English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton is credited with the formulation of three laws of motion.

Newton’s first law of motion postulates that a body at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by an outside force, and that a body in motion at a constant speed remains in motion in a straight line, unless acted upon by an outside force.

A body’s resistance to movement if at rest, or its resistance to changing its pace once in motion, is based on the property known as inertia, and the more mass a body has, the more inertia it has.

Let us connect this law of physics to the dynamics of governance in The Bahamas.

Governance has many moving parts and the level of authority and power both vested in and afforded to the prime minister makes him or her the central factor determining how the country will be governed, the place the country will take in the world, and how the lives of Bahamians will be impacted.

Though our constitution designates governance by the Cabinet and not a prime minister alone, the buck invariably stops with the head of government, and whatever his or her administration proves to be, invariably points to the kind of leader the prime minister is.

Recently, Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis gave what some dubbed his swan song in Parliament, claiming that he and his administration will do better next time in their focus on the poor, the youth, and the social advancement of Bahamians.

But a party’s new mandate to govern does not suddenly make the same prime minister a new kind of leader.

The Minnis administration’s inertia, as seen in its resistance to movement on critical areas in need of progress, and its resistance to taking a step back from its direction of taking the country down a road of confusion, lack of focus, and political intrigue, is glaring.

That inertia is proportional to the administration’s mass – or the stuff it is made of – and the larger the amount of ego, dictatorialism, lack of cohesion, inexperience and self-interest an administration is made of, the more we can expect to have a government that will not move as it ought, when it ought, and where it ought for the Bahamian people.

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