view that it is time for us to sign on to
CARICOM with the necessary reservations to the revised Treaty of
Chaguaramas. This
reservations should be on the Caribbean Court of Justice, the free
movement of people, monetary union and the question of tariffs which
might adversely affect revenue. The view is advanced that since we are already decided on the
question of World Trade Organization membership, there is a benefit to
full CARICOM membership on the tariff issue because we get to agree on
what the tariff will be with the region and then that level is the same
level for the WTO. It seems
to make sense.
The author of the article was confused because he could not
understand the decision-making process of the policy.
You, of course, know from your studies that you first have to
identify the objective and learn and discuss the nature of the problem.
Once you identify the problem, you then set out by analysis to
solve it. You offer
suggestions, see what the feedback is and then decide.
At all stages there is open, transparent consultation.
It is the right way to do things.
I hope that when the literature becomes available on this that
you will look at it and offer your suggestions.
When the Prime Minister of Barbados Owen Arthur was here in 2003
in August he agreed that because of The Bahamas unique situation, it
should be able to negotiate the reservations that we require. He agreed
to support them. It is wise
now to encourage a further advance.
The brief note that you gave me as I was preparing for this
address says the following: “ Graduates of NSU are prepared not only
to embrace the constant changes in the workplace but also to embrace the
opportunities of the global village with business and entrepreneurial
skills. The Free Trade
Agreement of the Americas and the Caribbean Single Market and Economy
are evidence of the changed face of trade and cross cultural
relationships with partners through the Caribbean and the world.”
To take you at your word, with your Degrees, the world is your
oyster, and we should be able with your help to make that faster,
quicker, better society, that protects its traditions but also embraces
change. The country will
expect no less of you.
It remains for me to thank you once again for listening to me and
for affording me this rare privilege to speak to the intelligentsia of
the country. I look forward
to working with you as we dare to struggle and dare to win.
Congratulations again!
Thank you
and God Bless you!
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