On June 7^th, 2016 the Bahamas will go to the polls for a Gender Equality referendum that has been delayed for over fourteen years.  Many are of the opinion that some of the questions being asked are a waste of time and can rectified by Parliament and the money better spent on correcting other issues in our constitution.

Today, two branches of government, the Executive and the Judicial, are caught up in a legal battle and it would seem that the constitution is insufficient to offer clarification.

“Mitchell: Injunction is nonsense” – The Nassau Guardian

Excerpt from this article; “As a Supreme Court Justice was hearing a constitutional motion from Save The Bays (STB) regarding private emails being read in the House of the Assembly, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration Fred Mitchell was in Parliament yesterday, again blasting an injunction issued by Justice Indra Charles that prohibits MP’s from releasing those emails.

Mitchell dismissed the injunction as ‘nonsense’.

‘I want to make this clear,’ he said.

‘I do not consider myself bound by an injunction issued by any court in so far as it applies to any attempt to stifle what I say and do in this place.  I will act accordingly.’

STB members are seeking a declaration from the court that they have a right to privacy under Article 23 of the constitution and that it is an entrenched fundamental right which trumps parliamentary privilege.”

A line has been drawn; one side seeks to invoke privacy laws as laid out by the constitution and the other seeks to violate these same laws by seeking to use parliamentary privilege as laid out in Article 53 of the constitution but this is only made possible by “Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, Parliament may make laws for the peace, order and good governance of the Bahamas (Article 52), which would tend to suggest that ‘good governance’ is a factor in the application of Article 53; so if the minister seeks to ‘act accordingly’ will he err on the side of caution by not violating article 23 of the constitution?

One of the main issues of these emails, beside them being private is the manner in which they were obtained.  The good Minister for Marathon, Jerome Fitzgerald claims that he found them in his political ‘garbage can’ and I can only feel that that he can only be referring to his mind when he uses this term but how did you obtain private emails of private citizens?

Mr. Mitchell actually makes a very relevant point when he asks, “You know even if we broke the injunction what was the court going to do?  How were they going to enforce it?, he asked” and this is where the constitution would have to make a clarification on which article actually trumps the other and what would be the possible ramifications for members of parliament violating the article.

Minister Mitchell goes on to ensure that all these emails are important because “When the facts reveal that there was, in fact a conspiracy to destabilize the government…..”, if this has not been proven to date and the minister has to violate Article 23 of the Constitution to do so then I would suggest that he has already lost this battle, but yet he forges ahead.

“Mitchell also sought to assure this constituents that he would not ‘blink or stutter’ and [he would] continue to serve unswervingly their interest in this place”, if only he had stepped forward in the Baha Mar crisis – serve the best interest of the people, but if by serving their best interest and ‘acting accordingly’ he seeks to act against the constitution itself, then what great purpose has he served?

The Progressive Liberal Party fails for one reason, it is within their nature.

END