Revolving door

Since 2002, Bahamian voters have rejected the incumbent party at the polls, choosing instead to punish the government of the day and cast their lot with the alternative party. But how far has this revolving door gotten us, and have we ultimately been better off from our continual decision to reverse course?

The question is one we have pondered a lot recently as there is a growing mood against the Free National Movement, which was elected to office four years ago, promising more respectful and accountable governance, but somehow delivering way below the mark it set.

Daily on cable television, no matter the program we are watching, we are bombarded by political ads seeking to sell Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis as a focused, in-touch, visionary and caring leader, whose leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic saved lives, protected livelihoods and kept the country stable amid unprecedented challenges.

Whether voters will buy into that message will eventually be seen, but Minnis, we believe, has a tough climb on the believability ladder.

It’s not that Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) Leader Philip Brave Davis is exciting the masses or engendering confidence in his ability to steer us beyond the economic and fiscal quagmire we find ourselves in.

But there is a great deal of anger and anxiety among the population.

If disenchantment among voters deepens in coming months, that would be to Davis’ advantage.

During a recent discussion on these very issues with us, an astute political observer, who we do not know to have any particular political leaning, opined that it would be in the nation’s interest to vote Minnis and the FNM out.

“We will have Brave,” he said. “We will have to live with Brave and hang on for five years. Maybe, just maybe, after that we would have sensible leadership.”

That statement, sad as it was, left us thinking even more deeply about our dismal political offerings.

Our country cannot take another five years of poor leadership.

An early vote?

With the month of May just days away, the Minnis administration, with Minnis as finance minister, is no doubt placing a strong focus on preparing a national budget.

We do not envy Minnis and his team in making the difficult decisions in an attempt to keep us stable while articulating a plan to address our burgeoning debt, even as the pandemic rages.

The mid-year budget snapshot, released by the Ministry of Finance at the end of January, showed a deficit of $736.1 million and a national debt of $9.3 billion (as of September 2020). 

The government borrowed $2.1 billion in the first half of the fiscal year.

There is an expectation that things have only gotten worse since the Mid-Year Budget report as social services demands on the public purse have persisted.

Seizing the opportunity to portray itself as prepared and serious, the PLP in March released an economic plan, promising to reduce value-added tax from 12 percent to 10 percent, and pledging to “recommend” to the National Tripartite Council “that they move towards a minimum wage of $250 per week” from the $210 per week that currently exists in the private sector.

As the FNM upped its campaign activity early this year and started naming candidates, it fueled expectations that an early election will be called.

At the time, some pundits speculated that an election would be called for May 2021 so the FNM could possibly be re-elected ahead of what can only be a bad news budget.

That clearly is not going to happen.

This means that the months of May and June are most likely out for an early election, as well as July as the new spending plan takes effect.

In an election year, it would be political suicide for an administration to increase taxes. The view that had been expressed by some political observers was that an early election would have permitted the Minnis administration to make that kind of tough decision.

With the country gripped by a third wave of the coronavirus, even if he had contemplated an election in the first half of 2021, Minnis no doubt gets that he needs to wait for the situation to improve.

In the meantime, we can expect him to continue claiming a win well in advance of Election Day.

Without a doubt, political leaders must demonstrate confidence in their party’s ability to win an election. This is why we continue to hear Minnis make statements like the FNM will win all 39 seats in Parliament.

While he makes that declaration publicly – for understandable and obvious reasons – the prime minister, if he is being properly informed by his party’s strategists, must have some idea that his party is in trouble.

He is hoping to be the first prime minister since Hubert Ingraham in 1997 to lead his party to re-election.

The odds are increasing, though.

Minnis is no doubt banking on growing stability of the US economy with increasing numbers of adult Americans getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and jobs returning.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistic reported this month that the unemployment rate edged down to 6.0 percent in March.

It said these improvements in the labor market reflect the continued resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Job growth was widespread in March, led by gains in leisure and hospitality, public and private education, and construction.

If Minnis decides to run out his term, if the Minnis administration could get the majority of adults in The Bahamas vaccinated, and if Minnis could take us into 2022 with improved economic conditions, the FNM’s chances of re-election would improve.

But that’s a lot of “ifs”. That’s, in fact, a lot of very big “ifs”.

No matter how long he waits to call an election, many Bahamians have already made up their minds that they will vote Minnis and the FNM out.

Disconnect

There appears to be a very good chance that we will continue to play musical chairs in Bahamian politics.

Up next, Brave Davis and the PLP.

But why do we keep shifting every five years and is it good for national progress?

A 2014 ABC network article by Tim Dean, titled “It’s time to let political dinosaurs go extinct”, made very interesting observations about Australia that reflect the 2021 reality of Bahamian politics and voter sentiment.

Speaking of the malaise afflicting contemporary politics in Australia, Dean wrote: “We’re currently governed by 20th Century political dinosaurs that are offering ill-fitting solutions to 21st century problems based on obsolete ideologies from the 19th century. It’s not just about a lack of narrative or vision, it’s that whatever vision either party can muster is tailored for the wrong century.”

He continued, “I suspect that many of us have sensed a growing disconnect between the ideologies of the major parties and the challenges we face today, even if we might not all frame it in this way.

“This fundamental disconnect could account for some of our perpetual dissatisfaction with both sides of politics. It might account for why we keep switching between the two parties at both state and federal levels, only to become disillusioned with who we’ve placed in charge shortly thereafter.

“It might also account for why so many people under 30 have simply tuned out the major parties – after all, both parties are at odds with their very 21st Century values and worldview.”

If we didn’t know better, we would think Dean was writing his observation on our current state of affairs.

More precisely: we are governed by those who still seek to operate towards a colonial system of governance which is ill-fitted for the era we are in.

Pillar to post

Politicians are duty bound to inform the electorate on the plans they have should they be voted into office.

We have in many columns articulated the many pledges the Minnis administration did not fulfill. It is blaming Hurricanes Irma and Dorian, and now COVID-19 for derailing many of the plans it had upon coming to office.

While the FNM government expects to be forgiven for its failure to meet commitments, we suspect many voters will not give it the pass it expects.

While the PLP’s promises might sound enticing, we have too often seen politicians dangle carrots only to come in office and disregard their pledges.

The failure of our political leaders to do in office what they committed to doing in opposition is a major contributing factor to our perpetual dissatisfaction.

For the country, forward progress has been difficult to achieve.

There is no national vision which the major parties buy into and which the country has adopted. 

New administrations come in seeking to carry out their vision for the direction the country should head. Before they know it, they are at the middle of their term, the nation’s problems are mounting, a sour mood has set in among the electorate, and it becomes increasingly difficult to mark major achievements in the second half of a term, especially if public finances are severely depleted. 

Add to the mix – in the case of the current administration – a destructive Category 5 hurricane and a once in a century pandemic and you get the perfect recipe for another dramatic defeat at the polls.

While we can boast about our peaceful transition of power, our constant spinning of the wheels keeps pushing us back to square one.

When he shared with us his disappointment that the work of the multi-sectoral, apolitical team that worked on the National Development Plan was set aside after the government changed in 2017, Felix Stubbs, who headed the committee, stated, “One of the difficulties we have in The Bahamas is that we’re so divided by politics that we never ever have our best minds working on any problem, and so we go from pillar to post whenever administrations change.”

By no means are we advocating that the FNM should get another chance to complete its agenda after the next election. We will leave it to the voters to decide. 

We understand fully that giving one bad administration a shot at governing again is worse than continuing our revolving door approach to selecting who will govern our affairs.

Such is the decision that awaits us, sooner, we suspect, rather than later down the road.

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