The question arises as to what might the Progressive Liberal Party have done in convention, had it wished to break new ground. In its fiftieth year, a so-called ﾓNewﾔ Progressive Liberal Party could have and should have already gone into overdrive to show how ﾓnewﾔ it really is. Regrettably, it has not seized the opportunity given it in its recent 48th Annual Convention.
The way forward for the PLP ﾖ in its supposed renewal ﾖ is to get away from basking in the glow of past achievements, and to catalyze a genuine transformation, one involving the fuller engagement of Bahamian initiative and natural genius. This would involve more than announcing, time and again, what foreign investors propose to do for themselves in the Bahamas.
As is to be expected in the circumstances, supporters and critics of the governing Progressive Liberal Party are today doing what they do best. Die-hard backers of the PLP are gloating about what they describe as a wonderfully successful 48th Annual Convention. On the other end of the spectrum, critics of the governing party continue their unabated criticism of any and every PLP initiative.
Our take on the convention is somewhat more nuanced and dispassionate than that of either die-hard PLPs or their equally focused nemeses in the Free National Movement.
In the first instance, we accept it as absolutely necessary that a party in convention would use the occasion to put the best face on its record; rally its troops and gear up for battles ahead. Second, a party in convention would also use the occasion to show off its best accomplishments. The PLPﾴs convention has been, to this extent, hugely successful. But once this is said, the question arises as to whether the PLPﾴs 48th Annual Convention broke any new ground. The conclusion is inescapable that it did not.
The overall impression given was that the Progressive Liberal Partyﾴs hierarchy was content to bask in the glow of past glory; revel in past accomplishments and, otherwise, gloss over any number of its myriad of deficits and demerits. As important as these are, they do not concern us in this commentary. Today, we reference our profound regrets that the Conventionﾴs designers and framers did not put more emphasis on crafting a more coherent vision for the nationﾴs future growth and development.
Instead of looking forward, the PLP in Convention looked backward. This conclusion might at first blush seem unfair, coming as it does at the end of a process which touted billions of dollars of foreign investments in the pipeline, and thousands of new jobs on the way.
These and other stupendous promises are part and parcel of what the public has come to expect from the party in power. In convention, they use all of the hype and hoopla available to them to shout about whatﾴs right ahead for the people. And as usual, the word comes down that thousands of new jobs are just about to come on stream. Herein lies the major paradox in todayﾴs Bahamas.
As Prime Minister Christie has himself lamented, The Bahamas runs the risk of being host to projects which generate jobs which cannot be filled by Bahamians. With a relatively small national population, and with a workforce numbering a mere 170,000, The Bahamas is often grossly deficient in terms of being able to match jobs with relevant manpower. The jobs vacuum is being filled by immigrant labour, some of which is undocumented.
Had the Convention been more concerned with vexing issues such as this, the general public would have had an opportunity to judge how forward thinking the PLP was in its fiftieth year, and in its 48th Convention. But since the Convention seemed focused on moving backwards into the future, the party seemed determined to shower itself in a flood of nostalgia and sweet news.
As we have ﾖ on occasion suggested ﾖ the major problem facing the Bahamian people is the myopia of so many of their political leaders. Apparently devoid of imagination and nerve, PLPs and FNMs alike routinely focus on each other rather than on trying to figure out how to involve and engage the Bahamian people in the large project of nation-building. And again as we have previously suggested, this is epitomized by the glaring look of any commitment to any large Bahamian project. Instead, year in and year out, these parties focus on foreign investment as if it was the panacea for everything in the Bahamas. Absent is anything that might better focus the minds of Bahamians on what they might do to move the development process along.
This absurd dependency on outsiders is itself both cause and effect of a boom and bust style economy, where splurge, spend and hard times are the predominant milestones on the national landscape. In this regard then, it would be safe to conclude that the Progressive Liberal Party in Convention broke no new ground. This past week, it was business as usual. If anyone listening in expected different, they would have been grossly disappointed.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
