Rick Lowe
Having been involved in political campaigns for a couple decades I'm always bemused by die hard party supporters.
If they're the opposition they expect the government party supporters to have open minds (i.e. Oppose any government initiative). But, if they were the governing party they would expect their members to toe the party line.
I can't help but go back to the BTC discussion. People that said not a peep when their party was selling BTC now have a laundry list of complaints, most of which are fabricated or meaningless in the scheme of things.
Take the line that BTC is a national treasure for example. Here is one of the last vestiges of minority rule and colonialism, and now they want to "save it"?
What happened to all the other left over things that seem to have been systematically destroyed or are unwanted?
How about the so called lack of transparency? We've seen more information on this from the government than anything I can recall. So what's the deal?
The lastest on is Mr. Branville McCartney asking his former colleagues in the government to rise above the politics and vote against the BTC sale. Presumably that means he is not playing politics?
This is a conundrum that is not easily solved within the framework of party politics and this is understandable, but maybe a little intellectual integrity by some in the political class would help rid us of most of this silliness.
There's far too many things that deserve scrutiny in the public sector, no matter which party is governing to waste energy on this sort of nonsense.
Mind you, there is one way to solve their puzzle. Abandon the idea of the Party Whip. But since we never hear Opposition parties mention this novel concept, we must assume some of them are strangers to intellectual integrity.
I agree with you Rick Lowe that their was transparency in the entire B.T.C sale and the Opposition did a poor jod in opposing and debating the B.T.C sale.However the big picture is the three failing Corporation Bahamasair,B.E.C. and Water&Sewage with combine 1 Billion dollars in recurrent spending.The Bahamas crime is now three times more that the United States,this will have a great impact on Tourism whenever the Americans are told by the United Stated States Department that the Bahamas is unsafe to travel for Americans tourist to visit which will happen sooner rather than later.The 4.2 Billion dollar debt is getting bigger and more borrowing is adding to the deficit.It is to be noted that America have the best tax system in the world and is having billion of dollars deficit.All the Sates in United States are laying off teachers,police officers,firemem and other Federal employees.The question is how long can the F.N.M ignore the same problem of downsizing Government employees at Bahamasair,B.E.C and Water&Sewage without putting pressure on the real possiblity of the Bahamian currency devaluing.So the F.N.M. Government have to choose winning the next election and not downsizing or causing the Bahamian people be rob of thier money with the Bahamian currency devaluing sooner or later.