The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I am often offended by what passes for commentary and criticism by the official opposition and their supporters but believe that no response is likely better for my health. As we begin a New Year, I am hazarding a change.

Some weeks ago, the son of a former FNM Minister of Finance opined, as if a verifiable fact, that the PLP have the best record in The Bahamas for increasing the incomes of ordinary Bahamians. Perhaps he was studying and or working abroad, a privilege not enjoyed by the majority of ordinary Bahamians, when his father formed a part of an FNM Government. The minimum wage in the public service was $90 a week when the FNM first came to office in 1992. The FNM raised it first to $150 and left the minimum wage in the public service at $210 per week when they were voted out of office in 2002. The PLP increased it to $220 per week in 2015.

The entry point salary for a police constable was around $12,000 per annum in 1992. It was raised a number of times by the FNM while in office; most recently to around $21,000 in 2008, where it remains. The top of the salary scale for police constables is around $31,000 per annum.

The entry salary for trained degreed teachers in 1992 was just under $11,000 per annum. That was increased to $18,000 by the FNM government in 2000 and increased further to around $25,000 in 2008 where it remains today. The top salary in the scale for trained teachers is now around $37,000 per annum.

The introduction of a career path for a teacher by the FNM in 1999 created new posts of senior and master teachers. Such posts permit qualifying classroom teachers to remain in the classroom while earning salaries similar to or higher than that of some school principals and other school administrators.

Records indicate that average national household incomes rose from nearly $27,000 in 1992 to nearly $40,000 in 2002 under an FNM government.

Perhaps junior suffers the common complex of being the son of a successful father.

Then there is the economic buffoonery that passes as the voice of experience. Often guilty on this score is the Chairman of the Arawak Group of Companies who now counsels that the current FNM minister of finance adopt the model of a former PLP minister of finance who had the great misfortune of leaving office and the Bahamian economy in shambles in August 1992 with:

• record unemployment levels,

• a crippled hotel sector,

• a public hospital chronically short of essential medicines and other supplies,

• dangerously low foreign reserves,

• an inability to have government US dollar bonds fully subscribed,

• Central Bank imposed equity requirements that limited and restricted borrowings by Bahamians, and

• the inability by the government to meet payments to the contractor for the construction of a new US departure terminal at the Nassau International Airport.

Essentially, he left a broke Treasury, growing public debt, and millions of dollars in unpaid bills!

This was topped more recently by the Leader of the Opposition’s objection to the grant of New Year’s honours to Sir Godfrey Kelly, an accomplished lawyer and veteran competitive sailor, former Member of Parliament and minister of education credited for commencing expansion of secondary public education, spearheading the development of the Queen Elizabeth Sports Centre, bringing The Bahamas into the University of the West Indies and for the introduction of the Cat Island Regatta.

Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition, who hails from Cat Island and who has represented that constituency in the House of Assembly for some 20 years, might comment on his own contribution to the development of his home island. He should urgently read Davidson Hepburn’s recent addition to his biographical account of growing up on Cat Island, comparing his experiences as a child with the state of Cat Island today.

Perhaps Mr Davis is more comfortable with a knighthood conferred by the last PLP Government in which he served as Deputy Prime Minister. The honouree in that instance, heralded as a leading black businessman by the PLP, is actually best remembered in the community for the closure of businesses: Business Systems, Nassau Airport Caterers, Cole-Thompson Pharmacy, the Anchorage Hotel, ABC Motors and the Jaguar, Ford and Toyota car franchises, and others. His venture into the liquor business had similar results.

Most amazingly this objection to an award comes from a former Deputy Prime Minister who recently moved a motion of no confidence in the prime minister for misleading the House of Assembly on a matter that moved civil servants from a mould infested, crumbling post office when he, as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Works, misled the House of Assembly on his ministry’s failure to ensure that a dormitory under construction at BAMSI in Andros was insured against fire.

I have to admit that I am beyond frustrated by the continued bumbling of government business by the current administration but if the best advice to them is what passes for commentary and criticism from the official opposition and its apologists and defenders then perhaps the government is better off taking its own advice after all.

THE RECORDER

January 2, 2020