"In real life, the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like persons."
- James MacGregor Burns

As I travel around The Bahamas, the questions that I am most frequently asked are: 'What's happening with the PLP (Progressive Liberal Party)?' and 'Are we going to win the next general election?'
These questions suggest that there is level of uneasiness with the political party that they, their parents and their friends have supported for decades. It also demonstrates a level of anxiety that such persons feel, a sort of disconnection from their party. It reveals a certain angst that so many PLPs are experiencing about the institution that, as long as they can remember, embodied their hopes, dreams and aspirations, things with which those who lead their party have perhaps lost touch, and from which those leaders may have become disconnected.
Therefore, this week, we would like to Consider this... Has the PLP become disconnected from its supporters? If so, why? And, more importantly, what must be done to reconnect?

Disconnected
At almost every turn, we encounter Bahamians who are facing enormous challenges daily, simply to make ends meet. When queried about their level of anxiety and discomfort, respondents universally point to the key areas of concern that seem to haunt our communities.
Those concerns include the level and fear of crime and an unacceptably high level of unemployment, which has been exacerbated by the stubbornly stagnant Baha Mar project that has dashed the hopes of thousands of Bahamians, and whose early resolution seems to lie in a distant future.
There is also the growing sense of uncertainty about the proposed National Health Insurance program that daily raises many more questions than the answers it provides regarding its effective introduction.
In addition, many people point to a political directorate that remains intractably disconnected from the average citizen. Many Bahamians complain about their members of Parliament, whose arrogance is exceeded only by his or her sense of entitlement.
There is a general sense that too many of our political leaders are completely out of touch with and disconnected from their constituents. We frequently hear of instances where constituents have neither seen nor heard from their representatives for months. Some of those MPs are seen by their constituents to be prospering, selfishly reaping the benefits that the system offers while leaving their supporters behind, further contributing to the sense of disconnect from those whom they were elected to serve.

Other examples of disconnection
There was a time, very early in our national development, when our leaders truly believed in and boldly demonstrated their inherent faith in the capabilities of Bahamians not only to work in, but also to lead the management teams of our major public corporations.
There was time when the boards of those corporations were exclusively occupied by Bahamians who nurtured those public corporations from their colonial embryonic stages into enormously successful post-independence engines of economic growth that propelled our emerging economy into institutions of national pride.
However, successive governments have opted to deviate from the enormous growth that we have witnessed over the decades and to prefer foreign companies to purchase these valuable national treasures, which, in their post-acquisition reincarnations, have performed worse than when they were owned and managed by Bahamians. This is equally applicable for both the former Bahamas Telecommunications Company and the Bahamas Electricity Corporation. Bahamians are dumbfounded, disappointed and dismayed that, since these corporations were sold to foreigners, they have not performed as well as they did when highly qualified Bahamians ran them.
Between the excessive number of dropped mobile telephone calls that many Bahamians experience daily at the hands of the "new" BTC and the plethora of power outages that many more thousands have witnessed since BEC was handed over to its new owners, Bahamians feel betrayed. Successive governments have demonstrated greater confidence in the abilities of foreign owners than they have in the sons and daughters of our soil who have historically shown their ability to manage these enterprises successfully.
There was also a time, during the Pindling/Hanna era, when there was a serious commitment to the concept of Bahamianization. So distant is this concept from our national consciousness that most Bahamians born in the last decade of the last century would be as lost in explaining that concept as they would be in describing the floppy disk or the disk operating system (DOS) of a first-generation desktop computer.
There was also a time when our leaders demonstrated greater confidence in the abilities of Bahamian professionals and did not turn to foreign consultants at every opportunity to advise them of solutions, which in most cases represent the regurgitation and reformatting of advice obtained from Bahamians and presented by such foreign consultants as their original ideas. There was also a time when parliamentary representatives visited the homes of their constituents or at least kept regular office hours to make themselves available to their constituents on a consistent basis.

Resetting the reconnect button
Now, more than ever, the time has come for PLP members of Parliament (MPs) to reconnect with their constituents. They cannot wait until the general election campaign commences to reconnect, because, by then, it will be too late.
It is equally important for those MPs to touch the hearts and lives of our citizens, to feel their pain, to truly understand their trials, challenges, hopes and aspirations, because many constituents believe that they have been forgotten over the last four years.
There are also many PLP supporters who made significant contributions to the party's standard-bearers in the last elections. These individuals have been forgotten by their MPs who appear to be oblivious to the sacrifices and efforts that were made to assist those candidates in getting to Parliament.

Conclusion
Given the enormous division that has punctuated the Official Opposition, the PLP leadership and foot soldiers should not rest on their laurels. They must not take either the opposition's disorganization or the electorate for granted.
While the election is still the PLP's to lose, the best way to ensure victory at the polls in the next general election is for the PLP to reconnect with the people, to do so early and to remain connected. It is only by doing so will it be assured of breaking the cycle of single-term governments which we have witnessed in the last 15 years.
It has been said that today's voters, while wanting to know the issues and wanting to hear what each candidate is proposing as a solution for the problems that face us all, still vote with their hearts more than their heads. Today's parliamentarians have not learned this lesson, and their perceived disconnection from their constituents is taking a heavy toll, creating a cadre of voters who feel discarded and distressed by that apparent desertion.
That kind of emotional abandonment will be reflected at the polls in a very negative way for the party that once had their hearts - unless a reconnection and reconciliation takes place quickly, before another party steps into that place that is currently empty and wins their hearts and their votes.

o Philip C. Galanis is the managing partner of HLB Galanis and Co., Chartered Accountants, Forensic & Litigation Support Services. He served 15 years in Parliament. Please send your comments to pgalanis@gmail.com.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian