Speak Prime Minister Davis, Speak

Fire upon OECD an EU racist Blacklisting

 

In this week’s Chat; I will focus my attention on  Prime Minister Davis’s  speech at the G77+ China Summit just concluded in Havana Cuba. Mr. Davis garnered much support in his dismantling of the OECD and EU incursions on economies in the region and made a bold call for the United Nations to oversee international tax co-operation and its administration, thus relinquishing the OECD and EU of this insidious and abusive tool.

 

Prime Minister Davis joined a round table of nations who have been negatively impacted by the imperial economic blackmailing and posturing of Europe and its indigenous trait of bossing around their former colonies with policies to crush their Black governments, their economies and the will of their citizens.

 

Prime Minister Davis was quick to point out that the economic hemorrhaging of Black Listing does irreparable damage to small developing nations. Mr. Davis in a brilliant sub juxtaposition showed how the developed countries of Europe are mostly responsible for the Climate crisis the world faces today and while countries like the Bahamas see their Balance of payments and public finances challenged by the new weather and climate phenomenon; the Europeans are indifferent, unrepentant and unrelenting.

 

Said the Prime Minister, “for too long we have lived in an environment where global tax policy was mandated and designed by the OECD, where the interests of the Global North prevail, often at the expense of small developing countries, primarily black governed former colonies in the Global South,” the Prime Minister said.

 

He called on the United Nations to step up and step in the release this strangle hold of the OECD and EU on countries like the Bahamas.

 

“The arbitrary and discriminatory actions of the OECD and EU have left countries of the Global South grappling with challenges not of their making, The climate crisis, largely created by industrialized countries, many in the Global North, poses existential threats to nations like ours. Blacklisting compounds these challenges, often leading to punitive financial penalties.

 

“The United Nations, representative of all nations, is the appropriate body to design and build truly equitable and inclusive international tax administration architecture. An environment of one country, one vote,” the Prime Minister said.

 

I cannot think of any other  dynamic, intellectually sound, poignant and audacious  speech this year;  given by a Caribbean Regional political leader such as Prime Minister Davis’s remarks in Havana.

 

This Davis speech puts him in the league of celebrated Caribbean Statesmen and Orators who effectively, without fear or favour advocate the interest of their nations and peoples.

 

Mr. Davis is now in the Hall of Fame League of former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley’s, and his iconic “ I have come to look for America” speech in the early 1970s at the United Nations, And Prime Minister Mia Motley of Barbados speech in Glasgow at the Climate conference; and Prime Minister Sir Lynden Pindling’s speech at the Caribbean Basin Initiative conference in Florida in 1981 in which Sir asked the United States to quantify the value it places on the strong alliances from the English speaking Caribbean. 

 

“Prime Minister emphasised the urgency for change.

We demand equal treatment,” he said,” is how the local Bahamian press reported Mr. Davis’s address.

 

In July this year, we had occasion to dissect the latest incursion of the OECD and EU in the CESRA amendments. I will re-publish my remarks made on my feet in that debate for my readers.

 

The new times in which we live will summon a new back bone to defend and protect this country. No Bend Down. Sir Lynden said we must  be prepared to fight for it. And so here we are standing up to the bully of the OECD and the EU. 

 

Here are my remarks in the CESRA Debate in the Senate :-

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Senator Darron S. Pickstock on CESRA in Senate Monday July 31st2023.

 

Madam President,

I reluctantly rise to 2nd the first reading and passage of these Amendments to the Commercial Entities Substance Requirement Act or CESRA 2018.

The learned Attorney General and the diligent Minister of Economic Affairs have painstakingly from Day one of the Davis PLP Government coming to office; expressed this country’s solemn and transparent commitment to meet the ever moving goal posts of the European Union, through the auspices of its various financial drone strike agencies such as the OECD; in order to avoid the  reputational damage to the Financial Services Industry of our sovereign country and to demonstrate to the former European colonizers that we are honest, accountable, transparent, reliable and competent.

 

Yet Madam President,

Blind Blake and Ray Charles can see that the European Union continues to move the goal posts, notwithstanding how former colonies such as the Bahamas are transparent in compliance and can show where we are always on track to insert and or activate new and pending protocols.

 

Madam President,

The man on the street says of the OEC D, “They think we are just stupid”.

 

There are some Bahamians who feel that the insurgency of the economic task master is aided and abetted by various sections of the media, whether they realize it or not. 

 

Madam President,

No one can deny how media has up served and garnished hysteria and panic in the Bahamas over the last twenty years over the European Union’s threat of Black Listing. Bahamians were like Chicken Little, the sky was falling, when this strike was first launched at the Hubert A. Ingraham Free National Movement Government.

 

We shuddered and shivered and yes we played politics as these forces slapped further reputational damage to our country’s financial services industry.

 

I should point out here, Madam President that the hysteria and panic which this black listing threat brings has nothing to do with P. I. P. which is Party in Power. 

Hubert Ingraham, FNM felt the sting of the media enablers of the cruel oppressive task master.

 

Perry G. Christie. PLP felt the same crush of the imperialist boots. 

Hubert Minnis, FNM discovered he too was not a blue eyed baby. 

And now under the Davis PLP administration the task master in Europe continues to crack its whip and herd nations of CARICOM, the regional brother and sisters onto Europe’s self-aggrandizing modern day economic plantation.

 

Madam President,

I will reluctantly support these pieces of legislation. I will give my support to the diplomatic efforts of the Caribbean Action Financial Task Force, of which the Bahamas is an emboldened member and partner, to meet the European Economic slave master on his terms.

 

Madam President,

Enough is enough.

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Europe Union and OECD is wrecking our Financial Services Industry.

European Union and OECD is pathetically dishonest and uses emotive and internationally charged impositions about Terrorist’s being funded or having access to fund their enterprises through jurisdictions like the Bahamas because, as you know we need Europe to watch over us and to be right up in our business.

 

To the gullible Bahamian or the weak kneed apologetic Bahamian; on the surface the OECD’s assertions seem honourable and sincere.

 

Yet Madam President,

The international record will show that there are member states in the European Union itself, who do not comply with the reporting requirements or the sharing of information that is placed on the Bahamas and other former Black government former colonies of Europe.

 

Further Madam President,

In several states of the United States of America, namely Nevada and Delaware; which is the western world’s biggest financial services center; the OECD and the European Union does not say diddly squat. The European Union issues no threat of Black Listing. The European Union and the OEC do not sit in Paris pontificating to Delaware and Nevada. As they say under the tree playing dominoes, HOG KNOW WHERE TO RUB DEY SKIN.

 

To the ordinary patriotic Bahamian who will tell it like it is; how can we dismiss that Bahamian’s commentary when he looks at what is happening and he concludes it is Economic Racism.

 

In other words, the ordinary man on the street has summed it all up as the condescending opinion of elitists in France that ask snobbishly; where the hell do we as former colonies of Europe, get off wanting to run Financial Service centers and to have Europeans who are eager to be our clients.

 

Madam President,

A new generation of Bahamian, and I would venture to suggest a new generation of Barbadians and  Antiguans have had enough.

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We are at the highest point of our patriotism and in this the year of our 50th Anniversary of Independence, we want to see Independence fully expressed and delivered.

 

So let the word go forth to friend and foe alike, that we are resilient and ebullient and determined.

We have weathered many a storm. And STILL HERE WE STAND.

When the United States annexed Hawaii as its 51st State and our once thriving pineapple industry was  rooted out to give favor and priority to what most saw as an inferior fruit in Hawaii  over that of Eleuthera; the Bahamian people  survived.

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When a suspicious international virus was used to wipe out our thriving Sponge industry, the Bahamian people survived.

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When the insatiable appetite for drugs by Americans and Europeans turned our island nation and its water ways into a killing field for narcotics trafficking; hoodwinked and mislead our people into the nefarious business; pushed their poison on our streets and into our children and  the powerful forces in the USA and Europe blamed us and sought to do us serious reputational harm; Yet we survived that.

 

Madam President,

Here we are at the dawn of the next 50 years. Marching humbly to the Centennial. We will not be denied.

Let me show you what I mean when I say that the acolytes of the European imperialists are at work in this country.

 

I challenge anyone, scholar or not, to read any article in the media going back over the last twenty plus years and see if you do not detect the  continuing thread or line which suggests that we, the Bahamian nation, we are doing something wrong; and the white man in Europe, has caught us and only wants to bring us back to the safety of his plantation.

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Go. University of the Bahamas scholars and students. Do your investigation and your reports and you will discover that it has only been of the last 12 months, where Bahamian thinkers, including Prime Minister Davis, the learned Attorney General, politician/lawyer Branville McCartney, Sir Franklyn Wilson who have come forward and rallied against the injustices that the EU and the OECD want to place on our Financial Services Industry. Only now we are now beginning to see fair reporting and the contrast as to what we in the Bahamas are being asked to do and what Delaware and Nevada and several developed countries who are members of the EU are allowed with not even an asterisk next to their names by the pious, sanctimonious OECD.

 

Madam President,

Enough is Enough.

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We have taken our concerns to the United Nations.

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We have offered reason and rationale to the tinkering and insatiable folk in Paris.

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We have appealed to their consciences. We have asked them to remember that they owe us for centuries of pillage and looting and forced labour. And the cruel and disconcerting caste systems they tried to use to divide and conquer our spirits.

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History tells us that the great Haitian Emancipator discovered in Paris that sincerity and mutual respect  for Human Rights and the rights of self-determination are not common to the colonizer.  

Yet the same old tricks emerge. The same old scare tactics. Terrorists funding my foot. But you know they will find clever ways to push this line of uneasiness.

Madam President,

All over this nation there are Bill Boards erected to pay tribute to our Founding Fathers. These were men and women who did the heaviest of lifting.

 

Their vision and their work and their courage transformed a sleeping fishing village into the third most successful economy outside of the USA and Canada.

 

When as young men and women, our Founding Fathers; looked around at what the colonizer had mapped out for their lives; these courageous persons moved resolutely on all fronts to educate, organize and galvanize the people to speak with one voice.

 

Back then very, very few had a college education. Very few finished primary school much less high school. The highest rank a Black Bahamian could go on the Police Force was Inspector.

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Most Permanent Secretaries and the Secretary to the Cabinet and the Secretary to the Royal Governor were imported from England. 

 

While the Islands of the Bahamas began to sell vacations beyond the Winter season to the world, Bahamians were not employed at the front office of BOAC in Nassau. Of course they are now called British Airways. 

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You could lawfully leave school at the age of fourteen. And school was not a  glowing incentive that the colonizing powers  sold to our people.

 

When the British left here in 1973 and we became an Independent nation, they gave the Bahamas one parting gift. A paltry Two Hundred Thousand dollars to build the Police College on Thompson Boulevard. Madam President, Island Luck paying more than that for one dollar on Fantasy Five.

After 314 years of colonization we could not even get a quarter of a million dollars.

 

And so Madam President,

Our bark is sea worthy. We are made of some strong stuff.

We the inheritors of Pindling, Whitfield, Foulkes, Turnquest, Moore, Butler, Symonette, Johnstone, Wilson, Roker, Adderley, Doris, Janet, Ruby, Hanna, Dillet, Maynard, Levarity, Bowen, Nottage, Allen, Isaacs, Elisha, Berta, Tommy, Christie, Ingraham, Wenty, Sweet Bells, Poitier, Burt Williams and Robert Love.

 

You can keep on pushing us. History will tell you that when we push back; we always remove the stumbling block. 

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The Quiet Revolution. None will be allowed to disrespect our right to LIBERTY. EQUALITY & FRATERNTITY, the very words of the French Revolution.

Madam President,

I will support.

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Reluctantly. Because we have to show the world the manner of our bearing. We must show the world; that with each double stroke of the oppressor’s whip on our back, we are unbending and prepared to work and engage.

The day will come, Madam President, and that day will come very, very soon; when the world too will join us and say, enough is enough.

Thank You Madam President.