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The Bahamas Is “Adrift” Says Bahamian Anglican Archbishop - Drexel Gomez
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The Nation Is “Adrift” Says Archbishop Gomez:
By TAMARA McKENZIE-
Nassau, Bahamas:



Archbishop Drexel Gomez:

A prominent religious leader known not to mince words declared on Sunday that the Bahamas is presently "drifting" and he is not entirely optimistic about its future. "I am ambivalent and sometimes I am not optimistic," said Archbishop Drexel Gomez. "I think that we are just ambling along and making our way. At present I think we are drifting a bit. I don’t really see any clear signals in terms of going in a certain direction and certainly this whole question of empowering people and creating a situation in which Bahamians feel that this is their country and they have a say in what happens, I don’t see that happening."

The Anglican Archbishop for the West Indies and Diocesan Bishop of the Bahamas, was a special guest Sunday on the Jones & Co. radio talk show hosted by Wendall Jones and Godfrey Eneas.

Archbishop Gomez said Bahamians should make it their responsibility to see that they have a government that is trying to keep pace with the realities of their expectations in order to produce a "Bahamianization" policy that is truly Bahamian.

"It [Bahamianization policy] will be a way of life accepted by most people and one that most people can buy into and work towards. [Right now] most Bahamians feel like they don’t have any say in what happens," Archbishop Gomez.

Archbishop Gomez said while he was not "certain" that the future was bright for the Bahamas, he still believes that the Bahamas and its citizens have the wherewithal to move forward in a positive light.

"I think we need the political will," Archbishop stressed. "We need to have a policy that really brings more people into the decision making and find ways of doing it. We really need some real planning and we are not really good at planning as a nation."

"We should be able to say that in 10 years time this is where we want to be. A country must have some idea of where it is headed and in today’s Bahamas, we seem to be headed from one budget speech to the next, interspersed with some news about this foreigner or the next foreigner coming in to spend some money or bring some plan."

"Where is the national plan and where does all of this fit into a national plan" Gomez questioned.

According to the Anglican Archbishop, the Bahamas has the resources available to devise a clear plan of where it wants to go. He added, however, that because he doesn’t see this happening at this present moment, he has no hope.

Asked if he felt that Christianity was competing with secularism, Archbishop Gomez said because the Bahamas exists as a by product of what is going on overseas, especially in America, Bahamians don’t have a sense of what it really means to be Bahamian or to establish a Bahamian way of life.

"What was Bahamian is largely influenced by external forces and external factors," Gomez said. "To add insult to injury, we live in a country where the economy is determined by outsiders….outsiders decide the fate of Bahamians. Unfortunately as a country we don’t seem to be interested in reversing that trend but I would hate to be in a Bahamas that puts a curtain around the whole Bahamas that stops the outsiders from coming in, but I would be happier if we were living in a situation where we were able to determine our destiny in a far greater degree than we presently are."

According to Archbishop Gomez, many Bahamians are caught in a "bind" where too many of them believe that only elected officials hold the wisdom to make sensible decisions and they were not tapping the minds of other intellectuals.

Asked by one of the talk show hosts if the Bahamas had lost its way because it was too caught up in materialism, Gomez said when making a comparison to what the Bahamas was like when he was teenager there has been a drastic change in attitudes.

"In terms of morality, my recollection of my teenage days and earlier, there was a lot of immorality around and we had the same teenage pregnancy problems and illegitimacy was real, although the present figures are higher now than they were then but fundamentally we are different now because our assumptions are different."

"What we take for granted now is quite different from what the older Bahamians took for granted. And therefore expectations change and I think it is the expectations in the Bahamian community today that are creating some of the problems related to crime and violence because people are unable to match their expectations to reality."

August 18, 2008 | 11:48 PM Comments  0 comments

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