The government promised support for the police, who daily risk their lives to keep our society from falling into anarchy. Yet, we have a junior minister talking gleefully to the press about finding a way to defeat the court ruling that you must pay the police for overtime already worked.

What happened to the promised push for diversification of the national economy? What is the parliamentary response to the IDB-sponsored book The Orange Economy by Filipe Buitrago Restrepo that promotes the development of the creative industries? (Download it for free from the Internet).

I challenge women members of the national cabinet and the men no less: Why no outrage at the rise in domestic violence, especially against women and children? When you at last raised the wind to speak about the referendum on the ability to confer citizenship on one’s children, you said that you favored a delay, so that you could educate Bahamians on the subject. So, where is the education program, or are you hoping that your promise will die quietly, smothered by our fears of increased taxation and other economic weights?

Where is the outrage at government’s making up for its failure to contain its own profligate spending in first class jaunts abroad by adding another tax weight to the already breaking back of the citizenry? Where is the outrage at the one-plus-one-equals-fifty million accounting system used to assess the success of Junkanoo Carnival? Is the enjoyment of however many thousands of a booze and dance fest enough to justify the spending of $12 million in a persistently sluggish economy?

Is The Bahamas heading towards becoming a failed banana republic (without a viable banana industry) where people can be imprisoned or worse without trial for daring to question their leaders’ fitness to govern? Why does a high churchman spend more time stomping politically for his son than plying the gospel of Christ in the pulpit?

How urgently we need statesmen to act out of love of country at this time when Bahamian society is fast devolving amidst an exponential rise in antisocial behavior, a lag in the achievement of gender equality and in basic human rights and the failure to thrive in so many aspects of society and family life!

Bahamians, I challenge us to take a good, long look at ourselves to see the extent to which we, the people, share in the responsibility for the failing of democracy in our land and twisted values and morals in high places. A government is a reflection of the people — our greed, our willingness to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage, our delight in cupboard love; that is, love for those who come promising handouts without questioning the legality of the sources and without decrying the misuse of public funds.

How can we expect to have an equitable and a peaceful society when many of us happily use religion to relegate some of our fellow citizens to the dung heap of Bahamian life because our over-inflated sense of righteousness or corruption declares them to be the wrong side of politics, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity. It is strange how a person’s god is often a reflection of that person’s own character or lack thereof.

For those who are sufficiently outraged and wish to do something of benefit to our country, I propose the following:

For the improvement of Bahamian education, all of us must take responsibility for raising it from the grave of failure. I beg the powers that be to lead the way by respecting teaching as a profession like any other and raising the level of training and remuneration of educators accordingly.

Make teacher education consist of four years of mastering the subject area and a year for methodology, ethics and the practice of teaching. Teachers should recertify every three years. Let there be a private and public ethics committee to oversee education policy and the behavior of educators and administrators.

Make teacher assessment real, not the cursory passage and lip-service I know exists in many quarters. Develop a true meritocracy in this and other areas of professional practice. Start adult classes to allow parents and guardians to upgrade their education to enable them to assist their children in a meaningful way.

Let’s acknowledge in practical ways that our children have different gifts and the education system must begin to institutionalize this fact in the national curriculum and classroom practice. To lump everyone in the BGCSE stream is a folly that produces failure. Some students are more gifted creatively and practically. Let’s celebrate them and create model schools for the visual and musical arts, crafts, mechanics and entrepreneurship.

Every child, whatever may be his or her gifts, should leave school with good literacy, numeracy and at least one employable skill. Overall, take politics out of the Ministry of Education and the classroom and out of every other public service endeavor for that matter. Remove the sacred cows that milk the system rather than giving nourishment to our people.

For probity in the conduct of the people’s business, heads of agreement documents should be made public in their entirety and before, not after the fact. For the improvement of parliamentary conduct, give teeth to the Disclosure Act and any other regulations that compel openness about subjects that are relevant to national matters. I want to know who the beneficial owners are of all buildings rented by government agencies. I want to know what morganatic marriages for profit have been formed between MPs and consorts who would not be sanctioned by law or common decency.

We have a parliamentary channel on television, but it is not a pretty sight. I propose that those who hoot and clatter when another member is speaking at the behest of the speaker be escorted from the House. There should be a penalty for parliamentarians who do not attend a reasonable number of sessions of parliament to offer comments of merit rather than schoolyard rants. Chairmen of political parties should be banished from speaking for government. When election time comes around, they are welcome to use all the deviance they can muster. It is the buyers/voters who should educate themselves and beware.

I propose that leaders who crave the respect of their people and the world at large should practice respecting others’ and human rights. When high office confers the right to run roughshod over others, we are dealing with autocracy, dictatorship, tyranny—call it what you like, but it is certainly not democracy and service at the will of the people.

As the old saying counsels, even the cat may look at the sovereign. From the ragamuffin to heads of state, the gendered and ungendered, those lacking politically correct connections, the imprisoned, the citizen and the foreigner must enjoy basic human rights in our land, if we are to continue to claim Christ and democracy.

I propose a limit on the spending of government ministers and functionaries, especially on travel that yields high living for the travelers and pictures of their merriment but nothing for the advancement of country and people. I propose published reports on the trips abroad, justifying the role of each member of each contingent and every penny of public funds spent.

I would also like an account of how and to whom and why government assets, especially vehicles, are apportioned and how used. And by the way, does the mileage accord with the officially designated use of these vehicles? I propose massive reform in health care administration, spending and maintenance before government hands more money from overburdened taxpayers into the hands of incompetents and malefactors, who have no better decision-making ability or “probity” than their choice of political party affiliation.

Repair the clinics, especially in the Family Islands, get Accident & Emergency at the Princess Margaret Hospital functioning efficiently to reduce the unconscionable waits of people who are sick, in pain and perhaps dying for lack of timely intervention. Let’s give government scholarships to medical students who will specialize in e-medicine and contract to work in Family Island communities.

In tandem, establish a web-based consultation system for the assistance of physicians and nurses in communities that do not have the population mass to sustain mini-hospitals. Finish, equip, staff and activate the mini-hospitals that exist. Digitize patient files, make public the names and qualification of suppliers to the health care system. Show us an exact plan of how the proposed National Health Insurance tax money will be better apportioned, managed and audited than what now obtains under the Public Hospitals Authority.

Why has government tried so hard to besmirch the reputation of the auditor general and several reputable accounting firms, who have found incompetence at best and malfeasance at worst? Show us the money!

Economic diversification: I propose that we talk less of “jobs and more jobs” and the kind of employment that teeters dangerously on a tightrope over the abyss of despair and want, when investors and government fall out. Let’s stop institutionalizing a new slavery and colonialism by increasing dependence on handouts and the Big-Daddy-will-take-care-of-you, plantation mentality and preach more self-reliance and a faultless work ethic when there are jobs.

Bahamians have long proven they are highly creative. Let government get out of the business of handouts, which is only a platform for assuring a biddable electorate. It is time to empower people to self-reliance and a truer independence. Promote more creative cottage industries and adopt the true role of governments—that of facilitation of opportunity through timely and just legislation and fair and “transparent” management of public assets.

For those who are in love with the notions of revoking citizenship, let me just say that, despite my name, I was born in a settlement deep in the heart of one of the almost forgotten islands of The Bahamas to parents, grandparents, great grandparents and fore-parents even further back who were also born in these blessed islands I love so dearly. Or has it become treasonous to love one’s country and refuse to remain silent in the face of its rapid unraveling owing to uncaring and corrupt politics?

• Patricia Glinton-Meicholas is a Bahamian educator and award-winning writer