First of all I must give credit to Dr. Earl Deveaux, Minister of Works in the new FNM government for releasing the details of the ‘independent auditors’ report on contracts issued by the former PLP government.

According to the report in The Tribune, of Thursday, October 4, 2007, some 75% of the contracts were not put out to bid as required, and “in many cases, contractors appear to be selected according to considerations other than competitiveness and merit, and staff and senior management recommendations for competition and selection of bidders are being overruled.”

Damning indeed.

Now we turn to The Tribune of Saturday, October 6, 2007, where Mr. Bradley Roberts, former Minister of Works in the recently ousted PLP regime, declared “that there was no competitive bidding for government’s recent school summer repair programme”.

Also damning.

Now the old Bahamian proverb that when you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one that got hit seems appropriate, but Mr. Roberts makes as valid a point as Dr. Deveaux, if he is correct.

So remembering the days of the old school yard, Dr. Deveaux tagged Mr. Roberts as ‘it’ on Thursday and Mr. Roberts tagged Dr. Deveaux as ‘it’ on Saturday.

I stand to be corrected, but I seem to recall similar ‘debates’ occurring when the PLP lost in 1992, and when the FNM lost in 2002. It’s just that the proponents wore different colours on each occasion.

Obviously the PLP does not seek advice from this not so humble blogger, but if they did, here’s what I would tell them:

My brother. If I were in your shoes, I would apologise to The Bahamian taxpayer for the way you dealt with contracts when you were the Minister responsible. You should then tell the Bahamian people that should the PLP become the government of the day in the future, you will all work assiduously to ensure that this never happens again. Not only that, but you will present an Opposition Bill to Parliament that allows for the prosecution of any and all Cabinet Ministers or MP’s that should do such a thing in the future.

Of course that all requires effort, so I guess we will have to settle for more games of tag.