We are today flabbergasted and dismayed by report after dreadful report coming in from any number of Government departments and offices that all speak about the extent to which some of these are collapsing.
Today we wish for our audience to take note that we are hearing truly dreadful stories about Ministers who are barely on speaking terms with their permanent secretaries. In other instances there are harrowing tales of scandal-tinged conflicts between people in the hierarchy of some other departments and offices.
In one instance, we were made to understand that one very senior political figure was slapped by a public officer.
We could – if we wished – provide names and dates and circumstances to back up our contentions. But since that is not the thrust of this commentary, we will leave off to another day the enumeration of such names, dates and circumstances.
Close observers of the national political scene have already made up their minds. There are those Bahamians who are convinced that the current regime has not delivered and that it cannot fulfill many of its campaign promises.
On the other hand, there are those Bahamians who are convinced that the foundation for social transformation has been laid, that the worst is behind and that the future is bright. These are the types of Bahamians who would remind all and sundry that Rome was not built in a day, that the new Progressive Liberal Party is on the verge of doing some truly great things.
As of this moment, much of this remains in the realm of conjecture, surmise and hope. As an old Bahamian saying responds, ‘mouth can say anything’.
We also know that for better or worse, people are judged by the words they use and the promises they make. And as we all know, when words return, they can bless or curse, vindicate or condemn.
As the Progressive Liberal Party met in Convention, it was haunted by the specter of a rejuvenated Hubert Ingraham and a revitalized Free National Movement returned to ‘reclaim their things’ as the old expression in the vernacular would put it.
Suffice it to say however that it sure seems as if today’s Bahamas is that kind of place where practically anything goes. And it sure does seem as if some one has decided to play ‘musical chairs’ in any number of Government ministries and departments.
This comes as a necessary consequence and corollary to widespread neglect, bickering, incompetence and inattention in so very many government offices.
In the meantime, the Bahamian people are obliged to countenance and gloss over these developments. They will do no such thing.
Like the rest of the attentive public that is fed up with these antics and shenanigans, we are also tired of the cheesy rhetoric about what is going to happen ‘in the near future’.
Whether reference is made to what is happening at Water and Sewerage, Bahamas Electricity Corporation or Bahamasair, among others, we see senior people arriving and departing with compelling regularity.
And then there is today the ongoing saga of the prison break that has left two men dead and a spotlight shining bright on Dr. Elliston Rahming and the Minister of National Security the Hon. Cynthia Pratt.
Curiously neither the Minister or the Prison Superintendent seems to get the point which is that the attentive public wants to know how it came to be that people housed in ‘Maximum’ could hatch and carry out their deadly plans without any one in charge having even a whiff of what was going down.
Quite evidently, some one was blindsided.
No matter what any inquiry reveals, we suspect that no heads will roll. In the meantime, there is one story after the other attesting to the presence of neglect and rot in abundance.
We are today forming this conclusion as a consequence of our firm belief that The Bahamas has become that kind of place where the buck never stops. What matters in that kind of Bahamas is the fact that cheesy public relations projects have become the coin of the realm and where talk about performance is routinely equated with real work and real news.
So whether the reference is to the ongoing Disaster in The Ministry of Education or to the state of some Government offices and departments, the story concerning loss of respect for standards continues.
At this juncture it is anybody’s guess as to whether the current administration has what it takes to arrest the rot that has set in. The attentive public wants answers from the Christie administration. They want to know what -if anything- that regime will do now that the Corporations are dysfunctional and rot is being revealed.
Editorial from The Bahama Journal
