The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

On the 30th anniversary of the Free National Movement’s 1992 election victory, Hubert Ingraham took the opportunity to double down on some of the organisation’s foundational and self-justifying myths. Having spent years close enough to the bosom of Mr Ingraham’s party, I have heard all of these narratives repeatedly. They do not withstand serious scrutiny.

Those who fund the Free National Movement would like us to believe that the big distinction between the parties is essentially managerial, rather than ideological and that “good” government is defined by the personal judgment or ethical probity of particular politicians.

This is a convenient distraction from issues like the structure of the economy, the distribution of wealth and the burden of taxation, all of which were and remain the primary concern of those funders, yet place them distinctly at odds with the mass of the population. Hence the need for distraction.

The distraction reached its nauseating zenith when, having seized power and begun to dismantle NHI, raise taxes on the poor and remove Bahamianisation protections (via the Commercial Enterprises Act), former Prime Minister Hubert Minnis alleged that the biggest issue facing Bahamians was corruption.

Minnis made this assertion of a country that consistently ranks among the least corrupt in the hemisphere, but also happens to feature one of the most structurally regressive tax systems in the world, which he and his colleagues were about to make more so.

Though Minnis and his colleagues went on to spoil the distraction by exposing the hollowness and hypocrisy of the FNM’s claims of being less corrupt than its rival, Mr Ingraham’s hint that his heir is more like the PLP than like him demonstrates that there is still life in the grand game of distraction and personalisation.

But a look at the facts discloses little material distinction. With Ingraham, as with Minnis, the big decisions always ultimately reflected the interests of those who fund the Free National Movement.

And the big decisions of the Ingraham government, whose effects will last and impact us the most, are not the licensing of private radio stations or the decision not to appoint Members of Parliament to utility boards.

They are the giveaway of BTC, the gifting of New Providence’s monopolized port to a group of traditionally dominant families and the removal of protections over Bahamian land, marginalising the average Bahamian from land ownership with no compensational boost to the treasury or to spending on Bahamians.

ANDREW ALLEN

Nassau.

August 23,2022