We live in a time when practically every one wants to do their own thing.
This is wrong.Regrettably, having traveled for so long on this road to destruction, some Bahamians see no reason to get off.
With that point made, we today we renew our persistent call for leadership in all spheres of society to get back to basics, and reach for the re- establishment of rules and regulations to govern the way people live in these islands. Everywhere we turn we see signs of lawlessness and contempt for the law.
Bahamians – in their vast and sometimes most distinguished majority – seem to have a gargantuan appetite for ugliness and indiscipline. Two examples might suffice to illustrate the point we are attempting to make. One involves the mess, which has been made of Arawak Cay.
Despite their rhetoric about keeping The Bahamas clean, green and pristine, The Minister of Health, the Hon. Marcus Bethel and Parliamentary Secretary Ron Pinder, Member of Parliament for the Marathon Constituency are barely coping with the challenge. The evidence of their failure is literally on the ground. Communities are still littered with all manner of garbage and debris; roadside garages are flourishing; and there is practically everywhere massive evidence of environmental degradation run amok.
That unsightly mess is now one of the more preferred watering holes for any number of social luminaries and hundreds of more ordinary folk. However humble or however exalted, the Bahamians who patronize the businesses on Arawak Cay seem totally oblivious to the fact that the entire operation is a blight on the landscape. And quite frankly, we could care less for the fact that there are very many Bahamians who like the place just the way it is.
Fact is that these Bahamians may not even know that they are wallowing in a sea of ugliness. Like most everything else, use becomes second nature. But from where we sit, that place is simply disastrous. It is one unsightly, smelly firetrap.
Our word to the wise is that they should move post-haste to nip this potential disaster in the bud. And for sure, the rot on Potters’ Cay is another ugly mess.
Regrettably, it seems quite unlikely that anything is going to be done by anyone, any time soon. Some of the people who are in a position to agitate for change; or to see to it that change comes are precisely some of the people who seem to enjoy the mess, and who do just that throughout the week, and sometimes twice on Sundays. Indeed, ‘just-the-way it is’ and liking it in that state of extreme ‘qualification’ is precisely what we are talking about; and it is precisely this attitude, which keeps this mess running.
There is –as far as we are concerned- no way under the sun that Arawak Cay could ever pass muster with the Town Planning Committee. It’s quite apparent that no one has had the courage to call that mess by its proper name, that being that it is one unholy mess, smack dab on some of the most valuable property in the country. And quite evidently, therefore, if we are correct in our surmise that firetrap and health-hazard Arawak Cay is operating with impunity, we have on our hands an even larger and uglier mess.
This time around, government itself would be found to be collusive in law breaking. And if this does not prove to be the case, we would argue that there is something dreadfully wrong with a Topsy-like project and others like it, which are allowed to grow up, willy-nilly so to speak.
The other example of ‘uglification’ involves the hordes of young Bahamians who are every day disgorged in their tens of thousands onto this nation’s streets. Here the focus is on the havoc that they inflict on this society on a daily basis. Very many of them are quite obviously lost; having been left to their devices by their tired parents and overworked teachers.
While we wish we could report that bad behaviour could be ascribed to a malignant minority, we cannot. Too many of the youth on the street are quite literally out of control. How else can anyone explain the graffiti spray painted on business houses and some homes; and pray tell how does anyone even begin to explain why it is that so many young Bahamians are allowed to go to school ‘any-old-how’.
Long gone are the days when the word ‘uniform’ would actually mean something in the real world.
And for sure, the way things are in The Bahamas so very often reflects the way they are in the United States of America, that great nation from which place comes this ‘nation’s’ bread and butter. The ill-discipline and lousiness there, have been adopted in The Bahamas. This need not be so.
Editorial from The Bahama Journal
