The Tribune

By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

OPPOSITION leader Michael Pintard has spoken of what he believes are some of the key areas of society and government that urgently need addressing.

In a speech to the Rotary Club at Nassau Yacht Club on Friday Mr Pintard highlighted five points that he believes could bring the country progress: a greater sense of urgency, responsiveness, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability.

“I’m in parliament my second time and often it is rather worrisome to watch us pat ourselves on the back passing pieces of legislation that stakeholders in respective sectors have been pushing for in some cases for decades,” he said.

“The truth is that the legislation can only be passed by parliament, so we really have very little justification for being slow in being responsive to those communities and at the point we passed them we’re celebrating ourselves.

“When I talk about this, I’m talking about the members of the differently abled community that have called for some fundamental changes in building codes, in cultivating a society that is inclusive in terms of its employment we have made some strides, but we certainly don’t deserve to be patting ourselves on the back. We should do our job quietly and firmly and apologise for having taken so long.”

He noted that another important principle on good governance is responsiveness.

“It is important that we are responsive to the cries that are in our community and one of the challenges we have today is that we have a country that is food insecure and while we have a supply chain issues it makes sense for us to concentrate in a very aggressive way to ramp up our production because we do know through successive studies that show import substitution over a three-year period we are able to save this country somewhere in the vicinity of two to $300m if in fact we do the required things in agriculture in marine resources in order to fix our food insecure position,” he said.

Mr Pintard explained the need for the country to be more inclusive in their decision-making process as some voices are “entirely too loud”.

“The third challenge that we have is the importance of inclusiveness, including other voices in the decision making of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas. There are two voices that are important but entirely too loud one is the political voice, two is the religious voice. Now I firmly believe based on my religious upbringing that it is important for leaders of the faith-based community and ought to be the conscience of the country in many ways,” he said.

“I do believe that there is a key rule for policymakers to play in coordinating the efforts of various stakeholders, but there are many other voices that are critical. The business community I believe that we have a largely passive business community in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas that occasionally through the Chamber of Commerce or other federations of businesspersons we weigh in on what is going on in our country, but I do not believe there’s sufficient commentary on choices made by policy makers.”

Mr Pintard said he stands as an advocate for the collaboration of the government and the opposition.

“There was a time that some governments actually held workshops where the technical team, who drafted legislation not only shared it with the private sector it was also shared with the opposition so when we get into the House of Assembly we’re not engaging in grandstanding or one-upmanship on the other, but we are moving the discussion forward in a way that is beneficial to the thousands of people, some of whom are without light, without water - who are relying on us to engage in mature conversations to improve the quality of their lives.”