What lies beneath

When former Minister of Finance Peter Turnquest stood to deliver the wrap up to debate on the government’s 2020/2021 mid-year budget report, it was legitimately surprising to those who questioned why a backbencher was carrying out a task customarily performed by a Cabinet minister in general, and a finance minister in particular.

Nevertheless, it was Turnquest’s statements beyond the figures in the budget report that left discerning listeners to deduce that at least insofar as outstanding needs for storm-ravaged East Grand Bahama are concerned, disunity within the Cabinet superseded government’s obligations to be expeditious in its response to the devastation.

Turnquest’s comments fed like breadcrumbs along a trail that pointed to what has been no secret over the past four years of the current Free National Movement (FNM) administration, which is that relations between Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis and Turnquest, were said to be hardly productive, despite the former minister’s good face to the public.

Turnquest resigned from Cabinet in the aftermath of untested allegations appearing in a writ filed by the chambers of Hotel Corporation chairman Michael Scott.

The former minister and member of Parliament for East Grand Bahama has maintained that the allegations are false.

Since that time, suspicions in the public domain have mounted about how and why Turnquest came to be mentioned in a writ for a case in which he is not named as a defendant.

During his wrap up, Turnquest branched into an emotional intervention, stating that he noticed colleague after colleague rise to his feet to bemoan supposed ill-treatment meted out to Mangrove Cay and South and Central Andros MP Picewell Forbes, by his leader Philip Brave Davis.

He stressed that “not one” of his colleagues had risen to speak of what has happened to him.

It is important to assess logical conclusions to that statement.

If Turnquest was seeking to draw a proper analogy between the Picewell Forbes matter and that of his own, one must question what lies beneath his comparison, since the pretext to the hackneyed expressions of concern for Forbes by FNM MPs, is that Forbes was allegedly done wrong by his leader, which led to his withdrawing his candidacy as standard bearer.

Bewailing that none of his colleagues condemned what happened to him, suggests that Turnquest was implying that he, too, was wronged, and that his colleagues knew of the same.

Were there any doubt about upset or internal strife behind closed doors, Turnquest all but erased it when in decrying the lack of post-hurricane restoration in his constituency and acknowledging recent infrastructural works therein, he told Parliamentarians, “I don’t know if it’s because my replacement was named, but I am grateful.”

His replacement on the Free National Movement’s (FNM) ticket for the upcoming general election is Minister of State for Finance Kwasi Thompson.

On Grand Bahama, observant residents privately questioned well before Turnquest’s Cabinet resignation and candidacy withdrawal, whether Thompson was eyeing a potential run in East Grand Bahama.

Turnquest’s reference to Thompson, like his emotive intervention regarding Forbes, were statements the former minister was not compelled to make, but he made them nonetheless.

In so doing, he seemed to be attempting to lift the veil of a Cabinet environment where all was not well.

It must be remembered that Turnquest was the minister of finance, and it therefore should be equally appreciated how atypical and controversial were his repeated inferences to a lack of progress in East GB not being tied to financial constraints.

From the observation regarding Forbes, which cast a specter the prime minister’s way, Turnquest’s impassioned railings against the government’s failure to effect reconstruction and repairs of storm damaged schools, clinics and government offices in East GB, also pointed an implicit finger at Works Minister Desmond Bannister, who was named deputy prime minister following Turnquest’s resignation.

Turnquest dubbed some of the government’s public works projects as “roads to nowhere”, and touched on the unpopular construction of sometimes puzzling sidewalks in New Providence.

He did so to form the context of million-dollar public works that were deemed necessary during tough financial times, even as East Grand Bahama stood in need of basic infrastructure and life-saving services that constituents have relied on due to the work of international NGOs.

Some may argue that his comments represent sour grapes since both men “took his spot”.

Others may point to what both Bannister and Thompson are seen to have in common, which is that they are both thought to be devotees of the prime minister.

As a Cabinet minister, one’s voice must be that of the collective, and now that such limits no longer exist for Turnquest, it was clear that he was going to use the unlimited time granted to closers of debates, to open a few eyes.

‘A national embarrassment’

As Perspective has reported, storm victims in East Grand Bahama continue to live in tents more than a year and a half after Dorian.

Sweeting’s Cay residents have repeatedly spoken with us about their poor standard of living in the fishing community that prior to Dorian, was a significant source of seafood for the domestic market.

Turnquest condemned the virtual abandonment and ultimate damage of unconstructed container homes donated to the cay by the MSC Foundation as a “national embarrassment”.

He also decried the existence of 40 modular domes still sitting in a trailer in the settlement of High Rock.

Disaster Reconstruction Authority (DRA) Managing Director Kay Forbes Smith recently told The Nassau Guardian that the authority did not have the $200,000 she said was necessary to construct the modular homes.

Of the failure to erect modular housing in the east, Turnquest said, “I do not accept that it is because of the lack of funding to do these things.”

In response to a member reminding him that he was the minister of finance at the time, Turnquest answered, “I know I was the minister, that is why I can tell you it was not about funding.”

If not the lack of funding, then what were the impediments that Turnquest was alluding to?

When making reference to inadequate restoration of piped water services on Sweeting’s Cay by the Water and Sewerage Corporation (WSC), the corporation’s executive chairman Adrian Gibson rose to point out that WSC made “several requests” to the Ministry of Finance for additional funding in that regard, that it did not receive.

To this, Tunquest responded, “We are debating the mid-year report, which is based upon a budget that was established in June of the previous year.

“If it was up to me, you think I would not take a million dollars to send to fix Sweeting’s Cay? I don’t want anybody to give an impression that me, the minister of finance at the time, the member of Parliament representing Sweeting’s Cay, willfully or otherwise, would have held back money that would have helped get back water in Sweeting’s Cay sooner.

“Let’s leave it at that.”

To leave it at that insofar as the public is concerned, is to leave unanswered the question of whether Turnquest was suggesting that he could not secure Cabinet approval to seek extra-budgetary funding for Sweeting’s Cay.

Why it all matters

It is of little to no concern to the public whether Cabinet ministers like one another, get along or consider themselves friends.

What matters to the Bahamian people is that the country has a Cabinet that both honors and respects its role in our system of government, and that no personal grievance or dislike which exists takes precedence over the national interest.

It is fair to question whether Turnquest’s comments suggested that the reason East Grand Bahama has not received what is needed in Dorian’s aftermath, were prevailing efforts to block necessary projects due to bad relations within the Cabinet.

It is also fair to question whether Turnquest was seeking to make excuses for failures in East Grand Bahama.

A caveat to this question may be that Turnquest is not seeking re-election, and so he will not be coming back to voters this term to ask that they forgive the shortcomings, and grant him a third term as their MP.

While serving in the Cabinet, ministers are to make their protests, complaints and requests known within the proverbially fortified walls of the Cabinet room, shielded by Cabinet secrecy.

For his part, Turnquest insisted in response to sporadic heckling on his post-executive commentary that he did just that, telling members, “I am embarrassed by this and my colleagues know. They know.

“See, I am not a member of the Cabinet now, so I can talk a little bit more freely, I couldn’t talk before, but I could talk now.”

Turnquest may indeed be free of at least those chains, but for thousands of storm victims on Grand Bahama both in and outside his constituency, the chains of slow recovery remain, made heavier by long term unemployment, COVID-19 restrictions and lack of closure for families of the deceased.

Regardless of the internal reasons, no amount of explanations will satisfy an island of residents who in many instances, feel let down by their government.

Of his comments denouncing the lack of progress in the east, Turnquest said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever have this chance again, so I’m going to take advantage of it.”

His comments suggest he believes the end is near for this term of office.

Be that as it may, for far too many Grand Bahamians, the end of uncertainty, displacement and anguish remains nowhere in sight.

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/what-lies-beneath/