Dr Keith Russell On Michael Pintard and the GBPA
We see you—now!
The Honorable Michael Pintard, leader of the Free National Movement and leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, is a colonialist, with communistic tendencies. But most egregious, disturbing and repugnant of all is that he appears to be a “House Negro”. All of which makes him woefully unsuited to ascend to the highest office in a free, independent and democratic nation, which happens to be predominantly black.
By his own admission, he supports the continuation of a colony, which Freeport is, and advocates to extend the illegitimate control over this jurisdiction and its people, by the descendants of the colonial masters. Tacitly, he justifies this undemocratic dominance by viewing it as the only way to bring order, stability and prosperity to the city of Freeport. And silently imbedded in this view is the offensive suggestion that the indigenous inhabitants of Freeport are too unintelligent, too unqualified or too uncivilized to chart their own destiny.
When pushed about his atrocious position, he pivots to his Communist leanings. His alternative to government of the people, by the people and for the people is to have a select Committee, made up only of the licensees of the Grand Bahama Port Authority, to govern and make the rules for the rest of us.
However, the most heinous notion, implicit in his grand performance, on that night of revelation at the town hall meeting, is that the people of Freeport should never have agency; they should never be free; they should never determine their own destiny; they need the master’s perpetual oversight. Some suggests that he is unrepentant in this flagrant miscalculation because he is compromised; he is meagerly benefiting from the status quo, from the crumbs off the master’s table.
Let’s be clear; in 1954 a group of white men, in a highly racialized environment, propelled by the doctrine of white supremacy, carved up Grand Bahama, giving themselves 99 years of economic and social rule of a section that would become the free trade zone, Freeport. They were mimicking history, just as a few European nations in the previous century, led by the same immoral doctrine, in 1884 at the Berlin Conference, carved up Africa, giving themselves rule over indigenous people.
In both cases, this colonial rule was brutal, savage, inhuman and immoral. In both jurisdictions, from day one, the original inhabitants resisted. In Africa, independence movements spread across the continent, gaining freedom, beginning with Ghana in 1957. They knew that the 1884 agreement, written into law, was immoral. They knew that their creator endowed them with inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We too in the Bahamas fought, gaining our independence in 1973. Still, the anomaly called Freeport (the colony) continued, undergirded by this infamous, diabolical Hawksbill Creek Agreement. Listen; inalienable rights are fundamental, inherent; they cannot be taken away, surrendered or transferred by any government, authority or legal document. Therefore, this Hawksbill Creek agreement should have become null and void from the day of independence.
Alas, The Honorable Michael Pintard wants this document, an affront to human dignity, to remain. He says the government shouldn’t manage Freeport. Obviously, he doesn’t understand democracy. We, the people, are the government. Pintard’s position suggests that we are incapable of self-governance. Does he think that we don’t have the mental capacity? The expertise? This renders him an enemy of democracy, an enemy of freedom and an enemy of progress. No private company should have governmental privileges and powers in a free state—period!
I applaud Prime Minister Davis and his administration for holding this private company to account. But, of course, I’m from that other school of thought. In my vision, I see padlocks and chains on doors and cessation of operations. Unapologetically, I’m from the by-any-means-necessary school.
Concerning that other school of thought, and Mr. Pintard seems to be of that tutelage, that the government can’t successfully manage Freeport, space nor time allows me to properly debunk the supreme idiocy of that impoverished, retrograde and nonsensical view. That school of thought also goes to great pains to point out all the wonderful things the GBPA and its wicked agreement has brought to the city (I hear echoes of Jacob and Esau). Again, it’s a matter of time and space. Because if I have to advance an argument here about the incongruity or the absolutely oxymoronic or odious notion of the “Good Master”, I would have to saturate this peace with expletives.
Mr. Pintard, we see you. You came out. Thank you. Maya Angelou made popular the saying that when someone shows you who they are believe them, the first time. The people of Marco City should not vote for a person who believes that they and their descendants should remain in a state of perpetual servitude; a state of affairs where they are always the laborers and never the owners. I understand why the owners want to maintain the arrangement. They are not like us. Sadly, Mr. Pintard appears not to be like us either.
I recall that powerful scene in the movie Amistad, about the slave ship that was taken over by slaves, somewhere in that unholy Middle Passage. Eventually, they were captured and brought to trial for the audacity of wanting to be free. During the trial, Joseph Cinque, the leader of the resistance, is watching the proceedings from the dock. His contorted face reveals that he is straining to understand the strange language, trying to weigh the outlandish contradictions; finally, his brilliant African mind pushes through the minutiae and the manure and comes to a certain clarity. The issue is simple: are we going to be free or be enslaved? This is when his frustrated, but thundering voice rattles the rafters, silencing the hypocrisy in the kangaroo courtroom: “give us free!” he shouts.
I write; you decide