The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

IT'S NO surprise that the PLP can throw a good party. The election campaign launch last week was certainly that.

And yet, this time, it felt like a misfire.

I’m not just talking about the fact the party launched just ahead of Lent and then committed to holding no public campaign events during the period of observation. Frankly, I don’t really believe that will be the case. Maybe no big rallies, but you can be sure social media will be full of party and candidate promotion. The FNM says it’s going to campaign regardless, and I can’t imagine the PLP will allow a vacuum for the FNM to fill.

No, more notable was the lack of big selling points by the party during the launch. That’s going to be a hurdle they will have to overcome between now and election day.

One thing was particularly striking for this so-called “New Day government” (my WhatsApp was full of people pointing it out): Time and again, speakers talked about the impact of COVID-19 and Hurricane Dorian on The Bahamas, even though those were the exact circumstances that hindered the previous FNM government. If anything, it was more of an acknowledgement of what this administration’s predecessors had to go through than a touting of its own success.

Prime Minister Davis has previously blasted that FNM government for its handling of both those terrible disasters, saying in 2021 in the House that “incompetence matters. Here it led to more tragedy, more heartbreak, more anguish.”

Without a doubt, any sensible view of recent Bahamian history should not gloss over the impact of those twin hammer blows. A report by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Latin America in 2022 reported the cost of COVID to the Bahamian economy as $9.5bn, and $13.1bn for the cost of Hurricane Dorian. Bahamian workers lost an estimated $2.4bn in wages between 2020 and 2023, affecting about 15 percent of the workforce.

All that is true. But if that is still the talking point of a government that came to office after the immediate impact, then the list of achievements is woefully short.

It’s also a smokescreen.

Sure, there was a huge economic impact, but that should not have stopped a government with a massive majority from passing or fully implementing at least some of the legislation that it promised.

We all know how the government has treated Freedom of Information legislation, for example.

Marijuana legislation – whatever you think of it – seems to have dragged on.

The same can be said for anti-gang legislation, which has not brought a single case to court yet.

Anti-corruption legislation ain’t going anywhere in a hurry.

The “Revolution in Education” pledged at the last election has seen no revolution, and very little evolution.

Promises to prioritise health with NHI and affordable healthcare have petered out and led to recent headlines about failures to pay providers and healthcare workers.

Pledges of a masterplan for each island seem to have come to nothing.

Now some of the promises can justifiably be said to have been hit by the need for the economy to rebound – you can’t reshape the education or healthcare systems without the money to do it. Equally, there were some promises--such as the “Home-Sweet-Home” programme--which pledged to incentivise Bahamians to build homes throughout the Family Islands as an investment opportunity for second homes and AirBNBs that you can totally understand being put on a shelf until funds allow. (Not that I think we’ve heard anything about that promise since someone put it in the 2021 election document.)

Some of those issues are low-hanging fruit, though, that could have been done by any government with a large majority. The promises on equality could have been stamped through but were not.

So, when the government now comes back to the people and--straight out of the gate--starts talking about the impact of COVID and Dorian, frankly, it’s just showing up its utter lack of a record to boast about.

It’s even doing the almost impossible – rehabilitating the record of the previous Prime Minister, Dr Hubert Minnis, who was tossed out of office in a landslide.

If indeed the PLP holds to its pledge not to campaign during Lent, then it needs to come out of the Easter period with a re-launch, and to stop talking about COVID and Dorian. The electorate is not going to care about why you couldn’t do what you promised, it’s going to want to see what you actually did.

The FNM’s social media team is already out there, talking about how there have been no new schools or clinics built.

Party leader Michael Pintard has not won the hearts of voters as yet, but he’s been quick in the wake of the PLP launch to hop aboard some of the major concerns of the moment, talking last week of how “the big issue really is healthcare” and also “dealing with the issue of mental health.” Mental health was another issue that the PLP promised to address, but that has gone nowhere. So, credit to Pintard for spotting the weakness. Frankly, he could just go through the entire PLP “Blueprint for Change” and pick off the issues where nothing was done. That would be a good start.

There is a feeling from several in the PLP that I have spoken to, that Pintard is a weakness for the FNM and that he will not win people over. But I think they overlook how split the FNM was when Dr Minnis won and became prime minister – having come through a period where the Rebel Seven formed a new Opposition in the House of Assembly and ousted him as Opposition leader. For the FNM to have been so split ahead of an election and for Minnis still to have won shows what can happen when the level of discontent with the government is high enough. Any qualms over the leader can be ignored.

If Minnis was able to win, Pintard can win.

The economy has rebounded. There are things the PLP should be boasting about. We seem to have done better than some other economies in managing the rebound, even if we seem to have stalled a little when it comes to overnight stays, for example.

Grand Bahama needs some big, big announcements and actual progress before the election if the party is to have a hope there (although I think it’s unlikely the PLP can count on the votes of those being sent home from the Grand Lucayan.)

It should also be noted that this government was voted in on a voter turnout of just 65 percent, the lowest in modern Bahamian history. A lot of people stayed home. If I were to put a bet on it, turnout will be low again.

That should be a comfort to neither the FNM nor the PLP. Perhaps the COI might gain some hope from the fact that fewer votes will be needed to sway the outcome. But more than anything it shows the disconnect and frustration of voters.

No matter what party, people are tired of hearing promises and not seeing them delivered. And that should be a lesson for everyone.