Dear Editor,

Allow me to congratulate Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis and the Free National Movement on their tremendous, overwhelming victory at the polls on May 10! To God be the glory!
Although I am a lifelong FNM, I never supported Dr. Minnis for FNM leader. I was always skeptical of his ability to lead the party to victory. I am happy to have been wrong, especially since, as I wrote in a letter to your daily, I came to despise the PLP!
Although I now wallow in the pain of Perry Christie, as I wallow shamelessly in the pain of all his arrogant men, I harbor some concern for Perry Christie, the person. In that regard I wish him well.
That being said, Perry Christie and the PLP treated the Bahamian people with contempt, and on May 10, the people returned the favor, and then some! The people's anger was almost palpable. You could see it in the numbers as the returns rolled in.
One can only hope that we have forever banished the likes of Jerome Fitzgerald, Shane Gibson, Allison Maynard Gibson, Leslie Miller and V. Alfred Gray from our national political life. Not to mention the crass, crude, classless PLP Chairman Bradley Roberts, who has so coarsened our political discourse. And hopefully the immature, intemperate Wayne Munroe never ascends to political office in our country!
It is indeed telling that so many of these despicable people went into this election thinking that they could, should and would win. They actually deluded themselves into thinking that the people loved them. They remind me of the man who, for years, beats on and abuses his wife; and because she remains the dutiful wife, he deludes himself to believe that, in spite of his brutality, she still loves him. She bides her time, and one day without warning, she sticks a knife in his neck and he goes to his grave with that "I thought you loved me!" look of total surprise plastered upon his stupid face!
In a blatant demonstration of total disregard for the Bahamian people and a selfish, desperate, but futile attempt to hold onto power, in the dying days of their administration, Christie and his colleagues heaped debt upon the backs of Bahamians!
In an act as vile and reprehensible as any I have seen, and one in which Police Commissioner Greenslade also finds himself culpable, Christie made a transparent attempt to capture votes mere days before the election by promoting a staggering 1,000 police officers!
Never in the history of a disciplined force has one quarter of its members been promoted in one fell swoop! The police force is now so top heavy it threatens to topple over! But it didn't end there. Christie, at the same time, promoted a mind-numbing 475 defense force officers. That is half the members of that service.
It was as if the man went crazy. Now promotions in those two services have totally lost their value. There is, of course a monetary value, to promotions. How will these officers be paid?
Then there is the case of all of the people being hired into the public service, literally right up to Election Day, many of whom did not even fill out application forms. They include the five who just showed up at the Freeport Post Office one morning totally without warning, during the pre-election week, and said that they had been sent by their MP.
This is without regard to the fact that 20 others had been placed on the Post Office payroll mere months before, as a part of the 52-week program; even before their arrival, there was precious little in the Post Office to be done!
These hirings also totally ignore the fact that, in another week or two, the Post Office reverts to its annual rotation system, where half the staff work the morning shift and the other half the evening, as conditions in the place become unbearable in summer because the air conditioner has been broken for years. It was apparently deemed more essential to find money to hire supporters than to seek to repair the air conditioning system. How about the tens of thousands of dollars in loans given to those with no means to repay them by the Development Bank in the days before the election? People literally flew into Nassau from the Family Islands in some cases to collect these loans.
In the dying days of their administration, Christie and the PLP indulged in acts with the people's money, that were every bit as lewd and obscene as the several lascivious acts they indulged in onstage in full public view! They perceived that they were drowning and harbored no qualms about taking the country down with them!
On another matter, I was happy to hear Dr. Minnis so prominently and emphatically pledge to not victimize Bahamians. We who are responsible for this government coming to office have a special responsibility to ensure that the pledge made by Dr. Minnis is honored by all and sundry.
We are firstly Bahamians -- not FNMs or PLPs but Bahamians! No Bahamian should have any more rights in this country than any other Bahamian.
We must never stand idly and see our brothers and sisters victimized by an administration we helped to put in place. The would-be victimizer must be exposed! That is notwithstanding the fact that PLP supporters have, in the main, stood mute while FNMs were victimized by PLP administrations dating back to the Pindling era.
We must now demand from the FNM that which we never got from the PLP -- honest, transparent, accountable governance.
The Christie administration refused to account to Bahamians while they were in office. The people now demand that they be forced to account. For Perry Christie and his PLP colleagues, the day of reckoning is finally at hand!

- Cornell Stuart

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