The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

AS the end of summer approaches, what should have been a time of great fellowship with backyard barbecues, basking in the sun, and frolicking in the sea, turned out to be a period filled with rage, anguish, and grief.

Young men are lying in the streets in pools of blood killed by their friends.

Mothers cry out in anguish; their bodies wracked with pain over the death of their children.

Coronavirus mercilessly, with a wide swath, stalks the careless and the innocent at will. Frontline health care workers are overwhelmed. The hospitals are overcrowded, and there is no space left in the morgue.

While COVID-19 cases are at the highest it has ever been, and the death rate continues to climb. The Prime Minister, at the peak of a pandemic, decided to call a snap election.

For the more significant part of 2020, the country was under lockdown with curfews and businesses closure for lengthy periods because, according to Dr Minnis, it was about saving lives.

Now while the pandemic is more dangerous than it has ever been, with an unprecedented record of hospitalisation and deaths on the increase, an election has been called.

Campaign headquarters filled with workers trucks and cars loaded with mask-less people on motorcades, whose lives are being saved?

It doesn’t add up.

My reason for voting in advance was to get away from the crowd, but Thursday, during the advance voting, there was pandemonium at many of the polling divisions.

Social distancing was ignored, and there was hardly any special consideration for the disabled and the elderly.

Let’s just call it a wrong decision and leave it like that.

Nevertheless, it leaves one wondering what is going to happen on the 16th.

Prayerfully Minister Marvin Dames does a better job at the polls then than what transpired last Thursday.

With the Delta Variant of COVID-19 lurking everywhere possible.

What better opportunity than large disorganised groups of people could there be for it to become more invasive.

Bahamas, let us not depend on the Defence Minister to keep us safe.

Pay attention to the testimonies of those that survived the COVID virus.

Wear your masks, practice social distances at the polls, and get vaccinated.

Let us be at our best manners and respect each other’s right to support the party of their choice.

The summer of 2021 will be recorded as one of the deadliest summers the Bahamas has ever experienced.

And as it closes out on September 21st, let us pray and do our best for it to take with it all of the rage, grief, and anguish that came with it.

Stay safe Bahamas.

ANTHONY PRATT

Nassau,

September 12, 2021.