The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

It’s official, the bell has been rung.

For many Bahamians, the Most Hon Hubert A Minnis could not have chosen a worse time to announce a general election. This group of Bahamians cite reasons such as “we are in the throes of another COVID-19 surge, perhaps the worst one yet, from the perspective of hospitalisations and actual lives lost to this deadly virus, coupled with the fact that the economy is in shambles as a result of the one-two punch delivered by Hurricane Matthew and the Global Pandemic” respectively. Whilst on the face, the aforementioned reasoning may appear to make sense, there is another school of thought that believes that things will likely get worse on both the welfare and healthcare fronts in the near term (i.e. between now and May of next year).

Hence when weighing the aforementioned factors, I believe that the current Prime Minister was caught on the horns of a dilemma, wherein he and his party would be damned by some if he called an election now, and would be equally damned by others, if he waited until later. I believe that he honestly felt he made the right decision, which was to return the Government to the people, by way of a general election.

Arguably, the current Government’s unfavorable rating is perhaps now at its highest point since their coming to office in May of 2017, having regards to pervasive labour unrest and the virtual collapse of the country’s healthcare system.

Nevertheless, in my view, it would be a huge miscalculation for the official opposition and other splinter opposition groups to believe that the FNM cannot be returned to office. Many still argue and verily believe, that the FNM made “lemonade from the lemons that they were dealt”.

Therefore, in order to unseat the FNM, the opposition will need to make a credible case to the Bahamian people regarding their plans to extricate the country from the grips of this deadly COVID-19 plague with minimum casualties; whilst at the same time, they must lay out the details of their plan to arrest rising unemployment, the downward spiral of the economy and the country’s credit rating respectively. This time around, it will not simply be enough to state that “the current government bungled these areas and hence you need to give us a chance”.

In my view, the party that is honest with the Bahamian people and articulates the most credible plans for remediation of these significant challenges, will be the next Government.

My fellow Bahamian, this election is perhaps the most consequential election since the pre-independence election held in September of 1972, our health and wealth and that of our children are very much at stake. Choose wisely!

KEVIN D SEYMOUR

Freeport, Grand Bahama,

August 20, 2021.