We are fast approaching the next general election, likely in 2017. But we are facing much more. If an election is held in 2017, with the elected government completing a five-year term, the election after that will be held in 2022, a year before the 50th anniversary of independence in 2023. Our half a century as a sovereign nation will mark a significant milestone. We will celebrate the 50th as the world approaches a quarter century in the 21st century, another milestone through which to view our progress relative of the region and of the global commons.
At the next election we face the question of what type of nation we wish to strive for as we embark on the second half of our first century as an independent country. The political party and the leaders we elect will help to significantly shape the course for the country for a number of decades past the quarter century mark. First, some of the major issues, then the current crop of leaders. Job creation is a perennial issue for any government. But to enhance job growth will require a strategy that includes foreign direct investment alongside the creation of individual, small and medium-sized businesses propelled by the training and capitalization of potentially thousands of Bahamian entrepreneurs in a broad array of fields.
Ongoing diversification within tourism and better educating and training Bahamians for existing and new jobs in various fields, such as financial services and the construction industry, will remain a challenge of which a University of The Bahamas and an enhanced technical and vocational training strategy will be essential. Critical to this will be government investments in education and training, and public-private partnerships to provide funding for Bahamian entrepreneurs. The revamping of the content and delivery of education at the pre-kindergarten primary and secondary levels are a crucial part of national success. The most consequential social initiatives of the next 15 years are the phased-in introduction of National Health Insurance and the creation of novel social intervention programs relative of the reduction of poverty, hunger and violent crime.
Struggling
We are still struggling to get right the matter of the grant of bail and its connection to our high rates of murder and other violent crime. Even with the success of social intervention programs, without reforms to the criminal justice system, our current alarming crime rate will not be dramatically reduced. A future government will have to make critical choices on oil drilling, environmental protection and climate change abatement strategies, Family Island and infrastructural development. In foreign affairs, how will a future government balance our relations with the United States of America and China, while cooperating with regional partners and engaging with emerging powers such as Brazil?
Public sector reform is an ongoing enterprise, including how government is financed and what government can and cannot afford. Restraint in the use of public finances, inclusive of VAT, will be essential as the country services a reasonable public debt that allows for necessary and major capital works critical for economic growth. These and other challenges will require leaders who are politically savvy, open to creative solutions and able to effectively communicate their visions and policies to the general public and to various stakeholders, all considerably easier said than done.
Sadly, there is a dismal choice of leadership before us in the person of Prime Minister Perry Christie, Opposition Leader Dr. Hubert Minnis and the DNA’s self-appointed Leader Branville McCartney. None of these leaders are up to the task of laying the foundation for a more modern, vibrant and confident Bahamas. Indeed the choices are akin to deciding which chair on the deck of the Titanic to choose as the luxury liner sinks.
Perry Christie is a spent force intellectually. Having mouthed platitudes and talking points for decades, he is taken seriously by few. He has become something of a punch line, a farce, a parody, though he clearly takes himself quite seriously, conjuring laughable self-aggrandizement, such as seeing himself as a “defining” prime minister. That Christie believes that “his government’s performance will not be matched in the history of this country” is a sign of his trying to feverishly rewrite a history that has yet to be written.
Paralyzed
Many in the PLP want to move past Christie but do not readily see a viable challenger who can defeat him at a convention and then go on to win a general election. The PLP remains paralyzed while Christie is at the helm. Christie has not demonstrated a capacity for growth. He is essentially the same man intellectually as he was decades ago. The PLP is also stuck. It has the ability to win elections. But as a progressive political force, it is also spent, bankrupt of novel ideas.
Today’s PLP is mostly a collection of vested interests and oligarchic mandarins more interested in the accumulation of power and wealth. The plundering zeal of the PLP of the assets of the state is unquenchable. Contract after contract are opportunities for the boys and certain gals to skim profits. Ironically, the PLP’s admission of failure as a party and as a government is the curiously named “Stronger Bahamas” public relations gimmick. Paralyzed by dysfunction and incompetence, and having failed to deliver on key promises, the PLP is desperately trying to turn things around in preparation for the next election.
Make no mistake, the PLP is in pre-election mode beginning with the carnival cavalcade, first in Grand Bahama, then New Providence, the latter held on the weekend of the third anniversary of its 2012 election. The “Stronger Bahamas” push and the $20 million jobs program are also a part of the pre-election strategy. Just wait to see how much will be spent on carnival, jobs and other election ploys next year, all paid for by the bounty of VAT.
The PLP has a tried and true political and electoral formula: One part hyper-nationalism and the other part race. Following the party’s 1968 victory, the issue of race was downplayed as the PLP set about convincing foreign governments and investors that it was a moderate black government. It was only after the split of the Dissident Eight that the party set about labelling the men who fought alongside them for racial equality as traitors to the cause. The strategy worked in many ways. There remain diehard PLPs who believe still that the PLP is somehow the true party of the black man, despite how exceedingly well the old UBP mandarins and the Bay Street Boys and their heirs did under Sir Lynden Pindling and the PLP, and still today under Christie.
Disingenuous
The other part of the PLP formula is hyper-nationalism. The “Believe in Bahamians” slogan was quite effective, though highly disingenuous given the PLP’s love affair with all manner of foreign interests, individuals and corporations. Continuing with the hyper-nationalism theme, we have the propaganda ploy of “Stronger Bahamas”, hatched and coordinated by a foreign public relations company to convince the country of how nationalistic and wonderful is the PLP. One has to marvel at the PLP and its ability for monumental hypocrisy delivered with a straight face.
Meanwhile, the FNM, a party with a tremendous history and legacy, is now a shell of itself under the dismal leadership of Minnis. For those who struggled to build the FNM, whose record in office is unmatched over the past two decades, the party is but a remnant of its past vibrant self. Minnis rarely defends the record of the FNM. He appears clueless about its history.
At least Christie is a believable prime minister. Minnis is not even a believable opposition leader, much less a head of government. He is the worst opposition leader since the advent of Cabinet government. His most recent gargantuan gaffe – and there have been many, with many more to come – was his claim that the PLP’s ridiculous “Stronger Bahamas” gimmick was his idea.
The fact that he claims to be the author of a questionable idea is one thing. Equally inexplicable, he is giving the government a pass on the idea, though as inexplicably, he labelled it as shameless propaganda. He doesn’t even have the capacity to recognize that he contradicted himself. If the FNM retains as leader someone who would be a monumental disaster as prime minister, it should not be surprised that scores of Bahamians now see the party as not only a shell of its former self, but unfit for office.
Minnis’ inexhaustible capacity for the most dumfounding statements is one thing. Also egregious is the complicity of certain mandarins who supported his election last year and now share responsibility for the weak fortunes and declining viability of the party. In a sad irony, many of those who proudly claim to have built the party are colluding in its spiral to the bottom and in its potential downfall as their heads remain stuck in the sand, bordering on the level of delusion of Christie. For his part, DNA Leader Branville McCartney’s basic appeal continues to be that he and his party are essentially something new and different, and that he is neither Perry Christie nor Hubert Minnis.
McCartney and his party cannot win the next election, but they can play the spoiler. With many of his senior colleagues disgruntled with his leadership and intellectual shallowness and frustrated with his autocratic style, the DNA is ripe for the picking in terms of the more substantial individuals within the party. With Christie and McCartney likely to remain as the leaders of their parties, the only credible chance for change is within the FNM. The country is not just hungry for good leadership and change. It is hungry for a better future as we approach major milestones as a nation.
The question for the FNM is compelling: Does it have the capacity to bring forward the quality of leadership worthy of its grand history and legacy, and necessary to win an election and to help the country to seize its future?
• frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.
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