“PM: PLP platform not yet agreed” – The Nassau Guardian

Excerpt from this article; “The revelation that the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) administration will provide free electricity for certain customers created a stir, but Prime Minister Perry Christie declared yesterday that the party’s platform has not yet been formally agreed upon, although it has been made public.

Christie suggested that ‘someone put that out’ but he did not explain exactly what that meant.

The party announced last week in its action plan on myplp.org, that should it be re-elected it would introduce policies under which the government would ‘cover the cost of electricity to residential customers who limit their monthly use to below specified limits’.

“This means that the use of electricity will be free to those customers,’ the plan said, though it did not detail the consumption limits.

Asked yesterday to explain his party’s free electricity pleadge, the prime minister told The Guardian. “I am going to speak later on my platform.’

‘There is major process that I am now engaged in, in my office, that will have an amazing impact on electricity out and beyond what the pledge [says]because the platform has not been formally agreed and settled and someone put that out.”

Beside the fact of the prime minister is saying only if his government if re-elected he will then provide free electricity to certain persons, there is also the issue of who ‘leaked’ the plan before he [the prime minister] and his government had the opportunity to sort through things and make it seem more plausible.

“The PLP released a press release on Wednesday night announcing the release on the plan”, so it was the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) themselves who ‘leaked’ the plan; how devious, but yet the prime minister still insists that the plan was ‘prematurely released’, yes, by the PLP themselves.

I am under the impression that they [the Progressive Liberal Party] thought that most people would not get past the words ‘free electricity’ and therefore fall on their knees at the feet of the government in praise but wait, some of us actually think.

I predicted that by the end of the day, when this new plan was released, that it would be refuted by management of Bahamas Power and Light (BPL).

“Last Thursday Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) denied knowledge of the PLP’s free initiative.” But it is the Progressive Liberal Party’s Member of Parliament for Tall Pines, Leslie Miller that seems most outspoken on the issue.

“Miller: Free electricity plan makes no sense.” except from this article; “Tall Pines MP Leslie Miller, the former executive chairman of the Bahamas Electrical Cooperation (BEC) said yesterday ‘it makes no sense’ to exempt customers from paying their bills based on power consumption.

Miller said the former BEC Board explored supplementing bills of approximately 3,000 customers, including non-profit organizations which looked after the less fortunate and the elderly.

He said this would be made possible by the projected savings from the long term contract for fuel and additional power from Clifton Pier ‘which was going to save anywhere from $100 million to $150 million a year on fuel alone.’

‘We were going to be very specific’, he said.

We were not [targeting] the general public.

‘That was for specific people who were really unable to pay their bills.’

Miller continued, ‘The government cannot afford to give across-the-board, free electricity based on consumption.  That makes no sense to me. I do not see how they can do it.”

“I do not see how they [the Progressive Liberal Party government] can do it”, but isn’t he, Miller, a part of same said government?  This will be addressed at a later time; the point now is how do you provide free electricity when it a known fact that the cooperation cannot afford it, even if it is subsidized by the government; because then the country cannot realistically afford it.

Indeed, the major problem/drawback with the plan is the cost of fuel and then there is the issue of off-setting the price of the ‘free electricity’, because as we all know nothing is free, there is always a price to be paid by ‘someone’ and when it comes to the government, that ‘someone’ is usually the taxpayer; you and I.  

The only feasible way that I can personally see the country providing ‘free electricity’ to anyone is to have free electricity provided in the first place and the best way to do this is through an intensive and aggressive alternative energy program, where the money that will be lost by this present proposal by the PLP be put into subsidizing home owners and others to investing in solar systems.  This would cut down on the demand on the grid and/or produce enough power to be fed back into the grid – FREE electricity- which then can be provided to others at a reduced rate, anything short of this is not economically feasible at all.

It is amusing that the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) would actually make a promises such as this and when questioned about it make the claim that the details have not yet be formalized; this sounds like most of their promises to date but yet the Prime Minister asks us to re-elect his government and wait to see what they have planned because, as the prime minister would put it, this proposal will have “an amazing impact on electricity out and beyond what the pledge [says]” although nothing has been formalized yet; sounds like the great things that were supposed to happen at Baha Mar.

The Progressive Liberal fails for one reason, it is their nature.

END