The Editor/ Bahamas Press/20th January 2025
Dear BP,
In 1953, Cyril St. John Stevenson, Sir Henry Milton Taylor and William Cartwright co-founded the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP).
The following year, Stevenson became the editor and publisher of the now-defunct newspaper, The Nassau Herald. At times, Stevenson used his editorial control of the Nassau Herald to promote the views and candidates of his PLP party.
He joined the “Magnificent Six,” a group of six MPs who formed the first opposition block in the Bahamas parliament. The six PLP parliamentary members comprised Stevenson, Randol Fawkes, Lynden Pindling, Milo Butler, Sammy Isaacs, and Clarence Bain.
According to Bahamianology.com, “the creation of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) in the 1950s set off a firestorm in the Bahamian political sphere. It was audacious and unprecedented. Their foremost mandate was to challenge the stranglehold the Bay Street Boys, the political hegemony, had on the Bahamas. At first, they were not taken seriously, but that soon changed”.
“The 1956 General Elections changed the perception of the Party. The PLP won six seats out of twenty-nine contested. They also won first and second places in three constituencies: New Providence West, New Providence South, and Andros & Berry Islands”.
Of course, the white power structure and its subservient media lapdogs could not allow a progressive movement, as represented by a nascent PLP, to gain traction. So, as the late Mr Stevenson foresaw when he established the Nassau Herald, the media has been after the hides of the PLP and its supporters ever since. So why, after more than half a century of progressive PLP leadership, is bias in the media more virulent and corrosive? How are the media houses financing their operations when circulation is lower than before? The answer lies in media ownership, favouring Bahamian society’s most affluent, racist, reactive and powerful. Through juicy retainers, foreign propagandists, and advertising revenues, these dinosaurs ensure that an anti-PLP narrative is repeated ad nauseum. They see the PLP as a threat to their continued abuses of power and the maintenance of an oligarchical country long after these structures, at least in theory, have been dispatched to the dustbins of Bahamian political history.
To maintain the status quo, the media is the chief purveyor of misinformation, slanderous articles, and misleading headlines. Reading the media report exposes one to so much nonsense that one wonders if the writers live in the same country. No schools, clinics, or significant projects happen under the PLP in this make-believe world, only according to them, maladministration and alleged corruption. In their warped world, tourism is not flourishing. So how are we distracted and being led as lambs to the slaughter?
Why do some still believe that the lack of progress in the Grand Bahama, for example, is the PLP’s fault when no progress was made under the FNM when it had three Cabinet Ministers? Why are the minister and prime minister’s explanations about the greed and avarice that triggered the recent union actions unreported? The media wants us to believe that the unrest was caused by public disaffection with the PLP and not greedy, power-hungry individuals.
This is because the media, populated by FNM sympathisers and enablers, ensures that nothing positive about the PLP ever appears in the news; their spin on the news confuses us.
But these propagandists have other unwitting helpers: PLP parliamentarians, many of whom supply the ropes for their hanging. This political self-sabotage happens as follows.
· Parliamentarians allow themselves to be “ambushed” by reporters and make ill-considered statements which are promptly and predictably spun to make them and the PLP look bad.
· They accept telephone calls from their hangers-on from public places, which makes the caller look “connected” and their ministers subservient.
· They expose themselves in videos, which makes them look callous and insensitive to voters and shows an astonishing lack of self-awareness as a public official.
· They appear unaware that their friends and family see them as meal tickets to be discarded when their bellies are full. Indeed, these are the ones who leak their business to their buddies in the media and repost inflammatory, defamatory videos about them as well.
· They allow themselves to be used as punching bags in the media and appear unaware that the PLP is in an existential battle with a malevolent FNM and all of its spawn. That is why they seek new friends, many of whom detest the PLP and its works and are treacherous and wicked vipers.
My advice to all PLPs is that they toughen up. We are a party which historically never took “last”, and this is certainly not the time to start.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Brown
