Fr. Campbell Asks: Reject British Honours

Rev Canon Sebastian Campbell has issued a strong plea to his fellow clergymen in The Bahamas who received the recently announced British Honours not to accept them.  Rev Campbell is the Chair of the National Heroes Day Committee and has been on a twenty year or more campaign to get the British honours abolished and local honours introduced.  The PLP passed new legislation to do so but failed before they left office to implement the provisions of the act.  Prime Minister Hubert Minnis just before the Christmas break announced that he was bringing the new orders into effect but at the same time granted new British honours, many of them to his FNM donors in the last election like Mark Holowesko and Nancy Kelly.  Two preachers Rex Major and Ranford Patterson received them as well.  Rev. Patterson was an obstructionist for the FNM while the PLP was in power and he was head of the Christian Council.  Antonius Roberts, the artist, was interviewed by the Nassau Guardian and said that he would have preferred the Bahamian honours but the fact is the British honours were also part of our system and so if the country was honouring him he thought he was bound to take it.  Dr. Minnis and the FNM are perverse.  They ought to have followed the policy line of the PLP which is while they would not ban people from getting them, they would not grant any more of them.