The Tribune

By NICOLE BURROWS

SHANE Gibson had the temerity to stand in Parliament and talk about respect for leadership.

He focused his comments (was this supposed to be a meaningful contribution to debate?) on Andre Rollins’ remark about the comical situation his party leader Hubert Minnis found himself in.

The divide between younger and older generations shines in this one unintentional example.

Mr Gibson, while not an old man, is an older man, apparently from a school of thought that you never question, challenge, or disagree with leadership.

No one, least of all team players (and that’s what you must be if you are a party member, and you must always agree with the team) should challenge the leader or his authority, even when the leader finds himself in an embarrassing position that is so ridiculous it can be described as comical.

It seems Gibson believes you don’t question, you don’t disagree, and you never display honesty in your communications. Or maybe what he means is be honest, yes, but not too honest.

Mr Gibson should realise – and it’s very difficult to understand why he hasn’t by now – that a leader must first be worthy of respect, and not solely because he/she is a leader. A leader should seek to earn the respect of anyone he leads or wishes to lead by conducting him - or herself as a leader ought to.

Hubert Minnis still struggles with leadership. He’s like a goofy kid when he stands up to address Parliament. He may have the best intentions but his communicative disability makes him a target for jokes at the expense of real business in the House of Assembly... and that’s the real problem with him not being well spoken. It makes him easily ridiculed and ridiculous.

Take for instance his offer to submit to a lie detector test. Who in their right mind would offer to take a lie detector test? For all the lies other politicians have told, not one ever went out on that limb. And that’s not to suggest that they were telling the truth as opposed to lying, but you never subject yourself to such an extreme unless you are required to, otherwise you come across as trying much too hard. Which is exactly what happened and continues to happen in Dr Minnis’ case.

Prime Minister Perry Christie talks to Dr Minnis like he is a disciplinarian talking to a child, pointing and waving his finger... and Dr Minnis has not one comeback. If ever he does, it’s usually a mutter or a stutter. No one is inspired by that. And for all the potential he may have to be a great leader, none of it is apparent when the PM grinds him into the floor like citrus pulp.

I’m not a Dr Minnis fan, but I’m an underdog fan. I will always stand up for the goofy kid, the disadvantaged. When the PLP men cackle like little boys and girls, taunting goofy kid Minnis, it disgusts me. Because not only are they talking garbage and wasting time on the job of governing my country with success, but they have no resonating point. Besides which, none of what Mr Gibson is saying is relevant to his or the others’ reason for sitting in a session of Parliament.

To increase the time wasting, Mr Christie gets up and gives a speech about why he is so wonderful and above reproach. Whether he is or not is between him and the people he leads. He is justifying his character and reputation to us when we’re already frustrated and don’t care. We’ve already decided we want him gone from his post and now his self-defence is irrelevant. It may be a matter for the record only, but how much time is he really going to spend defending himself?

And more to the point, same as Mr Gibson, why are you wasting time talking about yourself being the oldest sitting member of Parliament, when there is important business to conduct in that room? All this tells me is that the PM and Mr Gibson and all the hyenas of the PLP have no idea why they are in that room on your and my behalf, or if they ever do they don’t take their obligations very seriously.

Police responsibility

Some members of the police force also seem not to take their obligations seriously. Cries of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement is ramping up. A lady, who quite possibly could be in the wrong for not having a seat belt on and putting one on at the last minute, drawing attention to herself from the officer she says abused his position and caused her bodily harm, has revealed another gaping hole in our social fabric. The police are accused of dealing irresponsibly with civilians, get asked about it and their response is as it often is these days, from the police to the politicians, they are “unable to comment, as the matter is pending or under investigation”.

In other words, we’ll deal with it as we please and in our own time. If you hear anything about it after now is for us to decide. And then the incident gets blurred into the background and becomes a part of history and another thing not dealt with in our country in a timely or effective manner.

Speaking of which, what became of that issue involving Bradley Roberts and some alleged sexual impropriety on his part several years back? Because you would swear he was the original female crusader. He has certainly surprised me with what could very easily be his most coherent thoughts about gender equality - or about anything ever.

Of course, he is batting for the PLP, so he probably has no choice but to go with the flow of the majority of the members in his party. I just wish his commitment to cause could be real and true because that would truly be novel for him.

What is not novel? The fact that we always seem to need someone from the outside to confirm for us what we already know on the inside.

The IMF says we should focus on information and communication technology as infrastructure investment priorities. I say we should focus investment priorities on all infrastructure, including information and communication. And I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one who has said this in recent years.

It is painfully apparent the choices we have to make and the direction we need to focus all our development efforts toward. In this vein, the recommended public private partnerships should take place for the development of infrastructure by local and foreign private businesses in conjunction with the government, to ultimately ease the financial and administrative burden on the government. But Mr Christie keeps asking for more hotels.

As much potential as these recommendations have, here’s our challenge with information and communications; how we handle details and confidentiality.

As Jerome Fitzgerald, Leslie Miller, and others have recently demonstrated, our respect for information leaves too much to be desired. We may have the manpower to work these industries as new industries or industries of growth in The Bahamas, but we are not looking closely enough or valuing individual rights to privacy by keeping our mouths shut about things that are not meant to be in the public domain mostly because they serve no purpose by being there (as opposed to information in the public domain placed there intentionally to fulfil transparency and accountability requirements).

• Send email to nburrows@tribunemedia.net