The PLP suffered two seismic defeats at the recent general election. The first was a staggering loss which wiped out all but two Cabinet members, including, for the first time in our history, the incumbent prime minister.
The late, former Prime Minister of Belize George Price suffered a similar humiliation. But unlike Christie, who announced his retirement from politics, Price ran again, capturing a seat in the National Assembly and returning to the prime ministry.
The other seismic defeat for the PLP is the loss of a central narrative and mythology, which boosted the PLP before and after its 1967 victory.
Mythology and narrative is essential for the identity of groups and individuals. They tell us who we are by reminding us of our history, our struggles, our heroes, our purpose. The loss or the shattering of a narrative is often an existential threat.
Consider how Turkey seeks to write the Armenian genocide out of its history. The white majority in the United States of America has ruthlessly dismissed the genocide of Native Americans and the truth about black slavery.
In his masterful works, the brilliant and often tortured African American author, James Baldwin, repeatedly returned to the theme of how white America constructed a central narrative that kept finding inventive ways to destroy black lives and narratives.
The PLP has a legitimate claim as the party that ushered in majority rule. But over the decades the party acted with hubris and spectacular arrogance in representing itself as the embodiment of the struggle for majority rule, while sidelining the contributions of others.
The "Dissident Eight" who formed the FNM sacrificed as much, and in some cases even more, in the struggle. With Sir Lynden Pindling and the PLP having betrayed a number of the core ideals of the struggle for economic, social and racial equality, a majority of the men who ushered in majority rule eventually left and joined the FNM.

Self-serving
But for decades the PLP boasted that it was the champion of black Bahamians, deploying a certain brand of black nationalism that was politically effective and which sought to turn the FNM into a party that was enthralled to the Bay Street Boys.
The PLP reprised this effort in the 2017 general election. It failed spectacularly because a new generation of young Bahamians saw through the conceit and the self-serving manner of the PLP's strategy.
The PLP ran ads with white Bahamians claiming they were the bogeymen and bogeywomen, out to crush the aspirations of the black majority. Now Opposition Leader, Philip Brave Davis, repeatedly employed this strategy at rallies.
This strategy may have worked for an older generation of Bahamians, but it is a failing strategy for a new generation who see the PLP enthralled to certain white foreigners like the controversial Peter Nygard.
The video of PLP ministers bowing and scraping to him after the 2012 general election went viral. It hit a nerve in many Bahamians.
The revelation that the former Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald begged former Baha Mar developer Sarkis Izmirlian for lucrative contracts and $20,000 a month for a family business sickened many Bahamians.
Voters then discovered that former Labour Minister Shane Gibson was receiving money on a regular basis from a Nygard company.
The truth is that the PLP has been enthralled for decades to white foreigners with deep pockets. The late fugitive Robert Vesco was one in a long line of dodgy individuals whom various individuals in the PLP mercilessly used.
The former Bay Street Boys did exceedingly well under Pindling and the PLP, as well as under Christie.
Today, a new generation of young Bahamians, including scores in traditionally PLP seats in New Providence, are no longer buying the PLP narrative.
Former Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell is self-servingly wrong. His blinders are on. The 2017 election was revolutionary in terms of upending a PLP narrative that no longer works as it once did. Much of the PLP's mythology has been demythologized.

Slamming
Most Bahamians see through the PLP's game of slamming white Bahamians and foreigners when its suits their interests while looking for money from Lyford Cay and other places.
PLP Chairman Emeritus Errington "Minky" Isaacs displayed in dramatic form the narrative that has sustained the PLP for generations.
Isaacs stated: "I always speak to my children and I tell them check your history years ago, who round us up while we were in Africa?
"Our own black people round us up. The white people stood on the side and watched. Well ain't nothing changed. When we as black people gonna learn to stick together and learn together? You don't see no white people supporting the PLP per se. We got to learn the stickability."
Of course, he has much of his history wrong. His was a version of the odious, so-called black crab syndrome, which odiously claims that unlike white people and certain ethnic groups, black people are unable to cooperate for a common purpose. This is one of those lies that too many black people unfortunately keep telling themselves.
It was overwhelmingly colonizers and white slavers who strategized and carried out the genocide of black Africans. Many black empires and kingdoms refused to participate in the trade and fought mightily against it.
Isaacs would do well to watch author, Harvard Professor and documentarian Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s revealing and inspiring series "Africa's Great Civilizations". It will teach him and others the truth about the brilliant history of Africa and the broader narrative of the slave trade.
Thankfully, Isaacs' asinine diatribe was rebuked by Exuma MP Chester Cooper. He refreshingly noted: "During Monday's ceremony for the farewell address for former Prime Minister and Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) Leader Perry Christie, there were unfortunate remarks made by the moderator in the vein of black people enslaving each other while white people watched, and white Bahamians not supporting the PLP, as an allegory for our party's recent loss at the polls."

Probe
"While there will be much to discuss and probe in the wake of the PLP's loss, I want to make clear that I, Chester Cooper, in no way support those sentiments or think them a fitting and proper analysis of the PLP's loss.
"The PLP is an organization that is supported by Bahamians of every racial makeup. The thread that binds us is that we are all Bahamians. Many white Bahamians voted for me and fought a hard battle in Exuma and Ragged Island to keep that constituency in the PLP's column in what appears to be a wave election.
"I thank all Bahamians for their support and dedication to the PLP and to The Bahamas. This country, like so many others, has a deep and complex racial history, and though we still bear the scars of the deep wounds of the past, we move forward together to build this country that we all love. This is the time for healing. Indeed, Bahamians of all races and ethnic backgrounds are welcome in the Progressive Liberal Party.
"We are interested in building this nation for all. This has been clearly demonstrated in former Prime Minister Christie having supported many white Bahamian candidates in the past and the white PLPs who served in the Senate and Parliament.
"We will need all hands on deck to steer the PLP back to its progressive roots and work to empower all Bahamians, regardless of race or ethnicity.
"I would like to express my thanks for the faith that the former prime minister, the National General Council and the good people of Exuma & Ragged Island reposed in me as a candidate, and promise to give excellent representation and to hold the current administration accountable in the House of Assembly."
If the PLP is to renew itself, it will have to move beyond a certain mentality and toward faces and individuals who may represent a new beginning. Brave Davis is not one of these faces. Nor are two of his Senate picks.
The PLP will need leaders who can help the party to renew its narrative threads and mission. The notion of power for the sake of power and not for a larger mission helped defeat the PLP in one of the more consequential elections in our history.

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

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