Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Works and Urban Development Philip Brave Davis should resign from the Cabinet or be immediately dismissed by the prime minister in regard to the former misleading the House of Assembly over the matter of a contractor's failure to possess insurance for building a dormitory at BAMSI gutted by fire.
Davis unequivocally told the House that the contractor had all-risk insurance at the signing of the contract. He also emphatically stated that the contract expired before the fire because of delays in the project and the failure of the contractor to pay the annual premium. None of this was true.
This is particularly egregious because Davis not only provided alleged facts that proved to be wrong, but he also supplied a false narrative when he said the insurance had lapsed, even providing a detailed narrative as to why the insurance had lapsed.
Recall, that this is the same Davis who, in defending the erection of billboards of crime statistics at the last election, asked why anyone should be afraid of the truth and facts. The man who so seemingly loves the truth did not do his due diligence at BAMSI, opting instead to mislead when the facts were readily available.
What is troublingly curious is that it took six weeks after the fire for Davis to propose his narrative, which proved patently false. Clearly, he had more than enough time to get the facts and to inform the House.
Again, curiously, the newly minted Queen's Counsel provided the false narrative before he claimed that he eventually saw the file, something that he likely would not do as an attorney. How odd that both the minister and the contractor offered the same brazen factual error. Davis ought to have known the truth. He had time to find out. All he had to do was to review the files before he misled Parliament.
He cannot blame his officials. It was his job to do due diligence and to know the facts before he made his emphatic claims. The only honorable choice he has is to resign. In failing to so do he is not acting honorably.
Principle
There is a major principle of parliamentary democracy and good governance at stake, a principle which if ignored makes the entire government and Prime Minister Perry Christie complicit in Davis' actions.
The model of parliamentary government which we practice in The Bahamas, along with others' parliaments, is based on rules as well as powerful conventions and a commitment to honorable behavior on the part of those who manage and function within the system.
One of the most serious breaches of the rules and conventions of Parliament is for a member to mislead Parliament. From time to time the speaker is called upon to deal with a member who is alleged to have committed this breach in debate.
The standard as applied to ministers of the government is even higher. It is regarded as a cardinal sin for a minister to mislead Parliament, and a minister doing so is subject to retributive accountability. Nothing less than resignation of his ministerial position is required in a serious case of a minister misleading Parliament.
At Westminster, ministers have taken responsibility for misleading Parliament, even when they did so honestly based on information supplied to them by their officials. It is presumed that they knew, or if they did not know, that they ought to have known, which is the case with DPM Davis.
Perhaps the most spectacular case in Britain in modern times is that of John Profumo who held the non-Cabinet post of war minister when he was alleged to have had an affair with a model named Christine Keeler. The problem was that Keeler at the same time was having a liaison with a Soviet official in London so the question of a possible breach of national security arose.
Profumo made a personal statement to Parliament denying any impropriety on his part. When it transpired that the minister did in fact have a sexual relationship with Keeler he resigned from the Cabinet and from Parliament. His transgression was misleading Parliament.
This episode shattered the government of Harold Macmillan who had expressed confidence in his minister, a warning for Christie, who has yet to seriously address the matter of the DPM misleading the House.
Davis' credibility is now shredded and he will become an even more diminished figure if he does not resign. By failing to resign, he will lower public standards and will continue to be a liability for an already widely unpopular government. Rather than a new face of the PLP, he will become the face and a symbol of all that is wrong with the PLP.
Scandal
We are witnessing a grave crisis of credibility for the prime minister and his government with the BAMSI affair set to be the worst scandal thus far of the Christie administration. BAMSI-gate is a scandal of untendered contracts, potential fraud, irregularities, wide-scale incompetence, illegality, falsehoods and misrepresentations.
The affair began with the government issuing contracts which legally should have gone out to bid. The contracts, given out to government supporters, were announced in unison with the hoopla of a PLP mini-convention in Andros.
The lack of transparency and accountability was perhaps bound to blow up in the face of the government given some of the characters and PLP cronies who received contracts. In a communication to the House on BAMSI on March 11, Davis ended by tabling documents which he said was being done "for the sake of transparency", which is rich coming from him after $20 million in untendered contracts and after he had misled the House.
We now know that in addition to the dormitory contractor having no insurance that he was also not in full compliance with NIB requirements. Why did several Ministry of Works officials sign off on the construction project without insurance being in place? Were they asked to do so by certain political figures?
Does there exist a culture of corruption and turning a blind eye at the ministry? On the heels of the Renward Wells letter of intent affair, there are serious concerns about how poorly Davis is performing as a minister, with growing concerns about transparency and accountability at the ministry on his watch.
Davis has stylized himself as not flashy or charismatic like Christie, but as competent and capable. With the BAMSI affair, including the awarding of contracts, construction of facilities, security at the institution and his handling of the aftermath of the dormitory fire, he has proven spectacularly and grossly incompetent, further reasons for his resignation.
Following the robbery of tourists at BASH in 2009 PLP Chairman Bradley Roberts demanded the resignation of then National Security Minister Tommy Turnquest. It was clearly not a resigning affair.
Consistency
But as Roberts was presumably speaking on behalf of the party and for the sake of some degree of consistency, Roberts and the PLP must now ask Davis to resign or be fired for misleading the House. If they fail to do so, they will not possess the moral authority to call for the resignation of a minister in an FNM administration.
Had an FNM minister misled the House as Davis did, the PLP, including likely Davis, would have howled for a resignation. We are witnessing stupendous hypocrisy, which is shredding the little credibility left of the government.
Davis has summoned his defense lawyer skills to mitigate and obfuscate in order to deflect from his misleading the House, which is indefensible. Not only is his defense strategy not working, it has backfired and is making him look desperate, and his actions unseemly. Both his character and judgment are now under question.
This is not a legal trial in which he might try to raise reasonable doubts and win over a jury. The evidence is dispositive. He misled the House and should immediately resign. Public reaction seems to reflect an overwhelming view that he should resign. The jury of public opinion has rendered its verdict.
He has chosen feeble euphemisms like "administrative error" in order to deflect responsibility. The laughable attempt to blame his officials is angering many civil servants in his ministry and throughout the public service. Thus far, he has failed to fully accept responsibility for his actions.
In a communication to the House, a sort of parody of a closing argument to the jury, Davis attacked the opposition, spoke of the need for food security, lauded the important work of BAMSI, and generally attempted to cloak his failures in mitigating language, all of which mostly failed as the central issue remains his having misled the House. Both Christie and Davis have claimed that this is a teachable period. So what are we learning? We are learning of widespread waste and fraud, of spectacular incompetence, of gross mismanagement and of a government, a PM and a DPM all unprepared to accept responsibility for an abuse of the public trust and the public purse.
We have learned that Davis is no longer fit to serve in his current office because of his misleading the House and secondarily because of gross incompetence as works minister. He may have already demonstrated that he is also unfit to serve as prime minister.
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