The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

The Chairman of the PLP is having great difficulty understanding the arithmetic which shows that his party won the last election with less than a majority of the popular vote, and when this is pointed out to him for some strange reason he goes ballistic. He did this in response to Rick Lowe in a letter in Monday’s Nassau Guardian. Despite the PLP’s win the Chairman seems decidedly unhappy that a majority of Bahamians voted against them and this unhappiness is blurring his vision and bringing out a characteristic meanness in his constant outbursts though it is to be noticed that the linguist quality of his rhetoric has curiously ascended to a higher level than we have been accustomed to. That notwithstanding, however, he must not be allowed to succeed in talking nonsense by attempting to separate the PLP governance from the PLP political machinery. Never, since the Pindling era, has politics and government been so incestuously intertwined and never has Public Broadcast been more involved in the political process. Never, ever before has the business of government been so shamefully consigned to the daily newscast of public radio and television.

Imagine if in 1992 the Rt. Hon. Hubert Ingraham had not moved expeditiously to free the broadcast airwaves to ensure independent newscasts! The Chairman is reacting to the heat in the kitchen. He is recommending that the government be allowed to do its job “without the cynicism and veiled insults.” For someone who spent the greater part of his political life in attack mode, this recommendation seems rather silly. His belief that the Christie-led government “will return our country to a sound socio-economic footing as the record showed during 2002-2007” shows that he still does not understand the economic dynamics of this country over the last 20 years. The period 2002-2007 was indeed a period of relative global economic stability as was the ten years before except for the brief adverse economic consequences of the disaster of 9/11.Consider the economic prospects of The Bahamas during this fifteen-year period of relative global economic stability by reference to one of the best residual measures of economic welfare – the growth of its national debt. During the first five years 1992-1997 the National Debt rose by $431 million. During the second five years 1997-2002 the National debt rose by $412 million. During the third five years 2002-2007 the National Debt rose by nearly as much as the first two periods combined – $803 million. This rapid rate of debt growth in a period of global economic stability is hardly a signal of sound socio-economic footings. We certainly would not have wished that same governance during the period of the greatest economic upheaval in more than eighty years. But this is a point the Chairman and his party has never understood.

QE THOMAS II

Nassau,

July 10, 2012.