The Tribune

By Inigo ‘Naughty’ Zenicazelaya

Over the years, I’ve seen some dumb ideas and I’ve seen some ‘PLP’ ideas.

Now that Bahamas National Festival Commission (BNFC) chairman Paul Major has finally ‘manned up’ and admitted we lost our rear ends on this year’s event, I think we can all agree that Junkanoo Carnival has to be one of the dumbest PLP ideas of all time.

Now before my inbox is flooded with incoherent email from bleeding heart ‘Progressives’ complaining about my use of the word ‘dumb’, please know that I don’t use it lightly. In fact, it took me a good three minutes of deliberation between idiotic and dumb before dumb won out by the sheer force of its simplicity. Because if you’re counting (and I am), the math on Carnival is not complicated at all:

Give Paul Major $13m, lose $13m.

Give him $10m, lose $10m.

See? Simple.

Not that I’m placing all the blame on Mr Major. After all, this disastrous venture was dreamed up and green-lighted by the current Progressive Liberal Party administration. It’s no wonder a row broke out in the press between Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe and Major over who would deliver the bad news.

I can only imagine that conversation:

Wilchcombe (to the press): Major will deliver the financials.

Major (to the press): We gave the ministry the financials long time, they will release the information.

Wilchcombe (picks up phone and calls Major): Ma bey, you better carry ya bald head and tell dem people how much money yinna den lose again. And whatever you do you better don’t call my name cause I up for re-election so I’ne on ya run.

Thus we learned this week that our yearly ‘fete’ cost taxpayers another $10 million to put on and only generated around a half million in direct revenue. My God.

If that isn’t bad enough, Paul Major, practicing revisionist history that so typifies our current government, had the gumption to say (with a straight face) that Carnival was never intended to make a profit. Never mind that the event was sold to Bahamians as a big money grab where everyone and their costume-making granny would get a ‘lil piece’ of the millions from the thousands upon thousands of tourists rushing to the country to shake up ‘on da road’.

Well, judging by the event receipts, there wasn’t a whole lot of shaking going on. Except for us. Bahamians, it seems, we were so busy ‘getting swing’ that Paul Major (and by extension Minister Wilchcombe, and by extension this current government) managed to shake $23 million from our pockets in two years in exchange for a bucket of glitter and a couple feathers.

Think about it, $23m (that we know of) gone for two disastrous weekends while (according to Mr Major) 25,000 tourists sit on the cruise ships every weekend. And no facts to back up Major’s claim of millions generated in projected impact. And no heads rolling. And he still hasn’t been fired. My God.

I notice no one is talking about ‘heads in beds’ anymore. I also noticed the full page advertisement in newspapers promoting next year’s music makers contest the day before the commission gave us this year’s financials. Which basically means, ‘We don’t care what y’all say, we partying again next May’.

I have long wondered whether the whole point of ‘Carnival’ was to give the PLP government a reason to throw a big bash right before the general election. A rally to end all rallies, if you will. All on the people’s dime.

This year’s event was supposed to be a more fiscally responsible one. That’s probably why we saw lower tier celebrities like Wyclef and Destra (no offence) take the stage. Next year? I’m sure they will pull out all the stops. Beyoncé or Rihanna, Drake or Pitbull perhaps? We all know the ‘swing train’ will be in full effect.

Meanwhile, we will lose millions of dollars (again). Mother’s Day (a genuine money-making holiday for many businesses) will get mashed up (again).

Hundreds will ‘shake up’ in the streets (again).

And thousands will vote for the PLP again.

My God in Heaven, please tell me we are better than this.

Chinese arithmetic

Another incident that caught my eye was the infamous, long awaited Baha Mar employees payout. It seems the numbers in some cases didn’t add up in the final payouts.

In an article in Thursday’s Tribune, the distorted payout picture became a bit more clear.

Free National Movement Leader Dr Hubert Minnis took issue with the process, as well as the government and the Baha Mar Claims Committee, on how the process of issuing claims and how it was handled in such a cold and callous manner.

Minnis also noted that the process failed Bahamian workers, offering these comments:

“Government now expects former employees to be grateful for what they are getting, in some cases less than what is due to them, and then be quiet.”

“Little direction or ‘details’ have been provided to the former Baha Mar workers.”

“Some workers are being ‘forced’ to sign for their payout cheques without having a clear assessment or understanding of the process or if they are being compensated correctly.”

All of this coming on the heels of an announcement made earlier in the month by the Baha Mar Claims Committee, informing Baha Mar workers to basically ‘take it, or leave it’. Also boldly stating that there was little or no other recourse.

The Baha Mar Claims Committee, headed by another ‘political fossil’, former State Minister for Finance Mr James Smith, icily commented on the situation saying “that while it would certainly ‘consider’ correcting the settlement sum offered in the event of a mistake, the former employees have ‘no legal entitlement’ to any of the funds the committee is administering.”

The audacity of these retread politicos, singing loudly for their supper, without a care as to who they deafen in the process.

Let me do the math on this Baha Mar claims fiasco. The Baha Mar Claims Committee wants former workers to:

1 Basically take what is doled out to them, whether the figures are correct or not.

2 Dispute the claims if they are incorrect; however, know going into the process that they don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of finding or getting restitution through the courts.

3 Be grateful for whatever you get, because you really have no legal rights to the fund.

Well in this equation, one plus two plus three all add up to another bitter pill for displaced Bahamians to swallow, along with more double-talk, lack of transparency and cronyism from the present administration. And another win for foreign investors, who seem to be popping up all over, and not wearing their ID badges.

Short changed

The irony in all of this is that as my Bahamian brothers and sisters suffer from being short changed by our government, other entities (read Chinese banks, investors and local opportunists willing to sell out Bahamians to highest bidder) continue to line their deep pockets. All of these various entities are getting rich, while we Bahamians are struggling and (literally) dying.

But hey, at least we get to see Rihanna at a Carnival next year. For a price, of course.

Until next week I will leave you with these words from Albert Einstein, which I feel best sums up the whole scenario: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

• Inigo ‘Naughty’ Zenicazelaya is the resident stand-up comic at Jokers Wild Comedy Club at the Atlantis, Paradise Island, resort and presents ‘Mischief and Mayhem in da AM’ from 6am to 10am, Monday to Friday, and ‘The Press Box’ sports talk show on Sunday from 10am to 1pm on KISS FM 96.1. He also writes a sports column in The Tribune on Tuesday. Comments and questions to naughty@tribunemedia.net