The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

The commencement of the National Budget Debate in the House of Assembly two weeks ago was met with eager anticipation and reserved anxiety as Bahamians everywhere watched and listened with a hopeful expectancy. This annual national budgetary exercise and appropriation of the Bahamian people’s money, although commonplace, represents more than just setting the nation’s fiscal house in order, it lays out a framework, a road map of how the country will be managed and the priorities that have been established by the government in the yearly budget.

At a very fundamental and most significant level the national budget can either engender confidence from the Bahamian people or dampen their hopes and aspirations. For every challenge, we aspire to overcome an innovation we hope to realise it starts not just with an imagined solution or idea, but the capacity to attach the necessary funding. Simply put the budget, its communication, the subsequent debate and its presentation in its entirety is too important, too vital, and too strategic to the national interest to be co-opted and sabotaged by petty political grievances.

Fast forward to last week when the government moved a motion to abruptly stop debate on the Bahamian people’s budget! Why? No constitutional or legal impediment or hurdle. No national crisis. No national security issue. Why the motion? However in sync with the House rules it may have been.

Unfortunately, it was done to silence an elected member of parliament of the governing party who has been relentless in his criticism of his own political party’s performance. More notably what remained when the political dust settled after what essentially amounted to a rejection of the motion by the Speaker, was a parliamentary irregularity of mountainous proportions. Amidst an impending additional new tax, increased crime, daily bouts with electricity outages, nagging unemployment, Baha Mar project in limbo, an anaemic one per cent growth in a weak sluggish economy, frustrated public service and a Bahamian people who have become disenchanted with the apparatus of government, key voices were not heard.

The Minister of National Security, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Right Honourable Prime Minister all abdicated their duties and did not contribute to the budget debate in the House of Assembly. It is unheard of and it remains quite astonishing in my view and in the minds of many Bahamians that such substantive ministers and the Right Honourable Prime Minister himself would all be complicit and irresponsible in neglecting their ordinary ministerial duties and their obligation to the Bahamian people just as a means not to allow a member of the honourable House of Assembly to speak. Simply remarkable!

The tragedy and calamity that was well on display last week by any measure of objectivity was that the strategy employed by the government prioritised personal political grievances and vendettas over the national interest and many Bahamians feel that they have been done a great disservice and injustice. As the political hacks clamour to justify this political anomaly of the highest order what cannot be overstated is the fact that Bahamians did not hear from the leadership of their government, including the Right Honourable Prime Minister on what is always the most pivotal, necessary and consequential piece of legislation that is laid before parliament and communicated to the people of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.

SHANENDON E. CARTWRIGHT

Nassau,

June 22, 2015.