The Tribune

FORMER Deputy Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis, now leader of a four-member Opposition in the new House of Assembly, is confident that given time his party will return to lead the country.

In assessing the honest critique of what caused his party such a devastating defeat— given by the party’s newest member Exuma MP Chester Cooper — Mr Davis accepted some of Mr Cooper’s findings, but with reservations. He likened Mr Cooper to a child who tells the truth, no matter the cost.

What did Mr Davis mean by that conclusion? The only interpretation possible is that it would have been better to have maintained the lies than face the consequences of the truth.

If that is what he meant then it is time that such old stalwarts as Brave Davis and Bradley Roberts disappear into the sunset to make room for a new generation — represented by persons like Mr Cooper, who seems to have a grasp of integrity, the meaning of service, and the need to be honest with the people who have elected him.

According to Chester Cooper, the PLP lost the people by ignoring its party’s scandals, its internal errors and protecting the party’s interests over those of the country. He said that the PLP were neither transparent nor accountable. In fact the party was the full blown result of the “all for me baby” generation birthed in the Pindling years.

Apparently, Mr Davis, instead of facing the truth about his party, is, like US President Donald Trump, looking for a scapegoat on which to pin the blame, thus removing the spotlight from himself. The Bahamian people saw the truth on May 10 and “impeached” the whole PLP party. We wonder how long it will take the Americans to have the courage to do the same with their own problem. However, President Trump will probably take that burden off them by “tweeting” himself into oblivion.

Anyway, back to the PLP. According to Mr Davis, despite the PLP’s “shortcomings, history will judge us fairly… we helped many, we tackled key issues, we left The Bahamas, as a whole, better than it was in 2012”.

What a tissue of lies. The truth is they left the country bankrupt facing years of belt -tightening before there is any hope of returning to fiscal health. If their many failings during their past five years was not enough, they took their last gamble to fool the people before going to the polls by spending $250m in the months leading up to the elections.

It would be too much to list all of their financial failings, but BAMSI, which was designed to feed the country and reduce our import food bill, cost another $80m. Maybe under expert agricultural guidance, BAMSI can eventually be groomed into the food basket of the Bahamas. If not, it will end up like Austin Levy’s dairy and poultry farm at Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera, which was taken over and destroyed by the inept PLP. The late Sir Lynden Pindling had boasted that Hatchet Bay in PLP hands would be the “greatest success story in Bahamian agriculture history”. It certainly was when it was forced to close as this country’s greatest agricultural failure. The people of Alice Town were distraught at the loss of their livelihood. It has taken Bahamians all these years of losses before their eyes have been opened to the truth. On May 10 this year, they gave the PLP their overdue justice by driving all, but four of them, from parliament.

How can Mr Davis possibly say that this country was left better off than it was in 2012 when between then and just before Christmas last year Standard & Poors credit rating agency downgraded our rating to junk status, and Moody’s, which had The Bahamas’ ratings on their “watch” list will reassess our financial situation this year with the threat of also tossing The Bahamas into its junk basket.

Prime Minister Hubert Minnis, in his inaugural address to the nation yesterday, called the approximately one-quarter of a million spent to win votes before the election “another glaring example of the recklessness and massive waste by the former administration, which still today accepts no responsibility for its disastrous governance,

“They stubbornly,” said the prime minister, “refused to change track. In Opposition, we warned them that there was dire trouble ahead, but the response was to go full steam toward the iceberg, spending the people’s money with wild abandon and few results.”

Despite this, Mr Davis is certain that the PLP will win the country back in 2022. Unfortunately, for Mr Davis, the only way that that could possibly happen is if a person like Mr Cooper, who can accept the truth and demand change, takes over the leadership and injects some integrity into the party. If not, the PLP will spend another lifetime in the wilderness, a wilderness that they have created for themselves with their own selfish and greedy shortsightedness.