Progressive Liberal Party Chairman Raynard Rigby, who was the special guest on the Love 97 radio programme, “Jones and Company” yesterday, declared that the Christie Administration has already fulfilled 65 to 70 percent of its campaign promises as outlined in its “Our Plan” document.
“I believe that if you judge this government on [its] record to date, it would be unmatched by the first three and a half years of Hubert Ingraham,” Mr. Rigby said.
“You could judge the government on what you hear out there, what people say on the streets or what we perceive the issues are, but to me the determining factor [in] how you really show how effective a government is, is you look at what [it has] been able to achieve, and when you look at the record three and a half years [later], there’s no doubt in my mind that this government has been hard at work transforming The Bahamas.”
He said that if one looks at the record of the government and judges it only on the economy, housing, and tourism, there’s no doubt that the government has been able to satisfy the expectations of Bahamians.
“Nation-building is never easy, I believe, but I think that in the time that we’ve been in office since May 2002, what we’ve been able to do with the economy has been just absolutely phenomenal,” Mr. Rigby said.
“I think what we’ve been able to do in housing-has been phenomenal. What we’ve been able to do in terms of shifting our tourism product, the revitalization of Cable Beach, the anchor touristic developments in the Family Islands [has been phenomenal].
“I believe that these are exciting times for the Bahamian people and that when you remember what we would have said in the run-up to the general election and what you see now, by and large we’ve been able, I believe, in a very significant way, to deliver on the promises and the expectations of the Bahamian people without raising taxes.”
But the show’s host, Wendall Jones, pointed to what he said some people believe are failures on the part of the government: a legal system that’s in a mess; the failure to reform education; and the failure to adequately address the vexing illegal immigration problem.
Regarding illegal immigration, Mr. Rigby noted that a recent International Organisation for Migration (IOM) report has for the first time quantified the numbers of illegal immigrants in The Bahamas.
The researchers estimate that there are between 30,000 and 60,000 undocumented Haitian nationals in The Bahamas.
“That, therefore, would then lead to the development of a comprehensive policy as to how [to deal with the problem]-There’s obviously this very emotional approach to illegal immigrants in The Bahamas,” Mr. Rigby said.
“So therefore I think the policy has to be one that factors in those who are xenophobic and those who are liberal in their views and their approach.”
Addressing concerns about the legal system and the state of court facilities, he also pointed out that a new court complex is under construction on Nassau Street.
Mr. Rigby reminded as well that failures in education are not a PLP or government problem, but a national problem that requires a multifaceted approach.
“Frankly, I really believe it’s now time for us to think outside the box,” he said.
“I think we have gotten to the point in our country where we have to ask ourselves ‘Is this educational system serving us well?’ I think the general public would say ‘no. It’s not serving us well as long as we have 10 or 5 or 20 percent of our students who are [illiterate],” he said.
Mr. Rigby said this is a problem that the country has to wrestle.
“If we don’t fix it in a very significant way, we would be doing an injustice to those students in the public education system and perhaps in the private education system and we’d be doing an injustice to the further development of The Bahamas,” he said.
Mr. Jones then asked what the government has done in almost four years to fix the problem.
Mr. Rigby said the government has appointed a commission to deal with special education needs, and he indicated that the government has taken significant steps to address security in schools, including causing there to be police officers placed on campuses.
But the chairman said that the government continues to face the challenge of striking a balance between providing certain improvements in infrastructure and services in all areas, and maintaining its approach to holding back on tax increases.
Prime Minister Christie has said repeatedly that his government is focused on improving revenue collections and does not wish to further burden taxpayers.
While on the show, Mr. Rigby – as he has done in the past – also spoke about a public relations problem he said the governing PLP has, but he stressed that this does not mean that Prime Minister Christie has not been accountable to the Bahamian people.
“The government has a challenge in getting its information out on a regular basis and in different formats for the wide spectrum of the Bahamian public to all be in tuned with that message and with that record,” the PLP chairman said.
“But, it is not the role of the prime minister, in my view, to be the public relations man of a government.”
By: Candia Dames, The Bahama Journal
