The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Your editorial today speaks volumes about the state, or non-state, of this 42-year-old country.

The Baha Mar debacle needs no comment except that at the end of the day it is, and will be, a Bahamian problem and one that The Bahamas will have to resolve “by itself”. The old people might correctly ask the A.G. “you gat time ta waste eh”?

There is nothing more to say on that story, but you have correctly called a spade a spade, in that the good Doctor cannot wrest, even the worst Government this country has ever seen, away from the current regime. Dr Minnis couldn’t do it anyhow, and surely can’t do it with a fractured opposition. Having had three years of devastation following the last election where, but for the pride of both the DNA and FNM, the now opposition would have won, what makes anyone think that there will be a different result if we go into another election with a split opposition vote? The Numbers boys remain beholden to the governing party and are likely to remain that way until election time, and they have unbounded money to lavish on those that will legitimise them.

I don’t know what the real problems are between the FNM and the DNA, but I cannot fathom that they could be any more entrenched, than were the differences between the UBP and the Free PLP, back in the day. I will never forget the bye-election in Fresh Creek, Andros. It was a three-way contest between the PLP, the UBP, and the Free PLP. The day after the election, Geoffrey Johnstone (UBP ) offered Henry Bostwick (Free PLP), a ride back to Nassau on his boat, and after each had expressed, what a “cut ass” their respective candidates had taken, the discussion gravitated to what eventually became the dissolution of the UBP and the Free PLP to form what is now the FNM.

This is the kind of selfless leadership and statesmanship that is needed now, in this precious little country of ours. If we cannot learn the lesson taught in May of 2012, then we will repeat the disaster again in 2017. Neither the FNM nor the DNA need to contest any seat in such an election.

BRUCE G. RAINE

Nassau,

January 13, 2015.