The Tribune

YOU would hope we could do better.

An election ought to be about choosing the safest hands to trust with our country. To borrow a line from the FNM posters everywhere, “It’s about your future”. It is about our future, both as a people and as a nation. The PLP may want to bring “a new day” but to get there we need to make a reasoned choice.

We need to weigh up the options, understand who will deliver what. It should be a debate about policy, and about how those policies will be implemented. Instead? We are in the middle of a battle of insults and finger pointing that wouldn’t go amiss at the local playground.

Whether it’s Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis saying that PLP leader Philip “Brave” Davis is “dead scared” or PLP chairman Fred Mitchell accusing his FNM counterpart Carl Culmer of “living in cloud cuckoo land”, even as Mr Culmer accused PLP “goons” of victimisation, it’s a long, long way from any serious discussion of our future.

Where is the debate over how each party would invest in our healthcare, to pick one example? How about examining the differences in immigration policy, or what each party intends to do to stop the murders on our streets?

None of that. Just rallies and motorcades and insults and let’s all race to the bottom.

The sad thing is that there are good policy initiatives to talk about. After his name calling, Dr Minnis went on to talk about the FNM investment in infrastructure – why not lead with that instead of descending to a lower level?

Just last week, the FNM announced a laudable pledge to provide free school food for all children at government schools – talk more about that than claiming that Davis has “gone missin’”. Food in children’s bellies has to be a better way to reach people than this childish back and forth.

If a politician only has insults to throw, that’s just a cover for the fact they have nothing to offer. Don’t let people who want your vote fool you with noise, ask them what the policies are, how they can afford them, and how they will make the country better.

Because that has to be our end goal in this – and every – election. We have to make our country better. We sing in our national anthem of pressing onwards, that we “march together to a common loftier goal”.

So don’t give us these childish insults, no matter what your shirt colour. Show the country what you can do.

If you want our votes, it’s the least we deserve.