The Tribune

Your Say

By FNM leader

Dr Hubert Minnis

IT is with deep grief and concern for my fellow Bahamians that I received the news of the layoffs of 2,000 Bahamian men and women as a result of the winding up of the Baha Mar resort.

This is a stunning blow to an economy that is already moving on shaky legs. It is yet another punch to the gut of the Bahamian people. The 2,000 figure can hardly begin to describe the full extent of the damage that this development will do. Each man and each woman laid off has a family or connection that depends on them. Automatically, that adds thousands more people, who will be trembling in fear of what tomorrow may bring in terms of mounting defaults on mortgages and foreclosure and diminishing funds in a climate of rising prices.

Even worse, it can mean the affected people will not be able to feed their families, which in turn will increase the pressure on the already stretched social security network. It is painful to think of what this latest evidence of government incompetence can mean in terms of loss of dignity and hope for those who can’t find new work in our tight job market. God forbid, but down the line, we will surely be looking at increased anger and increased crime in a society already depressed and hamstrung by crime and the fear of crime.

Three years past the last general elections, most Bahamians have come to expect bad news about the state of our country’s economy and society — news of murder and unemployment, news of the promises this Christie government has broken — one after the other. It would not be amiss to say that most people had reached saturation point where they couldn’t be shocked anymore. Until October 23, 2015, that is. There could not be a single Bahamian of goodwill who was not stunned by the headlines that dominated the national dailies and the top stories of the broadcast media. We expected it, but when the announcement came, it still sent many people reeling.

While the rest of us grieve, the prime minister’s only insulting response can be that he is “disappointed” at the outcome. How can he be disappointed when it seems that the crisis appeared to be the product of a heavy-handed attempt to force a solution tailor-made to secure the greatest benefit for government and their new best friends? Ego was injected into the Baha Mar negotiations and impending disaster has been the settlement.

How can the threat to the people’s livelihood and lives be accounted a “disappointment”? How, in decency, can impending financial and social disaster be shrugged off in such a callous manner? Losing a job in the present circumstances is monstrous. We are living in a time when Bahamians are just coming to terms with the added burden of value added tax and fearing what new burdens the National Health Insurance scheme will add. Who could possibly be so hard-hearted to burst another golden bubble just before the holiday season?

But this is only part of a grim story. The multiplier effect of this massive failure will knock down many more dominoes – the Bahamian construction partners, the suppliers great and small, the men and women who left good jobs to participate in the Baha Mar gold rush and the artists who came to believe that Baha Mar was the King Solomon’s mines for creatives, the businesses that will have to fight to survive the shrinking spend. We can be very sure that the government’s high-handed dealings with Baha Mar has caused us significant loss of credibility in the international marketplace. If the chain of destruction is not broken, this country could be looking at loss of credit and devaluation. Do the ministers responsible really expect us to believe that investor confidence is not being eroded? I’m certain that this must be a factor of their grim realities. Who can resist anguish and anger when you think of this mess?

The Baha Mar gold dust has turned to sawdust. One of the major planks in the PLP’s election platform has collapsed and it will take a lot of futures with it unless the situation is remediated without delay.

But then, who knows what the truth of this situation really is? On what basis can we reliably foretell the next move, when lack of transparency has been the stock-in-trade of this PLP government? When did it become legal or moral for the public trust and public funds to become the plaything of the Bahamas as it has under the present regime? Are we not becoming the victims of a new imperialism? Are there no limits to the hypocrisy of a government who created a Majority Rule Day and a National Heroes Day and, at the same time, have created new forms of bondage for the people who put them in Parliament with high hopes of increased financial freedom and overall quality of life?

To the point of ridiculousness, members of the national Cabinet were running on about threats to Bahamian sovereignty a short while ago, because the Baha Mar developer sought help from courts in the United States to seek shelter and time to restructure their debt and save the project. In any case, the petition failed and the US judge threw the matter back to the Bahamian courts, so it turned out that there was nothing to fear.

I do not hesitate to say that there may be a real threat to Bahamian sovereignty at hand. Who can blame the suspicious among us who believe that another startling announcement is hovering in the wings, waiting to take centre stage and sing the Bahamian people another false PLP lullaby? Who can blame anyone who thinks that the next media blast will bring the news of a buyer who will get the hammers ringing again and the 2,000 Bahamians back on the employment rolls at Baha Mar before the sun sets on the day of the new announcement?

If the Bahamian people feared loss of sovereignty before, we can be assured that we will soon be surrendering the freedoms our mothers and fathers fought so hard for and sacrificed to win. My fear is that our sovereignty is on sale – cheap to a buyer already at hand. What will the proceeds of the sale buy? Not progress, dignity and peace for the Bahamian people, but certainly a banquet to feed an already inflated ego, golden opportunities for highly placed greed and, just maybe, it will buy another election.

I condemn this government for the selfish game it has made of governance and people’s lives. I condemn the continuing and growing lack of transparency on the part of the current government administration. I condemn the fact that so many vital questions about key government moves remain unanswered. Why has the private insurance industry not been accorded the dignity of a fair hearing of the many legitimate questions they have about how the National Health Insurance programme will work? On behalf of the Bahamian people, I want to know what improvements we can expect to healthcare delivery without a complete overhaul of the present system with accountability being the most urgent requirement for progress.

On behalf of the Bahamian people, I want to know the truth behind Bank of Bahamas.

Who really got the golden handshake in the BEC scandal? What’s the truth about BAMSI? Why has the national debt increased by hundreds of millions, when we were assured that the revenue from VAT would be used to pay the debt down? The country’s fuel tank is running dry, yet members of government are still spending like there is no tomorrow. Why are they travelling first class around the world, month after month, when they should take the lead in cutting costs?

I condemn the fact that the people who dare to question the PLP rodeo are treated to scorn and ridiculed by the party’s court jester. In my opinion, the people, especially the young ones who stand up for their right to know and challenge the smug secrecy of government, are patriots. I condemn the fact that the news in the Bahamas today has become little more than a dumping ground for the broken promises of a failed PLP administration and an obituary for the dead hopes of voters who believed in the “Gold Rush”.

The time has come to restore transparency and trust to the governance of The Bahamas. But until then, my team and I pledge to give whatever assistance we can to those who are now fearing the next step in the current saga of blunders and self-interested decision making on the part of an uncaring government.

Despite the many slings and arrows directed my way, I pledge to remain firm in my fight to restore the shine to Bahamian democracy.