The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

OPPOSITION leader Michael Pintard says it’s untrue that the former Free National Movement administration did nothing to contribute to the National Development Plan.

While pointing out how the former government was involved with the plan, Mr Pintard furthered that the Free National Movement signed off on an Inter- American Development Bank offering to provide money to review what had been drafted at the time.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis asserted that there had been no meaningful work on the plan since 2017.

Mr Davis made the comments on Tuesday while giving a lecture on the plan at the University of The Bahamas. He also outlined priorities of his government and some of the historical context to support his administration’s plans.

Responding, Mr Pintard said: “It is most unfortunate the prime minister spoke about a National Development Plan, which we support in the Free National Movement (and) support certainly under his leadership and there has clearly been evidence that in the past the National Development Plan did in fact benefit from the input of the Free National Movement.

“While in opposition prior to 2017, we participated in the discussion and made contributions to helping to frame that National Development Plan.

“While in office, one of the most notable things that have been done is the IDB offered to fund a review of the National Development Plan. I believe it was somewhere in the vicinity of $200,000, which required the sign-off of the previous administration, which in fact we did and that review was again to look at the viability of the National Development Plan whether it’s still useful going forward.”

He continued: “What is true is that you did not hear an ongoing discussion about it but let us be clear the National Development Plan is in large measure driven by the sustainable development goals of the United Nations and multiple government ministries as well as corporations, their programming, their legislative agenda, their policy positions, and the programmes were given by the sustainable development goals. Again it is not as if key planks of the National Development Plan was not being implemented or pursued. However, I do believe it is useful to reference that document because such a document has a unifying impact on what we do collectively as a country and the various stakeholders and certainly if given the opportunity to manage this country going forward we will reference it because I think that is absolutely important.”

Mr Pintard also said he thought the Prime Minister missed the opportunity to unify the country.

“You cannot be talking about uniting the country but when you do a historical review of what each administration has contributed, you only find that the administrations that you were a part of have been useful. It is intellectually dishonest for him to do that and I’m surprised because I expected that he would function differently.”

“And again it shows a lack of political maturity.”

At the presentation, there was also a question from the audience on taking care of Bahamians who are part of the LGBTQI+ community.

In reference to this, Mr Pintard said: “Again my comments to you are relative to what the prime minister’s statements were. One of the comments he made is that he is for protecting all Bahamians. We support that, however, we have not seen evidence of him doing that. We have workers in beaches and parks who they refuse to pay notwithstanding the fact that they have contracts. We have persons in social services who have been terminated and have not yet received their benefits.”