Dear Editor,
They say that the leader has the final responsibility and should take the blame whenever a defeat is experienced by the group he or she is leading. That is a view I subscribe to but only in those situations where leadership has been responsible and accountable. The defeat of the Progressive Liberal Party on May 7th,2017, does not fall into that category because theirs was a leadership that was neither responsible or accountable to the people that elected them to serve. The defeat was a collective decimation, if I can use that phrase. Mr.Christie is no more responsible for the defeat of his party than all of the members of the PLP who refused to carry out their responsibility. The fact that a measurable proportion of that lost can be attributed to a member of his Cabinet who was not an elected member of Parliament, makes it even more painful, especiallyfor Mr.Christie, but I digress.
There was enough opportunity available for the last administration to make measurable progress as managers of the Bahamas. Up until the Bahmar legal proceedings there was an annual FDI input of 900 million dollars and this reduced to 100 million after the proceedings. It is now seen that the reasons given by the government for their moving against the former developer are not going to stand up, and by conjecture if they had left Bahamar alone and continued there was also the possibility that they would have ducked at least two of the downgrades that came our way.
So who is responsible for the loss at the polls on May 7th, 2017? We are. We did not manage our responsibilities as citizens an allowed an external power ( Chinese investors) to exert a greater control over the party we elected than we did, and consequently derailed what could have been a good term for the PLP government. Let us stop blaming the former Prime Minister for not doing his job, because we did not do ours. We dropped the ball.
The newly appointed Attorney General has gone on record as to what is ahead. We want to see the sales agreement, if there is one. We want to see people prosecuted if they have overstepped their boundaries as public servants. Most of all we want to see ourselves being more responsible as citizens of this Nation. If there is no sales agreement, there is enough money in this nation to buy Bahamar or at least put it into the hands of an entity who is not going to play Chess with greedy politicians. We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the region we are in and this is a responsibility that is ours alone. The landslide victory has given the Progressive Liberal Party a reprieve of sorts because they are not in the seat the Free National Movement finds itself in. The present Prime Minister is a very serious person, but even he might have been taken back by the response of the people that have chosen him and his administration to lead this country into the next decade, at least.
A serious people, a serious leader, this sounds like a good combination going ahead.
Sincerely,
Edward Hutcheson
May 15, 2017
