Each year we struggle to decide how we are going to observe this date in our history.

It has been largely left to the PLP and to the academe to determine what we do.  The FNM has no interest in bigging up this occasion since for its progenitors it is not really a day that they want to mark.

To their credit, some individuals within the FNM do not try to deny the history of the country.  The history is the history.

It has also become fashionable to seek to change what Majority Rule actually means.  Today in a kind of politically correct attempt to make the whole idea more saleable, it is seen as the full flowering of Bahamian democracy.  That it is but at the time of the victory in 1967, the contrast was stark.  What you had simply to do was to look at the pictures of the Cabinet of the United Bahamian Party and then look at the Cabinet of the incoming PLP and you knew the story without more being said.  That is what majority rule meant.  In 1967 it meant the end to the notion that one ethnic group had a monopoly on brains and power.

As I say in the present orthodoxy, we seem to struggle with what to do with it.  The College of The Bahamas held a lecture yesterday but that appears to be it for this day.  Later today, my colleagues of the National Heroes Day Committee will gather at the mausoleum of the late Sir Lynden O. Pindling in St. Agnes Cemetery in order to lay a wreath and mark the occasion.

Inevitably, what comes up on a day like this is do we make this a national holiday.  Some argue that we should.  I have ceased to resist the point.  What I do want to do this morning however for the country is to make a distinction between days that are public holidays and days that are ones for national observance.
 

When in the last Cabinet, we made a decision to move for the creation of National Honours and to set aside the second Monday in October as National Heroes Day, we settled that distinction.

Today, both bills are passed in the legislature but neither has been brought into force.

The National Heroes Day Bill would set aside the second Monday in October to   observe the contributions of all National heroes to the country this would include a list as long as the country would like.  It would also make it possible for someone to be officially declared a national hero.

It would establish local honours, and local honour societies.

In the resignation comments of the former Director of Culture, she lamented the fact that this legislation has not been brought into Force and in fact, the work of the cultural commission that looked into all of these matters seems largely to have been discarded.

I have personally raised these matters on the floor of the House.  The answers from the Prime Minister have as usual been contemptuous. I raised the matter with Loretta Butler Turner who is a member of the National Heroes Day Committee about seeking to use the influence of her Cabinet colleagues to bring this legislation into Force.  Nothing so far has been done, and this appears not to be the policy of the government even though they voted for it when they were in Opposition.

I would suggest that our history is important.  I spoke to a 30 year old last evening and told him that while he may not think that what happened in the history of the races in this country in the past is not exactly on point today, we who went before have an obligation to tell the history of the country so that when we see something coming we will know it.

I have often said that I understand that there is a tradition in Jewish families on special occasions that the youngest child is made to repeat the history of their people so that they will never forget.

I think that Majority Rule Day should be a day of National Observance.  In other words, there are certain ceremonies that the state should support to mark the day.  It should also mean that the schools should take special note of the day and that churches around the nation should be encouraged to take special measures to observe the day.  This should also mean that the curriculum of subject of history should reflect what happened on 10th January.  Some people simply do not know what happened and it is important that he story be told and be known.  Just the facts. This is the way to treat it with the due solemnity and importance that it deserves.

I am calling again for the National Heroes Day legislation and the National Honours Legislation to bring into Force so that this year we will mark National Heroes Day on the second Monday in October as a public holiday.