Dear Editor
Please allow me to respond to the writer who wishes Bahamians to believe that Prime Minister Christie is weak.
The writer believes that the Prime Minister messed up the recent Referendum because the “no” vote prevailed. A Referendum cannot fail because its outcome is the expressed free will of the people. I appreciate the tactics of the critics of Mr. Christie: Keep saying that he supported the “yes” vote so that if the “no” vote prevailed, the critics could use the Prime Minister as a scapegoat and surely they did.
I make another observation about the critics of Mr. Christie: When the “no” vote prevailed in the 2002 Referendum, many of the same critics blamed the Bahamian voters for voting against their interests and said that former Prime Minister Ingraham was too progressive and ahead of his time. They blamed the PLP for being flip-floppers and even the former Prime Minister himself blamed the Bahamian people and said that he was ashamed of them. I clearly recall many of these same critics bending over backwards to deflect any criticism and culpability away from former PM Ingraham and his governing FNM. This decided intellectual dishonesty, duplicity and hypocrisy are insufferable.
I get it that the writer does not like Mr. Christie and is venting, but what is lost on the writer is under whose leadership the country was plunged into these dire economic and social circumstances.
The writer has also conveniently forgotten that Mr. Christie and the PLP came to office in 2002 under very similar social and economic circumstances. In five short years Mr. Christie and his PLP lead one of the strongest and quickest economic turnarounds in this country’s recorded history. The Bahamas enjoyed record stopover arrivals; record government revenue; record tourism expenditure; an upgrade to its sovereign credit ratings in 2006; the creation of over 20,000 jobs and record profits in the private sector. The Financial Times (FT), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Standard and Poors (S&P) praised his government’s management of the Bahamian economy.
These objective facts strongly contradict the opinion of this obviously embittered writer.
Prime Minister Christie has led a robust turnaround before and he will do it again. Unemployment is already on the decline and he is just getting started.
Greater employment means greater spending on consumer goods – like cars, but it probably won’t matter because the writer would probably still weep, wail and gnash his teeth against PM Christie and the PLP all – the way to the bank.
Yours etc.;
ELCOTT COLEBY
10th February 2013
