“70 PERCENT AGAINST TAX INCREASE IN SURVEY” – The Tribune
Excerpt from this article; “MOST Bahamians oppose the Minnis administration’s ‘People’s Budget’, with more than 70 percent against the impending value added tax increase, a new scientific poll from marketing and research firm Public Domain reveals.
Seventy-six percent of Bahamians oppose the budget, with such a large opposition consistent across demographic groups, regardless of age or income.
M’wale Rahming, president of Public Domain, said the results are the latest indication the Minnis administration is heading toward the ‘point of no return’, that moment when Bahamians’ disapproval of an administration may not be capable of reversal.
‘What happens’, he said yesterday, ‘is people start to point back to other missteps that you’ve made so new mistakes are no longer in a void. So, it ‘looks how they did this and they ain’ talk to us and they did that last thing and they ain’ talk to us, so the people are no longer hearing what the government is saying, they are now referring to your past missteps and I think the danger is its difficult to govern when you don’t have buy-in from the general public and I think we saw that in the last administration and the one before that. At the end of those terms the genera public (was) no longer tuned into those administrations.”

Let me first interject that polls and surveys are a dime a dozen and while some may actually have merit; they too must be taken with a grain of salt because I can produce for you at this very moment a survey/poll which suggested that the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) would have won the last general election by a very large percentage but I will hold this survey as having merit; being the voice of the people, and deal with it accordingly.
Addressing the headline “70 percent against tax rise in survey”, I can actually believe this because no one wants to pay taxes much less have these taxes increased, so this would be no surprise; the surprise is the amount of mistruths surrounding the increase.
After having stabilized the economy [something VERY rarely spoken about by those that oppose this budget] the Free National Movement government then went on to implement a three [3] year plan in which it sought to address the $360 million in arrears, with ‘additional revenue from VAT and other taxes’ contributing to paying of this massive build up in unpaid bills
Over this three [3] period the government seeks to implement a plan to give back to consumers in the form of customs duty and excise tax reductions – this is the governments plan as it pertains to the increase in VAT along with a number of other concessions already announced but it seems that persons have only heard that VAT was being increased by 4.5% to 12% and just stopped listening to the government at this point, only to be taken on a ride by each and every person with an anti-government agenda – some of these persons not even knowing exactly what they are opposing or even why they are opposing it, but are more than willing to get on social-media, write to the editor, call into a talk show or even appear on a talk show to display their ignorance in this matter.
It is being suggested that this government is rapidly approaching ‘the point of no return’ with the people, and while I will admit that their communication up front end has been lacking, on the back end no one can reasonably argue about/against the objective of the government given all the evidence/facts readily available.
In this case ignorance is really a choice.
END