Today we celebrate The Bahama Journal’s twenty fifth anniversary.

We also remember and give thanks for the yeoman’s work given Wendall Jones in this effort by Lionel Dorsett [deceased] and Mike Smith.

These men were friends and comrades in a time when – quite frankly – we did not know if such a day like this would ever come.

That this day has come is testimony to their resourcefulness, their work ethic and to their combined vision as they helped give birth to the Bahama Journal.

We also thank all those people who make it their daily business to see to it that, this paper hits the street as it should when it must day in and day out.

Kudos are therefore due the men and women who work in Graphics and in our Print Room.

In addition, there are all those other people – our columnists – who do what they must – and so they share valuable perspectives with our national and international audiences.

Time flies and today we marvel at how twenty five years could come and go as if in a flash.

When the history of these times is written, some future sage will marvel at the chutzpah, purpose and dogged will behind the formation of this paper first as it took root in the minds of Wendall Jones, Lionel Dorsett [deceased] and Mike Smith.

They did what they had to do back then in those powerful days.

As we now recall, those days were days when the Bahamian hunger was deeper than ever for media that could and would speak truth to power.

We heard the people’s fervent cry for information that would tell then all that was going on in high and low places.

Today we not only celebrate The Bahama Journal’s twenty fifth birthday, we also mark the beginning of another year of work in media service to the Bahamian people.

We believe that we have succeeded. To God be the glory!

Closer examination would also reveal that we tried and did succeed in not only carving out a vitally niche for reporting and commenting on public affairs; but also in providing a discriminating public with a distinctly independent perspective on the same.

This has been an exhilarating ride.

This work was deeply inflected by that tumult of change in our country which witnessed the transition of political rule from the Progressive Liberal

Party in its evening-time and as it was then being led by [the late] Rt. Hon. Sir Lynden O. Pindling.

We were there throughout the hurly-burly of the late nineties when power – yet again – was retained by the Free National Movement.

Fatefully, this was set to change when – in the aftermath of Sir Lynden’s death at the age of 70 on August 26th, 2000 – the Progressive Liberal
Party – led by the Rt. Hon. Perry Gladstone Christie won.

That roller coaster ride ended in 2007 – as the Rt. Hon. Hubert A. Ingraham resumed office as Prime Minister of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas.

The rest of that tumultuous story is now being ended as Hubert Ingraham settles into retirement mode.

The political moment now belongs to Christie and the PLP.

This has been the ride of a life-time for them and the one big beat that matters most for us.

Today our joy is made even keener by technological developments that – when taken together – have brought us face to face with an audience that is global; thanks to the Inter-Net as a means by which information is packaged and delivered against a background where nowhere is any longer far away.

These times demand new ideas, approaches and a new vision as to what nation-building and development should be about in this era of rapid globalization.

In addition, the search is also on for solutions to some of the social problems we face.

Even as this search is engaged, there remains a sense that Bahamians are not listening to each other as speech itself degenerates into a babble of ignorance.

Things seem to be going from bad to worse.

If everyone who could was minded to help one other Bahamian who is in distress, ours would be – in short order – a more peaceful, healthy and beloved place.

As things fall apart, more and more Bahamian men, women, boys and girls are experiencing no end of distress. On occasion, this emotion pushes someone or the other to the brink.

And since rage is the fuel that drives and fuels action, these people turn their fury either on each other or on themselves; thus the staccato report in media concerning rape, murder, suicide and other violations of the human person.

The sum of the matter, then, remains – our work continues.