The Editor
Bahamas Press 14th May 2021.
Dear BP.
Now that the moment of reckoning is fast approaching for the most incompetent, corrupt and heartless government in Bahamian history the FNM is casting about for excuses.
This hapless, do not care government, in its arrogance, hubris and poor planning has the Bahamas one crisis away from utter destruction. According to a report in the Tribune of 11th May 2021 the Prime Minister (PM) rolled out this patently false excuse he said “it was impossible” to fulfil his pre-election good governance reform promises because Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Dorian and COVID-19 were so detrimental that his administration was forced to change course. He then doubled down on his deception in true Trumpian fashion to say that, “we have lost three years to crises”.
Obviously, the PM was not consulting a calendar when he came up with this
whopper. The FNM lied its way to power in 2017 and on the strength of its
overwhelming mandate set about destroying Bahamian lives, businesses and our way of life.
They sent thousands of persons to the breadlines; persons who had previously well-paying jobs and all the way they bragged and smirked about it. The minister of education took relish as he outlined how many Bahamians, he had sent home.
The FNM engaged in giving thousands of jobs to cronies, party supporters and awarding lucrative no-bid contracts to the boys and borrowing Billions of dollars as if money could not done. Yet, today, the FNM and its disgraced former Minister of Finance has never accounted for these funds.
So, from 2017 to Hurricane Dorian in 2019 the FNM did absolutely nothing to benefit Bahamians and instead heaped indignity upon insult on us in other words it was business as usual. The FNM in its twisted logic did not see Hurricane Dorian which made landfall on Abaco on September 6th , 2019 as one of the most destructive hurricanes to ever hit the Bahamas which required a measured, planned, forward looking and competent response.
Rather they saw it as an opportunity for cronies, friends, lovers and supporters to benefit financially from this disaster; and benefit from it they did. Overnight a ministry was created to manage the Abaco operations completely by passing and marginalising the trained logisticians, damage assessment experts and other skilled staff at N.E.M.A. which is statutorily tasked with disaster recovery and reconstruction throughout the Bahamas. N.E.M.A. also has access to subject matter experts from other government ministries. But alas, as the hundreds of millions of taxpayer and international donations rolled in, the FNM made sure that their boys and girls whose businesses were in Nassau not Abaco got all the contracts.
Through astounding FNM incompetence Abaco is virtually unchanged, persons are still unemployed, many structures remain in a state of disrepair, crime is rampant and the fate of hundreds of Bahamians and Haitians who were alive days before the hurricane remain unknown and unaccounted for; so is the hundred of millions of dollars allegedly paid out to reconstruct Abaco.
Now the FNM is trying to distract us from their disastrous mismanagement of the Abaco reconstruction by demolishing shanty towns causing even more human misery. But we will not be distracted. The FNM is responsible for Abaco and the state it finds itself in post Hurricane Dorian.
The recovery efforts were well funded and included international donors and expertise on the ground, but these resources were poorly managed and dissipated. But then what other result could we expect from a government focused on punishing its political enemies real and imagined instead of working assiduously to relieve the pain and suffering of all Bahamians. So, no PM hurricane Dorian was a natural disaster made worse by your administrations inept, incompetent and churlish management of the event.
As to the effects of Covid-19 on the PMs programmes much has been written about the FNM, s disastrous management of the pandemic. From an ill-advised reopening of the country to allowing key medical staff to move to the United States, refusing to re-engage junior doctors despite the pandemic.
The FNM has marginalised our medical staff and nurses; by setting up himself as the final arbiter the PM and his cabinet colleagues have shown that they have no clue as to what is required to save our Bahamas. The FNM government has resisted from day one free covid-19 testing for Bahamians, and we are now reaping the harvest of this wrong-headed policy as we battle the alarming increase in covid-19 cases and deaths, school closures and job interruptions.
From the start of the pandemic to the present date, the FNM still believes fervently that only its cronies, friends, lovers and benefactors have sense and are entitled to make economic progress in our Bahamas. So, they allegedly gave their cronies the monopoly on importing Covid-19 tests kits and allowed Family Island Covid test centres to engage in price gouging on an industrial scale. Ironically after demeaning and ignoring the advice of our Epidemiologists and Infectious Diseases Specialists, the PM has said that he will meet with them. Of course, we know what will happen, he will rant, browbeat and try to marginalise them just as he has other Bahamian medical professional and try to convince them that his covid-19 policy was right from the start; it only failed because of ill disciplined Bahamians and lack of buy in from the medical community.
So, PM we have indeed lost three years to crises, but these were all crises
exacerbated by gross incompetence, lack of transparency, arrogance and a lack of planning by you and your colleagues. Bahamians are fed up and angry because we now know that you think we are stupid and unworthy of your attention.
You want us to continue to accept the lies you are still selling us. You think that we will forget the messes involving allegations of corruption in your government; the cronyism, nepotism and victimization practiced daily by your ministers and board chairmen; abuses of public funds; the disbanding of the Revenue Enhancement Unit which has had disastrous consequences for our economy; alleged multiple public board memberships for “friends”; and let us not forget the billions of dollars borrowed in our names which only a select few has benefitted from but we must repay.
Many Bahamians have invested time, energy and their economic futures in your government only to be rewarded with a dismissive PM, pain, tears, national embarrassment, high unemployment an out-of-control pandemic and a national debt approaching $10 Billion. Bahamians gave up certain for uncertain in electing your government. We are worse off now than at any time in our history because of FNM mismanagement and dalliance and our patience with this government is at an end.
There must be a full and fair accounting for the years of FNM mismanagement. Bahamians must be told what happened and where our monies went. A new administration will be encouraged to find out which black hole our monies disappeared into and where permissible claw back these funds.
Its our money and we want a full accounting for it.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Brown
