The Editor
Bahamas Press 7 th December 2020
Dear BP,
The FNM government has always been a government of deflection, misdirection, hypocrisy and outright lying when it comes to the business of the Bahamian people.
One would only have to see what stupid act or misinformation they engaged in a day or so before they try the deflection. Today’s debate on a permanent register in the house is another such example. Not only is this government lost and incompetent, but it is also living in a never, never land and has lost its grip on reality.
The bill seeks to digitise the voting process and making it more secure. Be that as it may. The government has yet to successfully digitise its own operations. As an example, the online learning platform for our schools does not work and never has.
Bahamians attempting to return home from the United States wait, sometimes for hours to obtain a covid-19 visa to return home because the system crashes. This disgraceful system affects not only Bahamians but also tourists whose spending we need to help rebuild our economy. It is even more troubling that Bahamians trying to return to the land of their birth are faced with so many bureaucratic hurdles. But, fixing this mess and doing something good for Bahamians is obviously the furthest thing from the mind of the competent authority who calls all of the shots.
The reality is that at every level of digitisation this government and its secretly hired IT companies have failed and failed miserably. It failed with payments to NIB beneficiaries; failed on unemployment assistance; it failed with the out-island travel visa program in fact it is hard to find anything that this government has launched successfully save for illogical programs leading to the steady erosion of our country and its people. Now the government seeks to digitise the voting process which even in the hands of competent persons is a mammoth task and if the past is any indication the next election will be prone to all sorts of inconvenience and nonsense.
Nor has the government explained what happens to persons who previously voted but has not done so for some time; are they on this new register; if not can they and the many Bahamians who turned 18 since that last general election be allowed to register?
However, if the government really wants to make a valid contribution to Bahamians and, it can refrain from conducting the people’s business in the house as if it were some joking matter; they should digitise the Human Resources and job application records of all government ministries and connect this system to the US Department of Educations site on “Diploma Mills”.
Government can then confirm the validity of credentials of persons employed by the government and ascertain if the taxpayers are paying huge salaries to persons whose credential were gotten from diploma mills.
An excellent place to start is with their most recent hires in its financial ministries. However, Bahamians have learned from their long and sad experience that the FNM only hires its supporters and cronies no matter how incompetent, unqualified, or tainted. But as the old people always said, “ you may not get it when you deserve it but, you always get what you deserve”.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Brown
