The Economist Intelligence Unit February 7, 2016 Country Report on The Bahamas offers a number of deeply worrying observations. The report notes: "A weak fiscal position, rising debt burden, low demand for tourism, a soft jobs market and a high crime rate will be the government's main challenges."

The weak economic position of the country includes the uncertainty about Baha Mar, higher unemployment, a staggeringly high rate of youth unemployment and the possibility of a further downgrade of our credit rating. Moreover, with the introduction of VAT, Bahamians thought that our debt burden would ease.

The Economist report further notes: "On January 5 the U.S. Embassy issued a new crime warning for The Bahamas, urging its citizens to remain on heightened alert when visiting the country, warning specifically that there had been five assaults by jet-ski operators on U.S. citizens since July 2014.

"This follows earlier travel-related crime advisories from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. The Atlantis Resort, the largest in The Bahamas, also intends to step up its warnings to visitors. Concern over violent crime is expected to weaken demand for Bahamian tourism - the key driver of the economy - in 2016, leading to a slight downward revision to our growth forecast."

The economy and crime remain the major issues facing the country, with the level of violent crime increasingly taking a toll on our tourism industry and economic prospects. Bahamians are fearful. There is fear that crime will only worsen as the government seems paralyzed to arrest the incidence of murder. Many fear that their economic prospects will not improve in the foreseeable future. There is a sense of malaise that has settled on the country.

Contemptuous
Corruption, waste and extravagance at the highest levels of government continue to anger and frustrate as the tax burden grows and there is seemingly little accountability by a government contemptuous of transparency. Even as many poorer and middle-class Bahamians continue to fall behind economically, incurring greater debt and anxiety, senior political figures are swinging as many deals as possible in a frenzy of greed. The level of corruption by certain officials is staggering. The corruption is accompanied by a smug indifference to economic woes of those struggling to make basic ends meet.

Our social decay, incivility, propensity to respond to conflict with violence, often deadly violence, continue to metastasize. Yet there is little serious thinking or strategy by either of the major political parties to address our social decline, which points to another depressing feature of national life.

The majority of Bahamians now view both the PLP and the FNM with disdain at best, but more likely disgust and contempt. The concerns and needs of most Bahamians seem irrelevant to many in the political class whose lust for power is overwhelming at the expense of their respective parties and the country. The legacies and identities of the FNM and PLP have been laid waste by leaders unmoored from principles, certain ethical norms, basic honesty and truth-telling and the overall interest of citizens.

Many PLPs and FNMs lament that they no longer recognize their parties which have been seized by those so hungry for power that they want to crush, expel and destroy any dissent. Considering the history and founding of the FNM, the threat to expel FNM parliamentarians was another in a series of low points for a party founded on the principles of collegiality and freedom of expression.

We have seen in history and in the FNM where such thuggery and brutishness leads. It is easy to move from a slippery slope to a precipice in rapid succession. "Whom the gods would destroy..."

Autocratic
It is mind boggling how some in the FNM are repeating the party's fairly recent history as well as the recent history of the Pindling era and the descent into an autocratic, bordering on dictatorial, mindset. One wonders which of the Dissident Eight would be scorned and threatened with expulsion because he did not agree with certain matters in the party. Of course, the FNM has been here before in its history as various members of the Dissident Eight were threatened because of their dissension.

The FNM risks becoming a party of intolerance for dissent and a smaller and smaller tent. Now we have the disgusting and nasty attack on Montagu MP Richard Lightbourn by a former FNM who once before and is once again doing tremendous damage to the FNM. If the attack on Lightbourn is not strongly repudiated at the highest level of the party, the FNM will shrink some more, withdrawing into a cocoon of smug self-satisfaction and myopic thinking, blind to the party's decline.

Within the PLP, Prime Minister Perry Christie, among the most entitled of the entitled, is loathed to give up the power, pomp and pageantry of his office. He views a challenge to his leadership by Deputy Prime Minister Philip Davis as an act of betrayal, seemingly bordering on treason.

Christie is in the line of all of those others in our system who undemocratically and arrogantly believe they should not be challenged. The challenge of a leader is part of the lifeblood of our system. No one is entitled to lead a party. Others have a right, indeed an obligation, to challenge if they believe that they would be a better leader for their party and country.

Obsequious
The obsequious, posterior kissing of a leader is dangerous for the leader and those subservient to that leader. There is a tendency in The Bahamas too easily to genuflect to a leader once he has assumed the top office. While loyalty is important, the need to challenge the leader becomes even more necessary when he leads the party or the country.

The corruption of power grows quickly for those who are deeply insecure or have certain dispositions that tend to worsen with power. What makes this moment troubling is not only the leadership qualities so seriously lacking in the heads of both major parties. Even worse, neither leader has a serious, compelling and thoughtful vision for the country.

A weak and bumbling PLP has gotten away with its incompetence and failures because the FNM, for the most part, has failed to seriously confront the PLP. The FNM also has no in-depth alternative vision for the country in terms of the economy, crime, social decay and a host of issues.

The political landscape is depressing. We have leaders who have a single-minded, all-consuming lust for power and the potential accompanying economic rewards. What they thoroughly lack is an overarching vision and policy ideas for when they come to power.

The truth is that many of them really don't give a damn about ideas and policies. All they want is power, the price of which is paid for by the Bahamian people. We are at one of the lowest points in our modern political history.

o frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian