The Tribune

Malcom J Strachan says a desperate PLP government is clearly prepared to do anything to stay in power and is insulting the intelligence of Bahamians . . .

Wednesday, May 10, will be a day of reckoning for the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP).

After five years of horrendous, scandal ridden governance, the people of the Bahamas will finally have an opportunity to kick this Christie-led administration to the kerb and elect a party that will bring about change and accountability once again.

A Free National Movement (FNM) government is the only way for the Bahamas to restore some dignity to this nation and root out the corruption and incompetence that has plagued us for the last five years.

Perry Christie, during his first term in office from 2002-2007, presided over a similar, although now in comparison, far less corrupt administration.

Back then, many within his cabinet were only “small time” compared to what they are now. Back then, you had the same begging of investors and the odd inside dealing and kickbacks for contracts. But the size of the asks was far less, and the demand for contracts was far less frequent than now. Many business persons and investors in our country today, the few who still could stomach to do business here, call it “the cost of doing business”. In a first world country, it wouldn’t exist. But here, in the banana republic that we have become, the PLP feeds off it. Better yet, they encourage it. There must be “something for the boys” they would say, as they laugh themselves into fatter and fatter bank accounts, all while the people of the nation are made poorer by the minute.

But we are in election season now, and the PLP wants us to forget the abuses we have had to suffer over the last five years.

They want us to forget about the record levels of crime we’ve had to endure, and rampant corruption we have seen, and are still being exposed to thanks to recent leaks and revelations in the media.

We have a cabinet minister who knowingly kept the fact that his constituents were being poisoned by a gas station leak for over a year, and still today has the gall to not only campaign in that area, but distribute water bottles with his face and logo on them as part of his campaign materials. We have another government minister who illegally received donations into a United States bank account from a scandal ridden private investor while he was a sitting member of the Cabinet. When exposed, this minister had the audacity to claim the donations were for “scholarships” for his constituents. All shame has been lost. We don’t need to go into the others, as they are far too many, and it would take up all the space we have in this column.

But what we would like to address is their new offence. The crème de la crème: the PLP is cautioning voters to not vote against them on Wednesday, suggesting that a vote for the FNM would be a vote to stopping the progress that their party has created.

Now, if we wanted to be funny, we would list those “accomplishments” or “projects” here for you, but they would all add up to the same zero, so why go through that exercise? If you look at and listen to their description of their works, everything is coached in aspirational tones. “Your PLP Government will do this … your PLP government will move quickly to do that … your PLP government has laid the ground work to do the next, and so on and so on.”

You get the picture.

Poor Picewell Forbes in South Andros is a prime example of this. For five years, Picewell cannot point to one single substantive improvement he has done for his constituents on that island. Not one. We challenge him to show otherwise. His entire re-election campaign was a photo of him standing in front of a tractor as he looked out to nearby bushes where a promised basketball/sporting complex would be completed. What an utter disgrace.

Which leads us to our next point. The carrot and the stick approach that this administration has so shamelessly utilised over the last few weeks.

The Prime Minister and his candidates have been up and down the country promising one development after the next. Suddenly, after five years of incompetence, this Christie administration is signing deals and groundbreakings are all “just around the corner”. Either Christie and his merry men had been asleep at the wheel for four and a half years and only now have awoken to show us what they can do, or (the more likely and realistic option) they are lying to us.

Just listen to what the Deputy Prime Minister, Philip Davis, said in Long Island during their recent “rally” there. Mr Davis, in what could only be a joke, promised residents of Long Island running water (let that sink one for a moment) if the PLP was returned to office. Mr Davis said an international lending agency had provided the funding and plans were underway for $22million to be spent to install running water throughout the island. He urged voters not to elect the FNM because that party could “stop and cancel” that contract and thus deprive the people of fresh, drinking water.

Remember now, we’re in 2017. In 2017, an elected official is promising running water? Keep in mind, Long Island only got electricity in the early 1990s after suffering under the yoke of the PLP who punished that island for 25 years for not supporting the then governing Pindling regime. For 25 years that island had issues with its infrastructure and bore the brunt of oppression while Pindling wheeled and dealed his way to wealth and opulence. Now here we are in 2017, and Mr Davis wants us to believe that the FNM will deny its own supporters drinking water. They must think we have rocks in our heads! Either they believe that Bahamians are that stupid or they really don’t give two hoots what we think and they say these things anyway.

It’s like Mr Davis’ other little foot in mouth exchange on ZNS with Darold Miller. The PLP’s paid-for phone callers and radio show texters sent in the prepared message by their Greenberg consultants who tried to propagate the line that the much-touted Value Added Tax money had been spent on the new Royal Bahamas Defence Force fleet. Mr Miller, rightly, stopped his reading of the message mid-sentence and expressed his displeasure. Mr Davis tried to continue the line and was made to look like a fool as Mr Miller took him to task on the fact that the money for the boats was borrowed, and not a part of the spending of VAT. To all those listening, it was a telling sign of the level of contempt and arrogance that has gripped this administration.

The PLP of Christie from 2002-2007 wasn’t this bad. Just look at what this lot are doing in these last days of their administration

After fighting the police force for years on their overtime pay, suddenly on the day before the police were heading to the advance polls to vote, the PLP says they will not only pay the officers their money, but they issued promotions for them across the board. In other jurisdictions, this would be called and seen for what it is - bribery. But here, we must go through the motions, and grin and bear it. And we wonder why our crooked politicians feel a sense of invincibility?

Just look at their other campaign pledges. Free electricity! Can you imagine, in a country where in the capital city the power cuts out nearly every other day, they now want to offer the service for free? BEC is broke, and thousands of Bahamians are without the service today because it is too expensive, but the PLP wants you to believe they could give it away for free. Another insult to intelligent Bahamians.

But the ultimate insult will be what the FNM must expose when they come to office - the 200 new hires that have been authorised at every ministry by this administration. Many of these persons are sitting in Government offices, ostensibly hired as security and cleaners, with nothing to do. They are being paid $11,000 per person, costing each ministry $2.2million. That’s a whopping $35.2 million spent to secure votes ahead of a general election.

There must be something that this PLP government does not want the Bahamian people to find out. Why they are going to these extremes to pad their support ahead of the election. What else has the Bahamian people been blind to that will be revealed?

We’ve heard whispers of a secret sale of BEC to a Texas tycoon, with two prominent PLPs involved in a side deal for a “piece of the action”. But, surely, Christie has learned from his Bluewater debacle of 2007 to attempt such lunacy at this late stage. Surely, there must not be this level of desperation setting in where the PLP would try this move again.

But who knows. If their internal polls are telling them what the people in the country are truly saying, then who knows what lengths they may go to.

All we know is that the only way to get to the bottom of what has transpired over the last five years, there must be a change in government in this country. And the only real chance of that is with the FNM.

The only way to ensure that corrupt politicians are hauled before the courts and made an example of, would be if the FNM is elected to office. And the only way for that to happen is to vote FNM on May 10. This election is about where we want our country to go - further into the darkness of corruption and scandal or into the sunshine.

So, I urge all of you, to not throw your vote away behind anything else. This election is too important to risk it on anything else.

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