Minister of Foreign Affairs Brent Symonette.
Deputy Prime Minister Brent Symonette must have been playing football when addressing the United Nations a few days ago. The Minister of Foreign Affairs fumble over almost every line in his text and have left The Bahamas the laughing stock of the world. An ambassador told our news team just after Minister Symonette’s contribution to the UN, “The Bahamas have a lot of reading to do and Mr. Symonette should have taken up the topic of literacy to the UN.” This is no laughing matter at all, the government of The Bahamas MUST send a good reader to the UN at the next sitting of world leaders.
Listen to Mr. Symonette as he fumble over his text: http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/ga/62/2007/ga071002pm.rm?start=00
First of all, the Foreign Minister refused to address our nation as “The Bahamas”; he kept saying “Bahamas”. Second, there were too many pronounciation errors. The speech was 16 minutes long and there were more than 10 errors. Further, there was only cursory eye contact with his audience. This was entirely unacceptable as it gave the appearance of unpreparedness.
I was disappointed and concerned by the apparent duplicity in the part of the speech that dealt with our commitment to poverty reduction by 50% by the year 2015. This stated commitment is inconsistent with the government’s policy of terminating the contracts of more than 1,200 persons in the civil service and stopping projects that place hundreds of bread winners and family heads out of work. Many of these contract employees earn less than $10,000 per annum. The opposition PLP must take the FNM to task over this hypocrisy.
Overall his performance was less than average, right next to the national grade point average. At the UN, our audience is international and we must bring our “A” game. Sadly, Minister Symonette brought his “D” game
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