The Tribune

ON June 13, 1925, the late Sir Etienne Dupuch, the second publisher of this newspaper, entered the House of Assembly for the first time at the age of 26 to represent the Bahamas’ two most southerly islands — Inagua and Mayaguana. He won his seat by two votes.

When the votes had been counted, he called his constituents together and told them that he would give them of his best and that in his eyes they were all equal — regardless of how they voted — he was their representative and they were his constituents.

For 17 years, until he was elected as one of the representatives for the Eastern district in Nassau, he represented his Inagua-Mayaguana constituents well. Although he was no longer their official MP, many went to their graves regarding him as the friend they looked to, with their children and grandchildren often dropping into his Nassau office for advice and help. Some of the young people became members of The Tribune staff. One is still on our staff.

Not so today. Constituents are no longer equal in the eyes of their MP. And this is one of this country’s major problems. In exchange for their vote, Bahamians expect and demand special consideration from their MPs for contracts, job placements, and whatever can be channelled their way, whether they are qualified or not.

It has been a costly exercise for the taxpayers of this country when they have had to pay for shoddy workmanship done by someone who was awarded a contract — not on ability, but because he or she was a party faithful who expected to be taken care of. We often wondered if the politician deciding to grant these contracts would have awarded them so easily if it had been his own money that was paying for the inferior work.

But being the Bahamian people’s money it was “easy come, easy go”. No wonder this country is wallowing in debt today.

Bahamasair, always a heavy annual drain on the Public Treasury, was described in January, 1991 by its former chairman Philip Bethel as being “almost a social service” in its hiring policies.

This is the same Philip Bethel, who got on a public platform and declared that God had given this country to the PLP. At the time he was MP for Governor’s Harbour, Eleuthera. It was in 1991, that as a former Bahamasair chairman he admitted to being responsible for “the very open hiring policy” at the financially troubled national airline.

“It is me. No kidding,” he told members of parliament on January 28, 1991. “I am not going to run from it.”

Bahamasair, which had lost tens of millions of dollars, was over staffed. More than 200 staff had to be dismissed that year because the airline had cash flow problems and could no longer afford to pay for Mr Bethel’s generosity with taxpayers’ money. Mr Bethel also admitted that about 20 per cent of Bahamasair employees were from the Family Islands, mainly his constituency of Governor’s Harbour.

Mr Hubert Ingraham, then Opposition Leader, rising in the House on a point of order considered it “unbelievable and unbecoming of a Minister to say because persons asked him to get a job for someone that he just got the job when there is no vacancy and there is no money to pay them. How irresponsible can you be?”

Again, we are where we are today because you must understand the attitude and political beliefs — God gave this country to the PLP. It would also seem that He gave the Public Treasury to the PLP to keep His people happy. Bahamians shouldn’t wonder why this country is so burdened with debt today for which we have to be taxed. The abuse goes way back.

In 2007, MICAL MP V Alfred Gray was busy defending charges of political victimisation in his district. In remarks made in the House of Assembly in March of that year he gave the impression that he believed it his duty as an MP to help only his PLP supporters.

In a quick recoup in an interview with The Tribune the following day, he explained his House statement: “If I help the people who support and help me, what is wrong with that?” he asked. “But I never said I would only help those.”

He was defending himself from complaints from some of his constituents that he and the then commissioner were guilty of “gross political victimisation”. In their letter of complaint, Mayaguanians warned that residents were “on the brink of civil unrest”.

Disgruntled residents claimed that Mr Gray and the Commissioner were handing out jobs indiscriminately to PLP supporters in the run-up to the 2007 election. “Everybody who supports the PLP gets something dumb to do,” The Tribune was told.

These were all echoes of the comment of a senior member of Sir Lynden Pindling’s cabinet years earlier who arrogantly justified a complaint of political bias with the comment that he was only “checking for the PLP”.

No wonder former prime minister Hubert Ingraham had a tiger by the tail within his membership when he took over the government in 1992. Denied all the employment rights of Bahamians for 25 years of the Pindling rule, many FNMs believed it was now their turn to control the Public Treasury. Mr Ingraham not only wanted the best for the country, but he also knew that he could only achieve the best with the most qualified at his side — be they FNM or PLP.

This is one of the basic problems of our country. The country’s best brains have been mariginalised. Many of them left their country as a consequence.

Now we have Prime Minister Christie being criticised because it has been claimed that this current Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI) crisis at Andros has exposed the belief that all of these contracts were issued to “political cronies”. In reply, Mr Christie said he did not know to whom the contracts were awarded, but he hoped “the majority of them” went to the PLP “because the former government did a remarkable job in being able to empower FNM contractors”.

What he should have said was that he hoped that the contracts went to Bahamians most capable of doing the best job for their employers — the Bahamian people whose taxes were paying their salaries.

The Bahamas will always be in debt, drifting in the backwaters of the world until all Bahamian politicians and their supporters — regardless of party — accept that Bahamians deserve the best and that they will only get the best if the most qualified among them come to the fore.

We expect the Public Accounts Committee to get a list of all those contractors who bid on the BAMSI contract and the reason for the selection of the winner.

And in future all contracts in the name of the Bahamian people should be put out to public tender. The iniquitous habit of bid by invitation should end immediately. It is about time that Bahamians got value for their money.