Prime Minister Perry Christie is the master of farce and artifice, an impresario at substituting good governance and sound policy for public relations stunts and meaningless speech with as much value as cotton candy or a magical potion from a snake oil salesman.

The curiosity is whether Christie believes his malarkey and artifice, and whether he believes that the mass of Bahamians buy his empty song-and-dance routine. The emperor is so self-absorbed that he no longer recognizes how bored and indifferent his audiences are to his grandiloquent gobbledygook.

Perry Christie's credibility in The Bahamas is shot. Few find him believable or sincere. He seems as authentic as a counterfeit Gucci knockoff. He no longer enjoys the benefit of the doubt from the majority of Bahamians. He is seen as a grand farce.

In the run-up to the last election, Christie took to the airwaves to announce grand and sweeping plans to combat crime. He promised that Urban Renewal 2.0 would go a long way in combatting the scourge of crime. It never could and it hasn't.

A new murder record has been set on the PLP's watch and the Christie administration has failed to make the promised serious dent in crime, which will not prevent him from making even grander promises at the next election.

In that same crime address, Christie promised to double the national investment in education and training. Given that this would require billions of dollars it was always an impossibility. But because it sounded good to the emperor of farce, Christie made a promise he could not conceivably keep.

The litany of promises Christie and the PLP could not keep is as long as the misdirection, artifice and excuses for why these promises have not been kept.

The grand National Health Insurance (NHI) plan the PLP promised and which could not be delivered in the manner promised, is today a shadow of the former grander scheme. Recall the promise to deliver NHI in year one of this administration. Don't forget the 10,000 jobs in year one.

It was said that the supposedly great Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival would bring in scores of tourists and might significantly boost GDP. It has failed spectacularly on both fronts, the gap between the hype of the emperor of farce and the reality, as wide and as vast as the dimensions of our solar system.

Presided
Yet for two years the emperor has presided over the carnival like a Roman emperor might have presided over bread and circus pageants.

Then there is Baha Mar. Once upon a time during his first administration, the emperor of farce preempted the evening news on ZNS, giddily announcing grand plans for the redevelopment of Cable Beach.

Despite the hype and hoopla, Christie failed to bring to fruition the grand scheme. The reality, not a word Christie likes, is that the scheme was too big and not the optimum plan for Cable Beach. But he could not see beyond his rose-colored mindset and pomposity, and the yarn he and others were spinning, to realize that something more modest or a better themed project would have been better at Cable Beach.

There were always questions about the ability of such a huge undertaking to realize a profit and to pay back the financier. The PLP gave away too many concessions, a number of which had to be clawed back.

It took an FNM administration to renegotiate and get Baha Mar back on track. Yet the megaproject collapsed once again on Christie's watch. Then his administration made the colossal mistake of helping to push the project into liquidation, resulting in its going into receivership, tying the government's hand even more.

On Monday past Christie again went on live television to announce a breakthrough at Baha Mar. It was an incredible performance of self-indulgent self-congratulation. The prime minister and government, who are attempting to clean up their own previous disastrous course of action, now want to be praised.

Having made a complete mess of Baha Mar, resulting in thousands being laid off, and with many vendors and creditors in dire financial straits, Emperor Christie and the PLP should be asking for forgiveness for the mass misery they have wrought.

The same day Christie was preening about his new deal, many of the details of which are still unknown, the country was downgraded, the result of his disastrous, inept and delusional governance, including the mess he made of Baha Mar.

Encomiums
It was galling and made many Bahamians queasy to watch as the emperor sat on his throne as a parade of individuals were summoned to offer him encomiums and to sing the praises of the beneficent, mighty and oh so wonderful Emperor Perry Gladstone I: "Okay, enough about me. Now tell me, what do you think about me!"

His Greatness took no questions from the lowly press, while a ZNS reporter gushed and heaped further praise. With the country being downgraded and the Zika virus posing a threat to public health and tourism, Emperor Christie basked in his self-congratulatory and self-absorbed cocoon of giddy delusions.

One could hear the strains, then the crescendo of the mood music for the performance by our emperor prime minister, who once famously referred to himself as the country and who mused about wanting his own coat-of-arms:

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh, my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!
Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's 'actch'll'
Everything is 'satisfactch'll'
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day!

Perry Gladstone I must have felt especially wonderful, still basking in the afterglow from the previous weekend after one of his sycophantic ministers bizarrely placed a replica of an Olympic gold medal around the neck of the emperor, who posed reverently for a photo of the sycophancy.

The day of his Baha Mar announcement, which curiously just happened to coincide with Moody's downgrade, the country was treated to a pandering paean in the form of a letter to the editor written by an obsequious beneficiary of the reign of Emperor Perry. No need to read the entire letter. Just scan and discover some of its gems.

Laughter
There is a phenomenon known as the giggles, which involves an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Anyone in need of such a fit should read the letter. It is so utterly ridiculous and fawning and delusional that it could be taken for a spoof. Given the utter obsequiousness of the letter, the writer did his subject more harm than good.

The letter writer ends by suggesting that the supposedly misunderstood Christie, who has tried his oh-so-very best and who is the best thing since boiled fish and Johnnycake, should be guided by these words of Mohandas Gandhi: "Whenever you are in doubt and troubled on what to do, apply the following test: Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Do that and your heart will always be at peace."

Perhaps the letter writer should have offered Emperor Christie these words earlier in his career. Whose face was the emperor recalling when he asked to be handsomely paid as a consultant by an oil company in a case of a clear conflict of interest?

Who did the emperor have in mind when he was engaged with Mohammed Harajchi and Peter Nygard, from whom the PLP took millions, and of which Christie promised an accounting, neither of which ever came?

Who was Emperor Christie thinking of as he left his constituency in squalor for decades, failing to dramatically improve the living conditions of most of its residents despite being prime minister?

Whose face did Perry Gladstone I have in mind when his government sought to alienate 10,000 acres of the best land on Mayaguana to foreigners, which would have left the residents there in reservation-like settlements?

One can understand a certain level of fawning regard. But the boot-kissing sycophants who surround Perry Christie only fuel the imperious delusions and self-absorption of an emperor who long ago lost touch with the reality in which most Bahamians live.

Christie is a drag on the country. He has been a disaster as prime minister. He lacks the energy and vision to rescue the country from the depth to which it has plunged on his watch. He no longer has the capacity to serve.

Quite a number in his government have lost faith in him. For the good and the stability of the country, he needs to be replaced as PLP leader and as prime minister.

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

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