Bad News for the Boys

Only 45 minutes out of Miami by jet, the Bahama Islands have long been one of the favorite playgrounds of Americans. Composed of 700 islands that are washed by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, the Bahamas have a population of only 140,000 people, 85% of them Negro. Yet for many years the islands' fate has been held firmly in the hands of a tight little group of white businessmen known as the "Bay Street Boys," after the main street of the capital of Nassau. The group's two dozen members controlled both Bahamian commerce and politics through their predominantly white United Bahamian Party. Last week the Boys got quite a setback.

In the islands' first parliamentary elections since Britain conferred "limited" independence on them in 1964, the Negro-dominated Progressive Liberal Party and the United Bahamian Party tied with 18 seats each in the 38-seat House of Assembly. To get a parliamentary majority and topple the Boys from power, P.L.P. Leader Lynden Pindling, 36, a Negro lawyer from New Providence Island, wooed to his side the House's two other new members--a white independent, and a Negro laborite. At week's end, after Premier Sir Roland Symonette resigned, Pindling was invited by Governor Sir Ralph Grey to form a new government.

Two Targets. Running only a few Negro candidates, the eleven-year-old Bahamian Party had managed to hold onto power largely through the divisions within the opposition and the apathy of Negro voters, who seemed not to want a change. Thus the party went into last week's election with an almost smug unconcern; it staged no rallies, and its leaders in government even refused interviews. The 14-year-old Progressive Liberal Party, however, campaigned on all the main islands, plastered car and truck bumpers with stickers, and tacked up posters everywhere.

As his issues, Pindling picked two tempting targets. On the one hand, he accused the U.B.P. of making too much use of a good thing--namely, the islands' 1964 constitution, which permits government members to continue their private businesses on the side in place of a salary. The Bay Street Boys, Pindling said, cut themselves and their buddies in on promising investments, got the inside track on government contracts, and accepted questionable "consultant fees" from fellow businessmen. Pindling also found an issue in the islands' gambling, which, though illegal, is permitted at three casinos by specific exemption of the government. Pindling claimed that mob elements were taking over the casinos. To dramatize both charges, he has gone before the United Nations Colonial Committee in New ork twice in the past two years, flew to London in November to make the same charges to Fred Lee, then Colonial Secretary, against the United Bahamian Party.

A Miniature Zurich. The campaign worked, despite the fact that the U.B.P.'s paternalistic reign has had some rather impressive results in the Bahamas. Under Premier Symonette and Finance and Tourism Minister Sir Stafford Sands, the islands' economy is booming. Industrial development is spurting, thanks to the Bahamas' cheap labor, plentiful land and absence of income taxes. To lure international funds, the government has turned the islands into a miniature Zurich and induced 77 banks to set up shop, offering 6% interest rates and secret, coded accounts --no questions asked.

But most of all, there is the tourism, which now accounts for more than 90% of the islands' $150 million annual income. Last year, a record 800,000 vacationers poured into the Bahamas, and by 1968 the total should reach more than 1,000,000 a year, which would leave the islands second only to Puerto Rico in Caribbean tourist traffic. Whether they stay at Lyford Cay, Canadian Millionaire E. P. Taylor's resort on New Providence Island, or at any of the more modest hotels that are budding just about everywhere, the tourists leave a bundle of foreign exchange behind. Last year, for the convenience of its predominantly American visitors, the Bahamas even switched the official currency from pounds to dollars.

Change on Many Fronts. To keep the tourists coming, developers and investors are sinking millions of dollars into the islands. Former Wall Street Financier Wallace Groves acquired 150,000 acres of scrubland on Grand Bahama Island in the late 1950s, and through his Port Authority has turned it into a $400 million resort center called Freeport, with six hotels, two gambling casinos, and a commercial and industrial complex of 800 licensed businesses. Aluminum Executive J. Louis Reynolds is converting 13,000 acres on Andros Island into a housing, resort and commercial development that will include a U.S.-British navy undersea research and training center. Pan American's Juan Trippe is developing a section of Eleuthera, has thus far built a private golf course, a 100-room hotel and a nightclub, and has even added a jet strip and two flights a day out of Nassau. Other developments are being pushed on Abaco, Great Exuma, Cat Island and Paradise Island.

Pindling has no illusions about the problems he will face as the islands' first Negro Premier. The old ways of doing business in the Bahamas are deeply entrenched, and Pindling's unproven party will have to win the confidence and respect of investors. A quiet, Nassau-born barrister who earned an LL.B. at the University of London, Pindling promises full-scale reforms that will benefit all instead of just a select minority. "There will be change in direction and emphasis on many fronts," he vowed last week in his drab little law office in downtown Nassau. Among the first changes will be a bill to provide salaries for members of the government.

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