The Tribune

IN the House of Assembly last week newly elected Long Island MP Adrian Gibson accused the former Christie administration of putting at least 40 persons onto government’s payroll just two weeks before the May 10 election to influence the vote. One of the 40 was hired just the day before the election.

Mr Gibson said that in exchange for a government job they had to be “open PLP supporters”, showing their support in a tangible way. In other words they were to use their loud mouths to spread the PLP gospel, and, like the Pied Piper of fairy-tale days, lead voters to the polls to mark their X for the PLP candidate. Mr Gibson said that other than a “small handful,” they were all poll workers for PLP candidate Glendon Rolle for polling divisions one through nine.

Mr Gibson went further. He told House members that PLP candidate Rolle and a “contracted Ministry of Finance employee” were the ones “galvanising and leading the charge” in a “government vehicle” to hire the 39 persons. This certainly was a bold breach of civil service rules.

At one time — pre PLP – for a civil servant’s shadow to cross the line at election time was automatic dismissal from the service. However, over the years under the PLP all the rules have been discarded. It seems that anything goes … of course as long as it goes in the direction of the PLP. We are pleased to hear that Prime Minister Minnis is in no mood to accept the continuation of this deterioration in standards and moral principles.

Now that we have a people’s government it is the responsibility of The People to demand higher standards and, as they march into the future, to stamp out the idea that “anything goes.” Whoever the civil servant was who took the government vehicle to campaign in Long Island should be called in and made read the rule book of his employment. Both he and his vehicle were out of order.

Civil servants must learn that although they have the right to vote for the party of their choice, as long as they are civil servants they have to remain neutral in appearance and behaviour, both in and out of office.

A week or two before the election, Mr Gibson told the House, eight persons were hired as security guards at the Stella Maris airport. Mr Gibson supported his allegations by tabling in the House the master payroll for the 39 persons enrolled on the “National Empowerment Placement programme.”

Mr Gibson’s reference to the “National Empowerment Programme” now explains a statement made in April, about a month before the election by former Fox Hill MP Fred Mitchell. At the time Mr Mitchell said he was asked by residents in his constituency about the cessation of government job programmes. He said he told them that anyone on his party’s “empowerment programme” would have nothing to worry about if the PLP were re-elected. With this comment Mr Mitchell has made it crystal clear that the “empowerment programme” was the PLP’s inducement to get votes for the party’s candidates.

‘You’ve been hired by the government, and the only way that that will change is if you elect the FNM to be the government,” said Mr Mitchell. “What you need to do on election day is make sure the PLP is the government and then you don’t have to worry about losing a job.”

Last year, said Mr Mitchell, “the PM announced that 3,500 public servants would go on the permanent and pensionable and that is happening right now as we speak. So the only thing you have to worry about is if the FNM takes over in May.

“If you vote PLP you don’t have to worry about whether you’re going to lose your job after election, so don’t come asking us what’s going to happen after Election Day. You have that power in your hands, vote PLP, you don’t have to worry,” said Mr Mitchell.

And so, by whatever name you call it, Mr Mitchell has clearly spelt out the PLP’s inducement programme — a job in return for a vote, thus adding to the already overburdened civil service at the expense of the Bahamian taxpayer.

Now that the election is over, these people will want to know who is going to pay them for whatever work they might have done. Judging from Mr Gibson’s statement that department heads can find no written evidence “of any hiring that was authorised by a permanent secretary or director”, the inference being that there was no lawful hiring of these people under public service rules. Our only suggestion to these unfortunate Bahamians, who were hoodwinked by their politicians, is to look for payment to whomever hired you and directed you to your job site.

As, apparently, there is no legal contract of employment, these unfortunate Bahamians are not, and have never been legally employed by any government department. They, therefore, are not the responsibility of the FNM government and should not be on the civil service payroll. Even Englerston MP Glenys Hanna Martin, former minister of aviation and transport, ditched the eight security guards hired to guard Long Island’s Stella Maris airport. According to her they would not have been hired to work as security guards “in the absence of proper training.”

Therefore, whoever has been hired should look for payment to whomever devised the “empowerment programme” — and this does not include shifting the burden to Bahamian taxpayers.