The Tribune

NEVER has so much been at stake as it will be tomorrow when voters go to the polls in The Bahamas.

Unemployment and crime are at record high levels while poverty and hunger stare us in the face daily if only we have the courage to see it.

In the past two years, government debt-to-GDP ratio has risen to record levels, the highest it has ever been. While that ratio climbs, the Bahamian dollar continues to sink to new lows, now after four downgrades standing at junk status.

We are setting all the wrong records.

And there is little reason to believe the trends will change unless we change what we expect and demand of government, any government. We have settled for too little for too long.

We have sat back apathetically and pathetically and allowed others to make decisions affecting our lives rather than taking a stand. We have sat blithely by as government after government kowtows to bigger governments abroad or introduces taxes that eat away at our bottom line without providing concomitant services in education, health, infrastructure, safety and security that would be the return on tax investment in other societies.

We have settled for too little for too long. We could have and should have demanded better. But we were weak and those in government were made stronger by our weakness.

We settled for too little transparency, too little accountability, too little cultural preservation, historic restoration or environmental conservation, too little deployment of alternative energy sources, too little good governance, too little equitable granting of applications for Crown land, too little willingness to relinquish authority and allow local communities to raise taxes and govern themselves. We have settled for too little of too many things and we have endured too much secrecy.

We have seen too many politicians who were once good neighbours, people we could call our friends, grow pompous and arrogant.

We have seen what almost unlimited power does to those who gain it, profit from it and refuse to let it go. We have seen it transform the man who once sat next to us in church into the man who should go to church and pray for his own salvation.

We have seen what it does to strangle our desire to invest or trust in our future when all that we are certain lies ahead is uncertainty. Despite protestations to the contrary by two former Central Bank governors as well as the current governor, the threat of devaluation hangs in the air thick as a summer cloud filled with moisture and ready to burst. If, and when, devaluation rains on The Bahamas, the rich including, we suspect, a number of politicians from all sides, will have got much of their fortune out. The rest of us will be left to wonder how we will live. Our homes, vehicles and anything else we own will be worth less than they were before. Our food, electricity, insurance, everything we consume will cost more.

We must stand up and say we have had enough of a government that refuses to obey its own judicial decisions, that interferes with that system and has to be reprimanded by the former Chief Justice reminding it of the integrity and independence with which it is supposed to serve. We have had enough of brave judges and their families’ lives being threatened because of their decisions. We have seen a judge removed from a court and assigned another post following a ruling unfavourable to government.

We must say to whatever government retains or assumes power on May 11 that change is coming. Not just change in partisan politics - if indeed there is such a change - but in what we expect our government to be and the part we are prepared to play in it.

The first change must be accountability. If reports of ‘thugs’ going into offices of government ministries demanding papers be handed over so they can be shredded are true, those who fear for their safety now and are afraid to file an official complaint will one day be free to do so. You can shred the evidence but only fear silences the truth forever.

There shall be accountability for 11th hour contracts to friends and loved ones and, if government funds were used to finance political campaigns, those responsible must be held accountable.

Fear tactics are a manifestation of desperation. Say it isn’t so, but if it is, shout the words and mean them: ‘You will be held accountable.’ For anyone who tries to interfere with the knowledge and information that the electorate has a right to know leading up to a national election trespasses on the rights of those who have little enough democracy to hold on to as it is.

Bahamians, stand proud when you go to vote. If fear made you coward in the past, courage buoyed by the thousands of voices of a united civil society will be your bodyguard in the future.

Those who endured too much and settled for too little, your time is now. All you need to do on May 10 is vote. One simple step in the right direction and together Bahamians will carve a different, brighter path ahead with accountability, consultation and transparency - the ACT of the future, leaving the shenanigans of a rueful past behind and payment for those actions up to those in an independent judiciary.

There is too much at stake to spend the day at the beach.