Bahamian politics: two parties and a constitution voters kept

How the Westminster model works in Nassau

The constitution adopted at independence in 1973 follows the Westminster model, and Britannica describes it in those terms. The British monarch is head of state as monarch of the Bahamas, represented in Nassau by a governor-general, an office Freedom House calls mostly ceremonial. Executive power sits with a cabinet of at least nine members led by a prime minister, whom the governor-general appoints and who must sit in the House of Assembly and command a majority there. The cabinet answers to that house.

Parliament has two chambers of very unequal weight. The House of Assembly is elected by universal adult suffrage from single-member constituencies, for a term of up to five years; the prime minister can dissolve it and call an election at any time within that term. Every citizen of 18 and over may vote, and only citizens may. The Senate is appointed after each general election and has powers that Britannica calls relatively restricted beside those of the House.

The size of the House is one of the figures the sources disagree on, because constituency boundaries are redrawn between elections. The IFES election guide gave 38 seats at the time of the 2016 referendum, which is also the figure in the Wikipedia politics article. The IPU and Freedom House give 39 for the September 2021 election. The fact box in Britannica's article, revised in 2026, gives 41.

The formula gives the opposition four of the sixteen Senate seats whatever the result of the election.

Who has governed since majority rule

Two parties have held office since 1967, and the handful of others that have tried have been unable to win election to Parliament in their own right. The Progressive Liberal Party, founded in 1953, led the movement for majority rule and governed from January 1967 through independence until 1992. The Free National Movement was formed by PLP dissidents and former members of the United Bahamian Party, in 1971 by the Wikipedia account and in 1972 by Britannica's. Since 1992 the two have alternated, and Freedom House notes in its 2024 report that power has passed between them repeatedly since independence.

The swings are large for a two-party system. In 2017 the PLP was reduced to four seats; four years later it won 32 of 39. The 2021 election was called early, with the legal deadline in May 2022, and held on 16 September 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Turnout was 65%, the Coalition of Independents took more than 6% of the vote and the Democratic National Alliance more than 1%, and neither won a seat. Observers from the Organization of American States praised the conduct of the poll.

Elections are run by the Parliamentary Registration Department under the Parliamentary Elections Act, headed by a parliamentary commissioner whom the governor-general appoints on the prime minister's recommendation after consulting the opposition leader. An amendment in 2020 introduced a continuous voter register, first used in 2021. In its report on that election the OAS warned that people missing from the 2017 list who had not registered by the time the election was announced in August 2021 may have lost their vote, and repeated its earlier calls for digital registration and rules on campaign finance.

Smaller parties have come and gone without breaking through: the Bahamas Democratic Movement, the Coalition for Democratic Reform, the Bahamian Nationalist Party and the Democratic National Alliance among them.

Why voters rejected the citizenship referendum

The Bahamian constitution distinguishes between men and women in how citizenship passes to a spouse or a child, and Freedom House records the practical result: the children of married Bahamian women and their foreign husbands are treated differently from those of Bahamian men. In 2014 Parliament passed four constitutional amendment bills to remove the distinction, with near-unanimous support in both chambers according to the Bahamian embassy in Washington, and put them to a referendum on 7 June 2016. The embassy's commentary called it the second constitutional referendum in the country's history as an independent nation.

The four questions, as the IFES election guide set them out, were these. The first would have made a child born abroad a citizen at birth if either parent was a Bahamian by birth. The second would have let the foreign spouse of any Bahamian apply for citizenship, subject to security checks and new rules against marriages of convenience. The third would have let an unmarried Bahamian father pass his citizenship to his child on proof of paternity. The fourth would have made discrimination on the basis of sex, defined as being male or female, unlawful. Each needed a simple majority.

All four were rejected, by about two to one. The Parliamentary Commission counted 102,562 yes votes and 231,322 no votes across the four questions, and the embassy estimated from those totals that about 83,471 people, 46% of eligible voters, took part. Only three constituencies, St Anne's, Montagu and Central and South Abaco, approved any of the bills, all three backing the first.

The explanations offered afterwards did not agree. The chairman of the Constitutional Commission read the result as a message of distrust in government; the Save Our Bahamas group, which campaigned for a no vote, presented it as a defeat for what it called a global homosexual agenda; Amnesty International called it a missed opportunity and held that rights should be protected by the state and not decided by a vote.

How the courts settled what the referendum did not

The courts have since changed part of what the voters kept. In 2020 the Supreme Court affirmed citizenship for a Bahamian-born child regardless of the sex or marital status of the Bahamian parent, the Court of Appeal upheld the ruling in 2021, and in May 2023 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London ruled that children born to unmarried Bahamian fathers are citizens at birth whatever their mother's nationality. That was close to the substance of the third bill the referendum had rejected.

The Privy Council remains the final court of appeal. Below it sit the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court and the magistrates' courts, and the law is English common law. The governor-general appoints the chief justice on the advice of the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, and other judges on the advice of a judicial commission. Freedom House describes the judiciary as independent, while recording that the Bahamas Bar Association asked in 2021 for legislation to codify that independence and that the state appoints counsel only in capital cases. Libel remains a criminal offence carrying up to two years in prison, rarely enforced.

Who can become Bahamian and who cannot

Children born in the country to foreign parents do not become citizens at birth, and Freedom House records that protracted citizenship and naturalisation procedures make it difficult for them to acquire it later. Most are the children of Haitian immigrants.

Immigration policy since 2014 has required Haitian migrants and Haitian-Bahamians to carry a passport and residency permit. Freedom House reported in 2024 that the authorities apprehended more than 2,500 migrants between January and May 2023, most of whom were deported, and that the government gives citizens priority for hiring, land grants and places in hurricane shelters. The unregulated settlements where many migrants live have been the subject of litigation since an injunction of 2018; in 2021 a Supreme Court judge extended it to bar demolition of any such community on Abaco, and in February 2023 another judge lifted it. New regulations on the detention of irregular migrants were introduced in November 2023.

Women's place in politics has moved in the other direction. Women first voted in a general election in November 1962 and the first woman was elected to the House in 1982. At the 2016 referendum there were five women in the House and four in the Senate; after the 2021 election seven women sat in the House and four in the Senate, and when the new Parliament opened on 6 October 2021 women presided over both chambers for the first time.

What limits the government between elections

Freedom House's 2024 report describes the country as a stable democracy and calls government corruption a serious problem. There is no agency with specific power to investigate corruption in government, and the Public Disclosure Act requires legislators and senior officials to declare their income and assets every year but imposes no penalty when they file late. Parties do not have to disclose who funds them and campaign spending is not capped.

Several laws have tried to close the gaps. The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2019 created an independent Fiscal Responsibility Council to oversee public spending. A Public Procurement Act took effect in 2021 and was replaced in March 2023 by a new act that lets companies track their bids and favours small and women-owned businesses. In January 2024 Parliament passed a bill creating an ombudsman with power to investigate public bodies, which Freedom House reported had not been fully established by the end of that year.

The collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November 2022 drew Bahamian regulators into the case. The Securities Commission of the Bahamas asked the police to investigate the firm and disclosed in December that it had seized assets worth $3.5 billion to return to creditors and customers; the firm's lawyers accused Bahamian regulators of acting with its founder, and the government rejected the charge.

How the islands are governed outside Nassau

New Providence, with about 70% of the population, has no local government of its own and is run directly from the capital. Everywhere else the Local Government Act of 1996 set up elected district councils and town committees, meant to let island communities run their own affairs. There are 32 districts, with 110 councillors and 281 town committee members elected every five years.

Who the Bahamas stands with abroad

The Bahamas joined the Commonwealth on independence day, the IMF and the World Bank on 22 August 1973 and the United Nations on 18 September 1973. It joined the Organization of American States in 1982 and the Caribbean Community on 4 July 1983. It is a full member of CARICOM but has stayed outside the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, and at the World Trade Organization it remains an applicant.

Its two closest bilateral relationships are with the United States and the United Kingdom, where it keeps an ambassador in Washington and a high commissioner in London. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force, established on 31 March 1980, is a naval force with an air wing and a land unit; its tasks include stopping drug smuggling, illegal immigration and poaching, and it takes part in CARICOM's Regional Security Task Force.

The monarchy itself is debated. The Wikipedia country article records a growing republican movement since the death of Elizabeth II, and an opinion poll showing majority support for an elected head of state. When Prince William and Catherine visited in March 2022, protesters called for reparations for slavery.