Mr. Chairman, Mr. President, and distinguished graduates of the Class of 2006:

I am honoured by the recognition bestowed upon me by your university and, through me; you have honoured my country, The Bahamas.

I thank you for the warm reception you have given me and my party. The generosity of your welcome almost makes me believe that I’m a citizen of Murfreesboro.

I offer my heartiest congratulations to the Class of 2006 for all that this day represents for you in milestones passed and goals achieved.

Please allow me to compliment all the stakeholders of this fine institution on what you have achieved in building Middle Tennessee State University.

In a relatively short period, MTSU has already begun to make its mark in academia.  Your university, I have been told, is one of the fastest growing universities in the Southeastern United States.

I count myself especially privileged to be speaking to you on this auspicious occasion for several reasons. First of all, your institution is headed by a Bahamian of whom his native land is justly proud and this engagement provides an opportunity to demonstrate our pride publicly.

Secondly, commencement is always a propitious time in the life of the institution and its newest graduates.

It is a time of reflection. It is a time of change, when one important phase of life closes and another opens tenuously to a new phase yet unexplored.

And while many gathered here are joyous for having succeeded in attaining the academic goals you have pursued, many may now be assailed by pangs of uncertainty and self-doubt in the face of new challenges.

For this reason I have chosen to talk to you about possibilities, about dreaming the biggest dream you can muster and flying vigorously towards it, defying the gravity of any negativism that might threaten to hold you down and pin you to the ground.

Over the course of President McPhee’s tenure, you will discover that the people of The Bahamas, like the country itself, are brothers and sisters to the “little engine that could”.

We believe that, with intelligence, creativity, persistence and hard work, we can accomplish anything we set our hearts and minds to.

We Bahamians pay little attention to those who tell us we can’t, even when they come armed with weighty statistics and learned prognostications.

The word “can’t” seems to be the “on” switch for most of my people. You can tell us we can’t, but we won’t argue—We just go ahead and show you that we can.

There are abundant examples of it in our personal and national histories.

My own life’s journey demonstrates this refusal to accept negative predictions without a fight.

I didn’t do very well in high school. In fact, the teachers there predicted that I couldn’t learn and I was kicked out of what was then the best high school in the country, where the majority of the future leaders of the country were students.

What they didn’t know about the patterns of childhood learning resulted in my being put out of school.

They didn’t much accept differences in learning style and the need to deliver instruction to cater to a variety of modalities. So, at a very young and vulnerable age, I was rejected, cast aside by one branch of the academic world and labelled “Can’t”.

Fortunately, my parents had no time for dire predictions. They believed in me. They refused to accept that I was not good enough and sent me to another school. Eventually, I studied law in England and returned home to become a founding partner in a successful law practice.

After some time, I entered the political arena and was elected to The Bahamas Parliament.

I went on to become to become a member of the National Cabinet, first as Minister of Health and National Insurance and next as Minister of Tourism, which portfolio carries the weight of an industry, which supplies over 40 percent of my country’s gross domestic product.

I also enjoyed tenure as Minister of Agriculture, Trade and Industry. Some years ago, I was chosen to lead the political party of which I am a member and, in 2002, I led the Progressive Liberal Party to a landslide victory.

Now, I stand before you as Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.

The story of The Bahamas is even more remarkable. Our islands and waters are among the most beautiful on the planet.

Yet, after the opening of the New World to the Old World in 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall on the Bahamian island of San Salvador, the Spanish conquerors saw little of value in our archipelago.

As far as the Spanish were concerned our islands’ limited value was nothing more than a strategic location along the principal shipping route between Europe and the Caribbean and South America and people who could be enslaved to work as pearl divers or in mines.

From that questionable beginning to the middle of the 20th century, the islands of The Bahamas were considered the poor cousin of the mineral and agriculturally rich Americas.

Our early history was not an auspicious one, filled as it was by slavery, failed agriculture, devastating storms, colonial dominance and an economy characterized by booms and busts.

Many were astonished when, in 1967, the Progressive Liberal Party formed the first majority government and straightaway decided to seek independence from Britain.
A good part of the world said it couldn’t be done. We wouldn’t be able to govern or feed ourselves.

Many predicted that our country would soon fall into anarchy without British rule and come cap in hand to the world’s door begging for bread. There you have that word “can’t” again.

Just look at us now. The Bahamas achieved independence from Britain almost thirty-three years ago on July 10, 1973.

We became a fully self and peacefully governing member of the Commonwealth and a respected member of the United Nations, the Caribbean Community and the Organization of American States.

The Bahamas is a place where democracy is not only alive but flourishing.

Since Independence there has been year after year of positive GDP growth; The Bahamas has never been on any remedial IMF programme; in fact we have been given continuous ‘A’ ratings by the international financial ratings agencies.

As recently as last week, the International Monetary Fund praised the fiscal and monetary policies of the country.

As we speak, The Bahamas enjoys a per capita income of approximately $18,000 dollars, which is an enviable position by any standard and second only to the United States of America and Canada.

I can speak to you also of The College of The Bahamas which, in just over a quarter of a century, has established itself as my country’s premier tertiary institution.

The College is one of the Caribbean region’s most highly respected. C.O.B. is presently evolving into full University status, a goal the institution will achieve with honour and credibility.

Although we in The Bahamas have a lot of which to be proud, I am not being boastful. I am humbled and awed by the possibility of new sunrises and untold opportunities for new beginnings when all seems dim.

I have shared with you a bit of my story and my country’s history to demonstrate that size, race, colour, status, creed and financial means can certainly influence our lives but they needn’t rule our destiny.

The Bahamas, formerly a poor colony with a majority population, which once knew slavery, has propelled itself through all the world’s preconceived notions to stand proudly among the free nations of the world.  We could and did.  You can. You can make a difference in this world of ours.

What exactly it is that you can do and I wish to invite you to consider doing—This is the central thrust of my remarks to you today.

Graduates, I believe that we are all divinely endowed with the ability to influence our destinies. It is the extent to which you prepare to do so, however, that will determine the success of the venture.

You who have had the benefit of an education at this fine institution must never undervalue the power for successful living, which you have gained here at MTSU.

You have all gained a considerable fund of valuable knowledge and some have even created new knowledge and acquired leadership skills.

For those who were open to it, MTSU would have given you an appreciation of living among and working with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures. I understand that your university enrolls students from over 60 foreign countries.

Indeed, your president himself is a testament of the diversity and equal opportunity present at MTSU and also of the indomitable Bahamian spirit.

President Sidney McPhee’s roots are in The Commonwealth of The Bahamas. He was born on one of the smallest islands in the archipelago and spent his formative years in my country before he traveled to the US, embracing the opportunities available in tertiary education.

I believe it was MTSU’s sense of direction that attracted President McPhee, leading him to interview for the presidency. However, I believe it was his own strong sense of direction that led to his success in securing his present elevated position.

You are about to choose the newest directions for your own life. Whether you advance further up the academic hierarchy or take on employment, you will be entering a complex and dynamic world. It is a world where technology has closed the communications gap in ways that could not have been dreamed of even 30 years ago.

We live an era when more minority groups are being recognized as having something valuable to bring to the table of leadership.

It is a world where the ordinary man or woman can begin to contemplate recreational journeys in space.

Science and medicine have begun to explode many of the mysteries of the physical world and human disease and development.

It has become commonplace to talk about such things as sub nuclear physics, gene therapy and cloning, when the same terms would have been a foreign language to most individuals just 50 years ago.

You live in an age where college and even high school graduates can contemplate becoming millionaires before thirty.

You will be faced with opportunities, challenges and choices that multiply as you go on in life. How will you choose? What will be your criteria? What paths will you pursue?

Of course, your vision need not go much beyond the tip of your nose, your line of sight blurred by too close a focus on the rungs of the corporate ladder and the bonuses and the benefits.

You can also look at your physical appearance, your nationality, your colour, your gender, your religion or lack thereof and decide that there is nothing for you to decide.

You may think that life has already made the choices for you. If you ever begin to think of yourself as being acted upon rather than as an actor in the world’s great and ever-unfolding drama, I invite you to think about The Bahamas, the little country that could and me, the boy whom they said could not but did.

I would ask you to be ever conscious that often what we count as human advances can sometimes lead to dehumanization, isolation, indifference to one another’s pain and struggle.

It is essential, therefore, that you hold on to the belief that people are not isolated from one another, that humankind is interconnected.  Do not forget that although most of you are citizens of the USA, you are also citizens of a wider world, a world where people will no longer be awed by your citizenship in the developed world.

Instead, it is the primacy of their needs that will direct their relationship with you and your country.

Graduates, the world that all of you are symbolically entering today is far from just a world of the elite.  It is a world in which you will have to take the lead, a world that is changing and a world where there is a need for equilibrium and balance.

Our world, unfortunately, is still one where human suffering from disease is still too high.

Ours is a world where there are still too many people who do not enjoy the basic human rights of liberty of person, freedom of worship, access to clean water, food and health care.

It is still a world where terrorists consider it just another day’s work to blow up non combatants, including children. There are still people dying from diseases which pills costing a couple of pennies could easily cure.

All this while hours of television are devoted to the newest celebrity newborn and pop stars can contemplate paying phenomenal sums to be launched into space.

And I hope you realize that this is far from being some distant responsibility that you have.  Did you know that of the 6.5 billion people on the planet, 3 billion are under the age of 24?  It is a world of youth in which each of you has a responsibility to take care of your brothers and sisters now, a world in which each one of you is able to make a difference now.

Wherever you decide to live, whether it be the USA, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, you must play an active part in strengthening legal, judicial, social, financial, moral, ethical and spiritual systems now.

You must play an active part in fighting poverty, corruption, crime and ignorance now.

You must play an active part in the struggle to establish balance in our world.

I have traveled to numerous lands and have interacted with enough people from all walks of life to feel safe in saying that the concerns of the individual are the same in just about every country.

Just about everybody wants the same thing that you want. They want to live in a world of opportunities. They want to live in a safe world.

Men want to be able to provide for and protect themselves and their loved ones. Women do not want to be battered or treated as inferiors.

Parents yearn for chances for their children.  People want their voices to be heard, and they want to invest in their future.  They want to be valued.

Isn’t all this what you want for yourself?

Your task is to work towards such benefits not only for yourself and your relatives, but for all others in the communities in which you will live, in the communities that you will build.

The whole world is your community and every man, woman and children your brother or sister. A sense of the true value of humankind should always be married to intellect, to knowledge gained in institutions of higher learning, if we are to realize our true destiny as human beings. Failing to do this, we not only lose our opportunity for greater self-realization, we run the risk of destroying our world.

Therefore, when you graduates walk away from MTSU, I urge you to not only to let your alma mater’s strong center sense of direction guide you, but to carry with you a strong sense of the value of humankind. MTSU’s academic master plan, its blueprint for the future, its blueprint for excellence, quotes something Helen Keller said: “Worse than being blind would be to be able to see but not have any vision.”

I encourage you to open your eyes, see our world with Helen Keller’s brand of vision and embrace it with all your special gifts.

I encourage you to rise up and embrace life in all its quirks, disparities and marvels. Pledge today to be more than just a bystander to life grand show; don’t allow the pageant to pass you by as you stand in the sidelines.
You, with all the knowledge and strategies for living you have acquired at MTSU must do your part to bring change to this world of ours, to expand it while maintaining your sense of direction.

I implore you to do your part in shaping our world into a non-hostile place in which people of all types will be given the opportunity to become full participants in the cycle of life.

I wish you great success as you go into our world.

Thank you.