The Tribune

TWO years ago then DNA leader Branville McCartney expressed amazement to Tribune Business that government MPs and their leading supporters seemed to justify corruption. It has “almost become a culture,” he complained.

As a Bahamian he was “embarrassed” at the comments of a former PLP member of parliament who backed the “system” by which governments blindly award contracts to their supporters, whether or not they had the equipment or expertise to do the work. Mr McCartney found it amazing that there was a “public acknowledgment of corruption by a sitting PLP MP”.

“What is even more amazing,” he said, “I read this morning where a PLP stalwart said the US could not talk because they had ‘unclean hands’, and there was more corruption proportionately in the US than in The Bahamas.

“It’s almost as if they’re trying to justify corruption.... That shows not only locally, but internationally, that we have a corrupt system, and that has to change,” Mr McCartney said. He then referred to former Cabinet minister Loftus Roker who argued that the failure of many sitting and former MPs to comply with the Public Disclosure Act “breeds corruption.”

We recall when Mr Roker, who many years ago was PLP health minister, stood on the floor of the House of Assembly and told Bahamians that corruption in the Pindling government was rocking that government “to its very foundations”.

And then there was “Brave” Davis, deputy prime minister, who in 2014 argued that MPs should be paid more to deter them from wrongdoing. And in 2015, then prime minister Perry Christie expressed the hope that the majority of contracts for the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI) had gone to PLP supporters.

We recall a loud and bitter fight on the floor of the House of Assembly in 1988 – 30 years ago – when the late Wallace Whitfield, who headed the FNM after breaking with the PLP, insisted that the details of a $45m contract to Balfour Beatty be laid on the table of the House. The contract was to extend and improve harbours in Nassau and Freeport. Mr Whitfield, then supported by Independent Cooper’s Town MP Hubert Ingraham, maintained that the contract was heavily “padded” to “pay off” some people, including the Bahamian shareholders of Balfour Beatty.

The argument was long, loud and bitter. “This contract,” said Mr Whitfield,“has not met in accordance with the usual provision. Every contract which is $100,000 or over must be let out to tender and must be approved by a tender board. But this contract has not been put out to tender,” he thundered. How many contracts since then have not gone to tender, and how many ministries fail to lay their financials on the table of the House at the end of every financial year? There are some ministries that are four or five years in arrears. And even today, despite the attempt to weed out corruption and the award of contracts between friends, there is still an attempt to avoid putting contracts out to tender.

We have been told that at least one Ministry, which in our opinion is in desperate need of a forensic audit, just can’t find the funds to afford the audit. We are not suggesting that dishonesty in government was introduced by the PLP. This is not true. Dishonest dealings go way back. It is woven in the historic fabric of every generation. However, now is the time to make it clear that this is the generation that will make a serious effort to end it. And it is this government that should be the government to start moving the country forward in this new direction.

Tribune-trained Adrian Gibson, who was a government teacher, then qualified as a lawyer and last year entered politics, has undertaken a herculean task as chairman of the Water and Sewerage Corporation. Mr Gibson is tenacious and has a deep sense of what is right and wrong. He is determined to run the corporation like a business for the benefit of all Bahamians.

He recognises that politically motivated interference is the root cause of the Corporation’s problems.

“Water and sewerage,” he told Tribune Business, “needs to be run like a business. It shouldn’t be a place where cronies are stacked and basic principles are ignored for the sake of expediency.

“For any business to survive it must move to right-sizing, streamlining and profitability.”

Adrian, you have chosen a hard path — the right path — but with your determination, you will succeed. It is young people like you who now have to make that important U-turn into the future.