The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

I recently decided to log onto Facebook and was disheartened to see Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) supporters gloating over Correctional Services Commissioner Charles Murphy being sent on administrative leave, as he is regarded as a political appointee.

Murphy is alleged to be a Free National Movement (FNM) supporter. This matter is now tied up in the civil courts. However, the Murphy matter has motivated political operatives of the incumbent administration of Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis to call for the heads of other suspected supporters of the erstwhile FNM administration of former Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis.

These alleged FNMs are employed in the public sector that is funded by Bahamian taxpayers. This is a tit-for-tat confrontation that Davis would be wise to avoid. I am not going to call names, but I believe that these civil servants, whether they’re FNMs or PLPs, are placed in an awkward situation when the party they don’t support assumes power.

Individuals are cavalierly calling for the termination of civil servants who were simply following orders handed down to them by the political directorate that writes their monthly cheques. Failure to carry out those orders would automatically result in swift termination from the civil service.

In our Westminster system, the prime minister is a de facto autocrat that wields tremendous power, unlike the president of the United States, who is kept in check by Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution. When the opposition is catapulted to power, its vindictive members would then take retaliatory measures towards politically exposed civil servants for following orders deemed harmful to their political comrades. For these so-called politically exposed civil servants, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. For them, it’s a no-win situation they have been placed in by a tit-for-tat system that dates all the back to the defunct United Bahamian Party.

Fellow Bahamians being hung out to dry economically because of their perceived political persuasion does not prick the conscience of these political operatives bent on revenge. Prime Minister Davis has a grand opportunity to end this decades-old tribalistic practice that is red in tooth and claw by demonstrating to the faction of his base eager to exact revenge that he Prime minister of all Bahamians, not just PLPs. I am hoping that Davis will resist calls by his radical base for the firing of FNMs in the civil service by following the example of his former law partner Hubert Ingraham, who as prime minister, valiantly attempted to rid the system of political tribalism.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport, Grand Bahama.

October 6, 2021.