The Tribune

TWO WEEKS before voters go to the polls to determine the course of history for the Bahamas for the next five years, the governing Progressive Liberal Party is throwing rallies, dancing in the streets, passing out t-shirts, food and promises, ignoring the reality that should be hitting its supporters smack in the face.

The PLP is unravelling, a political party out of control headed by a Prime Minister who has held power for so long that he has developed “disinhibition”.

Disinhibition is a condition psychologists often associate with aging. An elderly person who no longer feels constrained believes they can get away with doing or saying just about anything. Someone labels them a curmudgeon and with a knowing nod, accepts that age has made them cantankerous.

But there is a far more dangerous side to disinhibition and that is what occurs when power leads to a feeling of being supreme, above reproach, all-knowing and essential. Power is an aphrodisiac like none other. Its properties are phenomenal, imbuing the powerful with god-like beliefs, filling their heads with deep-seated convictions about their own importance, the wisdom of their decisions, the feeling that no one can make the important choices but themselves, nothing can stop them and everyone needs them.

We have seen the impact of bloated self-belief in world leaders in far too many places and over too many centuries, from a Machiavelli 500 years ago to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un today.

But never have we felt it closer to home than we have recently and we find it frightening.

The trend began more than two years ago when the government blatantly refused to abide by a judge’s rulings in the unregulated development case of Blackbeard’s Cay. Later when Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald was ordered by the court to cease and desist from reading private e-mails, he said the court could not tell him what to do. When the same minister revealed he knew of the dangers of the Rubis fuel station oil leak that could be causing irreparable harm to the health of his constituents in Marathon, he said he could not reveal that information because it could have caused him his standing in the Cabinet where all information is to remain private.

The lack of inhibition continued when the very same Jerome Fitzgerald defied a court order to pay $150,000 in fines and legal costs in a case involving his reading of private e-mails in the House of Assembly, declaring he found the e-mails in his “political garbage can”.

The lack of understanding that such actions demanded accountability led to total inaction. Not once did the Prime Minister face such outright arrogant and outrageous behaviour by dealing with it head-on, instructing the Cabinet minister to pay the fine or submit his resignation.

Now that same minister has been caught red-handed, a series of his e-mails begging for work for his family from Baha Mar’s then-developer Sarkis Izmirlian and again, there has been no demand for resignation or a suggestion that he not seek another term.

Lack of accountability permeates this government.

A minister of state given the opportunity to explain where $1.4 billion in Value Added Tax has gone answers feebly, then explains he only had 10 minutes on the stage. A Prime Minister who tries to help him and says only $191 million of it may be missing. The same Prime Minister flips the finger in a gesture carried round the world by social media. A Cabinet minister jets back and forth to China as lead negotiator on a new ownership deal for Baha Mar with a company whose multi-billion dollar empire includes a vast jewellery component that stands to benefit her own family businesses.

The conflicts of interest are voluminous.

Yet, this weekend, the Prime Minister seemed so oblivious to what is going on that he utters a statement that things are going so good even “God can’t stop us now”.

Headline after headline should be sending shock waves through the party. There is only one explanation for why they are not feeling the heat. They are bathed in the belief that nothing can stop them because the Bahamian people since the days of Sir Lynden Pindling identify with the PLP. They believe the love is unconditional.

Puppies love unconditionally. Maybe the Bahamian people once did. But the adoration that the parents and grandparents felt for the party that carried them out of the age of the United Bahamian Party is fast evaporating in the face of arrogance so unmistakable it insults the very people it once tried to please.

Today’s voting population is a very different one from the voters who put the PLP into power. They demand more. They expect accountability and they want transparency. What they will not tolerate is disinhibition at the highest level because when power is uncontrolled, tragedy awaits.