If there is such a thing as a honeymoon in politics, we can say with certainty that the magical, misty-eyed excitement of the new union between the people of The Bahamas and the Davis administration has come to an end.

Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis and his Cabinet colleagues had the great fortune of taking office after a deeply unpopular Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis was fired by the Bahamian people.

So many were Minnis’ shortcomings, so offensive was his manner and style of governance that the soft-spoken and apparently logical approach the Davis administration took to governance was welcomed it appears by the majority of the Bahamian people, even if they did not support the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), or indeed vote, in the last election.

Gone were the scowls when speaking to the nation.

Gone was the barking at reporters who asked relatively benign questions.

Gone were the frenetic orders upending the freedoms of society at a moment’s notice.

Hubris and fatigue had set in among many in leadership of the last administration.

The public was, for the most part, looking with fresh eyes at Davis and his team when they assumed office.

People questioned the size of Davis’ Cabinet – the largest in an independent Bahamas – but were willing to wait and see if the reasoning that he needed so many people to tackle our many problems proved true.

People questioned why a government still in an extraordinary difficult fiscal position would undertake the expense of having numerous swearing-in ceremonies and the Opening of Parliament at the Baha Mar Convention Centre.

But people were not ready to castigate the ceremonies as an indicator for the possible attitude toward spending by the current administration.

There were also those who questioned why the government would pack thousands of people into the convention center as the COVID-19 pandemic remained a very real threat.

But so bad was the handling of the pandemic by the Minnis administration that Bahamians were willing to look past the risk the current administration was prepared to take to celebrate with its supporters.

However, that was then and this is now.

Ten months have elapsed and the attention of the public is now focused less on that of the former prime minister and his administration than on the current circumstances of their lives and what the people they elected nearly a year ago are doing about that.

Of course, Minnis is helping the government and harming his party by remaining so stubbornly in the media, but he has long cared more about his own political fortunes than those of the Free National Movement.

Unfortunately for the PLP, Minnis has been gone long enough for the public to understand that no amount of ire at the last administration will help deal with what confronts it.

And what confronts it is sky-high inflation, unemployment that is still high despite improvements in the economy, historic high gas prices, a looming depletion of the National Insurance Board fund and no apparent consensus on when those in leadership will come to grips with the fact that electricity prices will also soon rise.

The public is also confronted with rising crime and an alarming clip of murders since the beginning of the year that no amount of deflection will lead the public to consider what the former administration should have done better.

The public also sees an administration that is willing to spend lavishly on travel for large entourages without proper justification, coupled with the insult of public servants who refuse to disclose what is spent on these trips to the public.

There are housing challenges, a precarious level of government indebtedness, a crisis in education regarding learning loss during the pandemic, unions still unsatisfied and a healthcare system that still leaves much to be desired.

The Davis administration has also packed the public service with jobs for supporters with questionable qualifications and abnormal salaries.

And we are still unclear of the way forward on reconstruction for Grand Bahama and Abaco as the third anniversary of Hurricane Dorian approaches.

We do not note all of the above to be unfair to the Davis administration; there are still four years left in its tenure.

And there have been many positive things that have occurred in the last 10 months that have helped Bahamians and made a difference in the lives of many.

We wish the current government continued success, but the initial bliss has faded and the people expect results.

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