The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

Dr Nicki Kelly is a world-renowned behavioral psychoanalyst who graduated top of her glass at Harvard University and the University of Vienna in Austria and is an authority in the science of assessing the mental health of politicians simply by watching them on television.

Of course, nothing about that paragraph is true or has anything to do with reality. Much like Ms Kelly’s latest diatribe about the perceived mental fitness of the Prime Minister.

With zero empirical, theoretical or practical evidence from any source other than herself, Ms Kelly called Hubert Minnis everything except a child of God.

Her not-so-veiled dog whistle is that somehow this learned man with a science doctorate and years of success as a businessman is simultaneously a bumbling Uncle Tom to foreign investors and feared African warrior Shaka Zulu when he goes Over the Hill and is transfixed by the drums.

Her article was patently insulting to all right-thinking Bahamians. We have no way of knowing what Dr Minnis thinks of it. Likely he gives short shrift to writers like Ms. Kelly who has been spewing this brand of hatred for some time under the guise of a soft smile from an old lady who’s seen it all and reported on most of it.

Ms Kelly was over the top and her colleagues in the vaunted Press Club need to call her out for crossing a conduct line that journalists should avoid. Her disrespect for facts is what got her in naughty corner.

Ms Kelly was in the room, apparently, when discussions were taking place between the Hotel Corporation and the management staff who are seeking generous packages to separate from the Grand Lucayan Hotel.

Ms Kelly was judge, jury and executioner when she pronounced the Corporation wrong, Minnis evil for not stepping in, and the managers saints who were being exploited by a hapless self-loathing, neurotic Prime Minister who hates them because they presumably had the audacity to make it into the middle class.

Minnis had supposedly exercised his prerogative as corporation sole, to intervene on behalf of 164 line staff to get them packages which might have been about $15,000 average a person.

Ms Kelly advocated for the 90 management staff to get an average of $50,000 a person instead of the $30,000 on the table. To her, this had nothing to do with economics and everything to do with Minnis’ pettiness and disdain for successful people.

Minnis must have changed because during the years when he practised gynaecology his waiting room was often a cross-section of the poor, middle class and the wealthy with each patient commanding the same amount of his time and the same high-quality medical care.

What was particularly egregious was Ms Kelly’s keen analysis that because he harbours internal feelings of inferiority, Dr. Minnis goes wobbly knees around foreign investors.

The problems of Freeport were many and Ms Kelly must have seen the news reports with Grand Bahamians literally begging their government for financial relief for the island. Minnis tried to do something about it by buying a hotel to jump start the tourism industry and to her, somehow, he didn’t put his foot down in the negotiations.

Obviously, Hutchison Whampoa had zero interest in spurring tourism and were not prepared to put another red cent into the hotel. Minnis bought it back from Whampoa for exactly what the government sold it to them for years ago. If anyone’s crying into their beer over this sale it probably isn’t Minnis.

Then Ms Kelly donned her university proctor’s gown to lecture the Prime Minister on cruise tourism and on the above-his-head chess game being played by the largest cruise lines in the world for domination in the short-haul cruise market. The Bahamas is ground zero in that battle but somehow Ms. Kelly is certain that Minnis doesn’t get it.

To her, the Disney deal on Eleuthera was good because of intense local (but you just know she thinks mostly international) pressure on the parties. Never mind Minnis’ political obligation to listen to the people first and his government’s manifesto promise to be custodians of the environment. Disney made him do it, according to her.

A national tourism consensus must emerge that should point out the sheer madness of pumping billions of dollars into supporting the cruise industry when we all know that the rate of return on this investment pales in comparison to what we get from airline passengers.

Yet because the airline bosses aren’t beating a path to our door while the cruise masters think of new ways to outdo each other and our Treasury, Ms. Kelly attempted to educate this uppity lil boy from Over the Hill (there, the beans are spilled).

She metaphorically wagged her finger in his face and scolded him should he even think of selling out the Bahamas to the cruise lines. She knows that we have laws and regulations and a pesky little settled policy called Bahamianization. But that is never a part of her narrative when she analyses the Prime Minister’s intentions.

Criticism comes with the territory and journalists have a role to play in bringing transparency to government dealings. But casting aspirations on a man and summarily branding him a power craving, bogeyman with self-esteem and unsolved racial inferiority issues is beyond the pale, even for this once grand scribe.

She should hang her head in shame for this hatchet job.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau

March 19, 2019