The Tribune

The PLP needs to deliver on its 2012 charter for governance before the next election, Tribune Chief Reporter Ava Turnquest says

The Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) blustered into power on May 7, 2012, on a gargantuan catch-all platform that pandered to the hearts and minds of Bahamians across the country.

The campaign was a sweet one that climaxed with the release of “A Charter for Governance” just two weeks before the vote, and left 48.6 per cent of the electorate shuddering from the gold rush.

There is no shame in admitting you were swept up by the party’s rhetoric and sporty paraphernalia. The PLP had a strong plan, and it was expertly packaged.

Four years later, many are referring to that charter as a Trojan horse. However, the party’s embattled term has been closer to the RMS Titanic - the ill-fated vessel on whose legacy one of the most iconic romantic tragedies was staged. The major tenets of the PLP’s charter centred around a redirection of the status quo across every sector: economic policies to uplift the poor and middle class; anti-crime initiatives and interventions in the criminal justice system; the revitalisation of agriculture, tourism, creative, and cultural industries; modernising education and the public service; and a build-out of the Family Islands. It was an aggressive mandate that underscored under each objective the creation of a long-term collective testament in the form of National Development Plan: Vision 2030. This thrust has since been re-branded as Vision 2040, and has completed its first diagnostic phase with the release of the sobering State of The Nation report.

According to officials, the first draft of the “solutions and strategy” based document has been completed.

Dr Nicola Virgil-Rolle, a lead official, said the report “takes a long-term look with short, medium and long-term goals of the key solutions. It’s a solutions-based document, a strategy-based document, which has as its logical framework a set of goals, and then a set of strategies under each of those goals under four key areas, namely the economy, governance, social policy and the environment.”

She added: “It’s going to be a document which is very action-oriented, where the average person can look at it and tick off something to say that it was done.”

Just as many Bahamians will do in the lead up to the 2017 general elections, now that the final budget communication has been read.

Make no mistake: this government has tacked down a number of its promised initiatives across the various sectors. One of them is its commitment to protecting pensions through the Employees Pension Fund Protection Act and the newly-passed Pension Amendment Bill 2016. Unfortunately, as pointed out by Opposition MPs Loretta Butler-Turner and Hubert Chipman, the timely bills fall flat in the face of uninspiring unemployment numbers and a rising poverty line.

This is because no matter how great the RMS Titanic was, how gleaming and majestic, it will always be defined by the formidable iceberg that sent it to its icy grave. For the PLP, its iceberg - at sea level - appears to be Baha Mar, but looking beneath that hulking blemish on the Cable Beach seascape reveals a cracked foundation of unfulfilled and perhaps unattainable promises on mortgage relief and crime.

Running a government is a thankless job, as National Security Minister Dr Bernard Nottage can surely attest to. No drug bust, high conviction rate or anti-crime initiative can outweigh the social currency lost when a life is taken, and up to last night, there have been 62 murders for the year. While crime figures are not entirely comprised of murder, it was the murder rate upon which the PLP laid out their election campaign and it is the murder rate that will define their effectiveness on promises to combat crime and assuage the fear of crime.

Second only to the fear of losing one’s life, is the fear of losing one’s livelihood and, as is the case for thousands of Bahamians, the fear of losing their home.

To this end, the government has now allocated $20m in what is intended to be a four-year mortgage relief scheme - a second and last ditch effort after the first programme failed miserably. While the Christie administration believes this new plan could assist upwards of 1,000 delinquent borrowers, it is estimated that the actual need is four times greater than the plan’s capacity.

Whether too big or too small, each of us must hold up our end of the bargain and collect on every promise.

Especially those made to the creative and cultural industries. Among those that remain unfulfilled include: revisit and redesign the National Centre for the Performing Arts into a fully functional, proper performing arts centre; and establish a Bahamian Arts Council for the funding of the arts and cultural events. The PLP also pledged to establish a music secretariat to work closely with The Bahamas Musicians Union to build an archival library of Bahamian music and to institute an associated recording studio for the use and promotion of Bahamian musical talent; and to create a Junkanoo season over a 12-day period ending with the New Year’s Day Parade. In the straw industry, they pledged to facilitate the establishment of a co-operative to create a straw exchange which will purchase for resale all plaits that meet the standard set by the exchange; and define a policy whereby people in the straw industry can make written recommendations for a family member or employee to take over their stall in the market upon their demise or retirement.

“All citizens of the Bahamas, through formal and informal education, will fully understand and appreciate our culture and the heritage of our language, music, expressions, food, religion, and myths,” the 2012 PLP Charter for Governance states.

“We will also work with the creative industry to ensure that Bahamian culture becomes a major factor in economic development, working towards the goal that by 2030 the number of visitors who come to The Bahamas because of arts and culture will rival those who come primarily because of our beaches and sea.”

In a letter to the Editor last month, Creative Nassau President Pam Burnside lashed out at the government for disadvantaging efforts to bolster creative industries. In December, 2014, the city of Nassau was accepted into the UNESCO Creative Cities Network as a Creative City of Crafts and Folk Arts, based on our unique Bahamian Straw and Junkanoo traditions. The designation came after six long years of hard work by Creative Nassau, an organisation founded in 2008 by creative professionals. At that time, lawyers submitted an application to the Registrar General’s Department for the incorporation of a non-profit organisation to be known as “Creative Nassau”.

“So here it is, June 2016 - a year and a half later,” Mrs Burnside wrote, “and Creative Nassau is still waiting for its incorporation papers and Business License! Needless to say, we find this mind boggling, frustrating and totally unacceptable!

“Because our papers had not been processed, last summer Creative Nassau lost a five-figure grant that would have positively impacted the lives of 60 students in an amazing cultural after school programme we designed! Another summer is now upon us and we are still in limbo!”

She continued: “If this is the government’s often touted plan for encouraging entrepreneurship, innovation and creative economic enterprises, having boldly signed up at the 2015 CELAC Conference in Havana as chair for “the development of entrepreneurship and creative industries”, then we cry ‘shame on you’!”

Each ballot cast for the PLP in 2012 represents a social contract between the Christie administration and the electorate. The terms of agreement were heavily researched, set out in a Charter for Governance, and then aggressively marketed in a strategic campaign that targeted vulnerable communities and preyed on their fears, hopes and aspirations. In the lead up to the 2012 general elections, the PLP did its homework and crafted a charter that still rings true for a disenchanted electorate four years later.

With less than a year left, we mush demand a strong finish. We must demand that the government embody the same fervour, the same data-driven focus that propelled the party into power, in actualising its rhetoric. The time to demand it is now, not in protest at the polls in 2017, which will ultimately engender a new social contract, a farther goal post. Through the eyes of the young faces used to brand the 2012 election campaign, as Bahamians we are owed this much.

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