The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

VOTE for me, vote for my party, goes up the cry at election time, and then come the promises.

We will do this, we will do that – and here is our glossy manifesto full of those promises. The question is, do politicians really mean them?

While following the news in the past week, I have also been reading the first book in former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham’s collected speeches and writings.

The title of that book is “I Say What I Mean and I Mean What I Say”. Now some of you may take issue with whether Mr Ingraham always did that, but one thing is for sure – this current administration sure doesn’t seem to have meant what it said when it put pen to paper for its election manifesto – or as they called it the Blueprint for Change.

It will probably not come as a great shock that the latest example of such a thing comes from PLP chairman and Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell, who piped up to talk about campaign finance legislation.

The topic came up courtesy of an undignified round of finger pointing over donations allegedly given by the Grand Bahama Port Authority. Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis was asked a question about whether FNM leader Michael Pintard had been given millions in campaign funding by the authority – giving Mr Davis the chance to punt the ball over to Mr Pintard, who promptly labelled the whole thing as “fictitious” but said the authority had given money to both parties over the years. The latter is certainly true.

Mr Pintard also challenged the PLP to a round of I’ll show you mine if you show me yours – to which everything went quiet.

Of course, all of this would be a moot point if we had campaign finance legislation that made donations transparent to us all, so we could see who was a beneficiary of such donations, which might make it clearer if someone means what they say or whether they’re singing for their supper.

Mr Mitchell piped up to say that “there is no appetite” for campaign finance legislation in this country. He said that “neither side can agree on the terms of disclosure in this country. And that is my personal view.”

Strange that the party chairman would not have put up a stronger fight then on keeping it out of the Blueprint for Change if that is his view. Across the board, members of the party he chairs ran on that set of promises for election to this administration.

Right there, under a pledge on good governance, it says that the party committed to fully implementing campaign finance reform.

Even more recently than that, this year Mr Mitchell stood up in front of the Organization of American States and said work was ongoing on the legal side of things to handle campaign finance.

He said: “As outlined in the administration’s Blueprint for Change election manifesto,” (see? He remembers when he’s talking to people overseas), “the government is committed to campaign finance reform and work is ongoing in development of a legal framework to govern campaign finance.”

This was after the OAS election observer team pointed out the lack of such finance reporting requirements.

Back in 2016, he was also calling for such laws himself amid the row between Peter Nygard and Louis Bacon at the time, saying: “The question is the law needs to be designed to deal with that, disclosure, sources, amounts and public financing campaigns. All that should be on the table, I think.”

Not so much now he’s back in office, it seems.

It’s not the only thing in the Blueprint for Change that seems to have been cast aside or neglected in office.

Right next to the promise on campaign finance legislation is the promise on fully implementing the Freedom of Information Act. The Information Commission has been handed a budget that largely covers a salary and some photocopy paper, while Mr Davis said in January implementing the act is not one of his top priorities. He said providing relief to struggling Bahamians is a more pressing issue, as if it’s not possible to do both. Mr Davis has said he will do so in his term of office… but there’s little sign so far.

The Information Commissioner had told reporters he expected requests to be facilitated by late last year. Last year’s gone, and this one’s on the way, and there’s no sign of it happening. At the time, FNM chairman Dr Duane Sands told people “don’t hold your breath”. Trust the doctor – you’d have turned blue a long time ago otherwise.

How about marital rape legislation? Mr Davis has outright said that such legislation is not on the party’s blueprint for change – even though the blueprint says right there that the party is committed to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals that ensure quality education, life long learning opportunities, gender equality and empowerment for women and girls, quality water, sanitation and access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy. Wait, though, you say, where does it say marital rape? Well, it takes a little further reading – the Sustainable Development Goals referred to including eliminating “all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation. They also include ending all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere. I will tip my hat in the direction of Tribune columnist Alicia Wallace for pointing out that the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) looked specifically at the Sexual Offences Act, including the section on rape, as needing amended, including the criminalisation of marital rape. So it is in the blueprint after all.

That is just a few examples of things the government said they would do on the campaign trail that they show no sign of supporting in office.

So why should we believe them when they come knocking next time?

You said you would do this – oh, there’s no appetite, oh we have other priorities, oh we didn’t really say that.

So when you say next time you will do A, B and C, why would we have any expectation that you would not do the same once you got the votes?

This government is in a rocky place between the high murder rate, the police corruption probe, the officials who have been charged before the courts and the pain that people are still feeling in their pockets while being told how wonderful the economy is even if it ain’t for them.

If you add on to that a lack of belief that the government will do what it said it was going to do, then you’re going to have a major trust problem come the next election. And in our Bahamas, which swings from one administration to the other by habit, that will be a major problem for the PLP’s re-election hopes.