Commencement Address 
By The Right Hon. Perry Gladstone Christie
Prime Minister 
Of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas
On the occasion of graduation exercises
At Northern Caribbean University
Mandeville, Jamaica
August 13, 2006

 August 18, 2006 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the governing body, Mr. President, government officials, ministers of the gospel, distinguished guests, graduates of the Class of 2006: 

I am honoured by the recognition bestowed upon me by your university and, through me, you have honoured my country, The Bahamas.  I thank you for the warm reception you have given me and my party. It is always a pleasure to visit beautiful Mandeville, a jewel in the precious diadem of beauty and resources with which God has blessed the island of Jamaica – Big Yard.  

Before I go any farther, I hasten to offer my heartiest congratulations to the Class of 2006 for all that this day represents for you in milestones passed, goals achieved, dreams realized, reasons to dream anew. 

Graduates, you represent the cream of the crop of the nations and territories you call home and, as the Scriptures tell us, to whom much is given, much is expected. I can hardly think that there is a single one of the represented countries that does not have a need of your talents to contribute to furthering its national project. If you have embraced your university’s value statement, Ubi Semper Discimus – “Where learning never ends”, then you know that to live is to learn and to learn is to live. And it must be so very exciting to realize that the future of all the nations represented here today depends largely on your endless learning experience.   

I can tell the Bahamians among you that your country certainly has need of you. We are not yet a half million, the people of The Bahamas, and so every single, well-intentioned person who can lay claim to that title is as precious as water in a desert. You can view yourselves as rare, much desired and very necessary to the quality of life of those around you. And we in The Bahamas have worked hard to create an infrastructure to provide you with the tools with which you will help to engineer the 21^st century Bahamas.  

Graduates, we, as developing nations, cannot afford to squander our most valuable resource—our people. The recognition and stewardship of resources must be the watchwords for development and our very survival in this new century. We no longer live in the age when a king’s ransom in natural resources lay around the next turning in the road. There are no more undiscovered territories on this earth, unless they lie beneath the seas that do not readily yield up their wealth to land-bound men and women. Yes, the future of our homelands, of our region, of our planet lies in husbanding, re-discovering, expanding and enhancing what we have. It is in extrapolating from the known that we have always found the new. 

It is important to realize that our region and its peoples were stamped with an expiry date that predates our birth. The Caribbean and any country you can name in the area or on its circumference, have been viewed for more than five centuries as places of extraction, not as candidates for serious development. They said we couldn’t govern ourselves or support stable governments—We have done so. They said that we could not build stable economies. Yet, despite the best efforts of the metropolitan lands to disrupt or at the very least subjugate, we persist with our dignity intact. The notion of independent, respected tertiary institutions in the Caribbean region, built by our hands, managed sustainably by us, was thought to be a contradiction in terms.   

And yet, we have the evidence of the strength and persistence and burgeoning growth of Seventh-day Adventist witness in the Caribbean, which started as an orphan child to be relegated to the dust heap like Cinderella. It is a witness that fashioned men and women like the leaders of this fine institution and men like the President of The Bahamas Conference, Pastor Leonard Johnson and the late Pastor Keith Albury, former President, to whom I pay tribute today. It is a witness that fashioned men and women like the first Provost of Northern Caribbean University, Dr. Althea Moncur McMillan, my high school classmate. Other Bahamian graduates include Dr. Kevin Moss, physician; Mrs. Theresa Edwards, attorney; Desmond Edwards, attorney and the late Kayla Lockhart Edwards. These are people who give the lie to today’s dictum that you cannot be moral and govern successfully, that you cannot find financial solvency without being rapacious. 

Northern Caribbean University gives the lie to the scepticism regarding our ability to construct institutions of worth and endurance. You are now within shouting distance of your 100^th anniversary—I would say that that constitutes longevity. That you have grown in capacity and quality to the point where you could award your first doctorates in 2005—I would say that there is plenty to indicate worth in this and any of your long list of achievements, which include your own television and radio facilities. And I am so proud that the youngest student to enroll at Northern Caribbean University, a twelve year old Bahamian, will be a freshman Theology major in September, and this summer will host a show on the university’s radio station. 

I take great pleasure in commending those who had the faith to launch out against all odds to build this worthy institution. I congratulate you, President Thompson, your administrative team, your faculty and staff, who picked up the torch and kept it brightly burning. Today represents your victory as much as it does the achievement of your students. 

The College of The Bahamas has had to fight the same negativism for the past three decades and yet we forge ahead. Despite the obstacles, we are preparing students who are in demand as graduate students and researchers in the most rigourous of first world institutions. Our alumni can be found in leadership positions across every economic sector of The Bahamas. Moreover, it is the studied intention of the Bahamas Government to enact the appropriate legislation to establish the University of The Bahamas, as soon as the strategic planning is complete. I expect to be informed of the latter achievement in the very short term. 

And here you are today, Class of 2006, proud graduates. Because of NCU, you possess learning and analytical ability to compete globally, and are the beneficiaries of a moral and spiritual grounding powerful enough to guide you in a righteous walk and provide you with a bulwark against the storms of the tempestuous times in which we live. I assure you—you will need to go forward from this day wearing the full armour. Be inspired by your University’s 20,000 plus graduates, who have served the world with distinction in many professions. 

The builders of colleges and universities endure the rigours and sacrifice of their undertaking and you graduates have taken on the challenges of study at this level because we all recognize the supreme importance of education. Just a few days ago, we celebrated the anniversary of the abolition of legislated slavery in our countries almost two hundred years ago, but I tell you today that the work of true emancipation is still in its infancy. 

In our region, our possibilities and dreams are still held in chains, in many places, by insufficient access to educational opportunities. We are still shackled by prejudices inherited from the Old World and new ones we foolishly allowed to take root in the new. We are still hamstrung by unchecked migration. The peoples of the Caribbean are still hobbled by the grip of soul- and economy-destroying trade in and addictions to illegal substances. 

True education, such as that offered by NCU and which feeds the whole person, mind, body and spirit – is education that speaks to the dignity of humankind, education that does not discriminate on the basis of gender or any other prejudice that holds one individual to have rights greater than another, education that does not, in false pride, allow modernity to crush and discard worthy tradition. I’m talking about education that leaves the Creator in the story of Creation—this is the key that will eventually unlock the last manacles. 

Still, despite the sometimes overwhelming challenges, we have done well in the Caribbean. We have done well in our institutions of higher learning, but our story is still pretty much at dawn. The question of the moment is - Where do we go from here, as the new day and the new age roll in? 

To answer the question, we must have recourse to the question of resource management which, in turn, lies in brotherhood and mutually respectful cooperation and partnership. The future for our countries, for Northern Caribbean University, for the University of The Bahamas, must be grounded in discovering that brotherhood, the commonalities of history, geography, culture and identity, and nurturing them for mutual benefit. Individually, we only have some of the answers; together, we will possess that many more. 

I humbly suggest that our institutions begin with talks as to how we can establish cooperative ventures in programming, research, conferences, exchanges of faculty and students and general facilitation. I maintain that we can retain our individual identities in doing so.  

What is of greater benefit is initiate discussions at the regional level among all tertiary institutions to support the notion of husbanding resources. I believe firmly that the way ahead lies in creating signature programmes at each institution, which draw on the particular strength and uniqueness that each of our territories possesses. Depending on our resource base, some of us may be best positioned to develop strong tourism and hospitality, marine science, agriculture, heavy industry and the like. Why can we not begin to think of sending students to benefit from these areas of strength for at least a part of their programme? 

Whether we are fully conscious of it, the people of our region possess some of the best brains and the greatest fortitude known to man. You have only to reflect on our performance in various fields. If we based our assessments of supremacy on a population size to achievement ratio, the Caribbean would emerge as the real powerhouse. Why can we not use those brains to create think tanks to create a superior intellectual property from which all our institutions and territories might benefit? 

As I bring my remarks to a close, I wish to say that Northern Caribbean University, The College/University of The Bahamas, you graduates, our several peoples have a unique opportunity and a unique responsibility. We have to show the world how to make capital from the celebration of commonalities, the promotion of brotherhood, rather than highlighting differences as justification for conflict and wanton destruction. 

I implore you today to hold fast to the Caribbean identity that  upholds extended families, that reduces the numbers of orphans who must be institutionalized and senior citizens who must be hidden away in old folks homes, rather than celebrated as elders and tradition bearers. We must cling to the traditions of our foreparents, which passed on the values and history of our tribes to our young through song and story. Are there many Jamaicans, Bahamians, Dominicans, Antiguans, Trinidadians or indeed, any Caribbean nationals born before 1960 who did not sit in a family group to listen in fascination to the exploits of our parents and their parents? We must continue to tell our stories in this intimate way, but at the same time expand the number of communications vehicles, so that our histories and our values are strengthened and live on. 

I hold fast to the belief that the most precious part of the Caribbean identity is that, in this world of daily increasing irreverence, we are not ashamed of the name of Christ, not disparaging of public praise and worship, and have not legislated against prayer in state institutions. 

However, I despair that too many families and nations of today have not bothered to define and promote morality, spirituality and the values of education, honesty, hard work and responsibility to our fellow human beings, to country and to God. The end result is that we leave a vacuum in the minds and hearts of our youth to be colonized by the prurient and destructive.  

Let us pledge to join hands to do all we can to hold back the tide of ethnic and religious conflict that threatens to overcome the world. It begins with the promotion of high quality education, such as that with which Northern Caribbean University has gifted today’s graduates. However, it reaches its fullest maturity and beauty in the hearts of God-fearing men and women, who do not hide their talents under bushels but invest them, polish them and set them in high places to give light to a despairing world, sowing the seeds of hope. Pledge to make a difference in our world. 

Thank you.