The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Much has been made of Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis’ recent trip to Uganda in which he took part in the Non-Aligned Movement Summit. It was probably a representative for the Davis camp who took photos of him feeding chimpanzees while in Uganda, apparently not realising the backlash it would cause.

I would like to use the dire situation with the chimpanzees as an analogy of what is currently happening to the Bahamian middle-class. Both groups should be considered endangered species, although I am beginning to question if this current Progressive Liberal Party administration is even remotely aware of what is going on under its own nose.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) upgraded the threat status of western chimpanzees in Africa from endangered to critically endangered in 2016. According to its data, between 10,000 to 52,000 wild chimpanzees are believed to be living in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The population of this species has been decimated by poachers throughout the twentieth century. Its decline has been described as unprecedented by the IUCN.

That would be an apt description of the rapid decline of the Bahamian middle-class over the past five years. I decided to address this matter after seeing a Facebook post about a ZNS report regarding the financial situation of working Bahamians.

According to the report, 90 percent of Bahamians have less than $1,000 in their savings account. This is eerily similar to a Central Bank of the Bahamas report published by Eyewitness News in 2019.

I can only imagine how worse the financial situation of tens of thousands of Bahamians is today in light of the continued rising cost of living in 2024. Bahamians are now having to live from hand to mouth.

The upcoming NIB increase will only add further stress to an already unbearable crisis which no one in this PLP government seems to be cognizant of.

The middle-class has declined to the extent that we can state with absolute certainty that, for the most part, there are only two financial demographics in The Bahamas: wealthy and poor. There’s hardly an in-between. And the few middle-class Bahamians that remain are dwindling at a rapid pace.

Moreover, despite the record breaking tourist arrival numbers, it feels as if we’re stuck in an economic slump similar to the tail end of the 9/11 attacks on North America in 2001.

This is without a doubt the worst economic boom I’ve ever witnessed. Bahamians, by and large, are not feeling the impact of it at all. It is a mirage.

By no means are I placing the entire blame for the inflation crisis on the Davis government. But I’d be lying if I were to suggest that certain policies implemented since September 2021 haven’t contributed to the crisis.

As well, Davis must understand that Bahamians punished the previous Free National Movement government of Dr Hubert Minnis for the devastating fallout brought on by Hurricane Dorian and the COVID-19 pandemic. Both crises were external factors that Minnis had no control over. Yet his government would lose in landslide fashion in September 2021 because of them.

If Bahamians are willing to punish a government for Hurricane Dorian and COVID, they will most definitely punish a government for the current inflation, the likes of which we have never witnessed before in the post-independence era.

In closing, what makes this current PLP government so unique to the Christie and Minnis administrations is that it, unlike the two, seems hellbent on not throwing a bone at the Bahamian people.

By this, I mean that when the Christie government introduced valued added tax in 2015, it did so at the rate of 7.5 percent, instead of the 15 percent rate as was proposed by the foreign consultants brought in during the rollout of the taxation system.

In 2018, when the Minnis government raised VAT from 7.5 percent to 12 percent, it exempted breadbasket items from the tax.

Your electric bill also had to be a certain amount before VAT kicked in. Both governments understand the delicate art of negotiating. There has to be a compromise.

Unlike Christie and Minnis, this government has not only not thrown a bone at the Bahamian people, but has grabbed at the bone they met the people with.

Fast approaching the midway point of his tenure, Davis has a grand opportunity to change the narrative before it reaches a point of no return.

Like the chimpanzees the Ugandan conservationists are working hard to preserve, Davis must now get to work in preserving the middle-class before it becomes extinct.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama

February 7, 2024.