Whether reference is made to schools which do not work; poor resourced clinics, inadequate garbage collection, or any number of other policy relevant public issues, the attentive public is invariably given the euphemistic answer that the issue is a challenge, or that it is being ﾑmonitoredﾴ.
One particularly egregious display of jazzed up sweet talk came just yesterday from the Hon. Ron Pinder, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Health. When questioned about the sorry state of the government owned City Dump, Mr. Pinder waxed eloquent in describing and explaining why methane driven fires at that landfill will not go away anytime soon.
This is simply not good enough. The woman who called in to the Issues of The Day Programme made the point that she, and her neighbours were suffering. Regrettably, and notwithstanding any number of references to ﾑsome time soonﾴ, ﾑin the not too distant futureﾴ and ﾑcontinuing challenges,ﾴ Mr. Pinder was apparently in no position to speak authoritatively about when or if the problem would be fixed.
His on air performance and the publicﾴs tepid response spoke volumes about the extent to which policy making in The Bahamas has been fobbed off to amateurs. It also reveals the extent to which Bahamians have been seduced into believing that responsibility for getting things done, should always be somebody elseﾴs business.
Most Bahamians are apparently convinced that once they have elected a government, they should just sit back and wait for their elected members of parliament to deliver the goods. Perhaps more so than any other single factor, it is this gross dependency on government which explains the persistence of a chronic dependency syndrome among most Bahamians.
Interestingly, while many of our more astute political leaders readily admit (albeit privately) that this syndrome is socially corrosive and counter-productive to the national development effort, few are prepared to do much to eradicate it.
Indeed, what most do is to pander to the lowest common denominator in the populace: feeding the masses a porridge of fancy promises. At election time, they go into overdrive. The biggest culprits are to be found large and in charge in the Free National Movement and the ﾑNewﾴ Progressive Liberal Party.
As the record attests, in office those types are invariably either woefully incompetent or excessively long on sweet talk and artfully packaged promises. In some extreme instances, clich�s are packaged and presented as if they were policies. In vogue talk about �thinking outside the box� or �paradigm shifts becomes all the rage, as idle politicians try to muddle through. Again, our insistence is that this is not good enough.
What is needed for the more effective governance of The Bahamas is that government should be closer to the people. In our considered judgement, Bahamians need to take charge of those areas of social life, directly relevant to how they live at the community level.
By whatever name they are called, there is an urgent need for the design and establishment of district level government in New Providence, Grand Bahama, Abaco, and possibly Eleuthera. Environmental health, community policing, schools, healthcare and a host of concern impacting communities should be devolved to local authorities. The establishment of governing councils at the community level would bring with it other social benefits. Highest on that list would be that experience at the community level, would give neophyte politicians an opportunity to gain much needed experience. This would stand them in good stead, when or if they became national lawmakers.
In truth, the country is paying a high price today precisely because so many who are neophytes and mavericks have been plunged into politics and have emerged ministers. Should not be. And, for sure, it need not continue so.
Of all issues which are important, and which should be higher on the nationﾴs priority list, we argue that community level governance is a crucially important missing ingredient. In the ultimate analysis then, community level governance is an idea whose time should come sooner rather than later. Once implemented, it promises to transform the way Bahamian see themselves. This, in turn, will signify a real paradigm shift.
Our call, therefore, is for all who lead or aspire ﾑto run thingsﾴ in The Bahamas, to focus their minds on what is a real challenge, namely making ﾑgovernment by the peopleﾒ a reality.
Editor, The Bahama Journal
