The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

According to this morning’s (Nov 5) dailies, Dr Minnis claims that his government’s decline in support over the last 18 months has been because of “mistakes’” made and a failure to get more positive messages across to the public. Nice try, but thinking Bahamians know better.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a mistake is “an act or judgment that is misguided or wrong”. While nobody can deny a pattern of bad judgment, most of the missteps made by the FNM government to date have only been “misguided” in the sense that they either mistakenly exposed a propensity for dishonesty or betrayed some shady objective that was (from government’s point of view) best kept concealed.

Take the OBAN scandal. Nearly a year before a Guardian journalist caught one of the principals deliberately signing another man’s signature in the presence of the Cabinet, a telling event took place. Government was caught quietly removing the responsibility for the BEST commission from the Minister of the Environment to the Prime Minister’s office. When challenged, their first reaction in my opinion was outright dishonesty (“fake news”, said Dr. Minnis), before the official gazette was shown to corroborate the accusations.

The subsequent attempt to short-circuit the normal vetting procedures by eliminating the BEST Commission’s review of the project prior to approval must therefore be read in the context of a meticulously planned exercise. The only “mistake” was getting caught (twice) by sharp-eyed journalists. Meanwhile the one-time “transparency campaigner” Minister of the Environment went mute and has stayed so ever since.

Similarly, with Desmond Bannister’s contemptuous public attack on Darnell Osbourne, a senior public servant and Bahamian professional. In saying what he said, Mr Bannister was simply venting the FNM’s longstanding narrative on the Bahamian professional class: that we are a bunch of corrupt, overpaid parasites, undeserving of the salaries happily paid to foreign “consultants” of every variety. His only “mistake” (applying the OED definition) was that he did not check the accuracy of the specific rumours that he chose to employ in furtherance of that narrative.

The list is long and tedious of “mistakes” that are only really “mistakes” in that they expose the incompetence, dishonesty and grotesque world-view of the FNM. So far, the only genuine mistake made in relation to the party was made on its behalf - by the electorate.

GABRIEL GIBSON

Nassau

November 5, 2018