Statement form the Leader of the Opposition [the Hon. Philip Davis]

Responding to The Prime Minister

28 January 2019

Except from this statement; “Bahamians were treated from their Prime Minister to a litany of non-performance.  What a travesty this address was.  A nothing burger trying to pass for sensible public policy and accomplishment.

Mr. Prime Minister, after twenty months I office you must surely know you cannot simply pronounce something as truth – that which is clearly false.  You have fallen short.

The Prime Minister stapled together every piece of paper he could to try to make the government look ‘busy’. It’s the kind of thing that children do when the teacher walks into the class.  But nothing he said tonight can hide the fact that this government is failing.

I wonder who is the ‘the teacher’ in this situation.

Mr. Leader of the Opposition; the Hon. Philip ‘Brave’ Davis, I label your entire response to the prime minister’s address as “non-responsive”, as it really does not state exactly how you see the government as failing but rather runs off on a tangent only understood by the person(s) that wrote it and the person that presented it.

The question that I have for you is do you really believe anything that you said or do you see the possibility for the further erosion of your base and would do and say anything to prevent this?

As you speak to others of stapling “together every piece of paper’….to make the government look busy”, many now wonder if this was the tactic that was employed by the former Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) government when it came to the polices of the country; which was seen in its total lack of coherent and competent governance which subsequently led to them being fired the electorate.?

I must then go on to ask you exactly what has been stopped, cancelled and reviewed by the present administration when there was nothing left in the place of any substance to stop, cancel and review.

It is truly said, ,the manner in which you and your political organization has responded to change and actual progress and have brought most to the realization you either never wanted it  [progress] for the people because you feared that which you did not know – like our early ancestors that feared the sun itself.

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“2018 murder count lowest in nine years” – The Nassau Guardian

Excerpt from this article; “With 90 murders recorded in 2018, The Bahamas has seen the lowest murder count since the 85 reported in 2009.

Murders decreased by 26 percent in 2018 compared to 2017 when there were 122 murders.

Police reported last year that while rape increased by 12 percent, murders, shootings, armed robberies and stolen vehicles saw  significant decreases compared to 2017.

Minister of National Security Marvin Dames attributed the decrease to the police force’s adjustment of operational strategies.

During the budget debate last June, Dames said when the Free National Movement came to office Bahamians were tired of high murder rates and ‘demanded that this administration get to work.’

‘We did’, he said. ‘We initiated and executed our short, medium and long term goals in our crime plan.  And while we are certainly not resting on our laurels, we are making inroads in reducing crimes.”

First allow me to say that it is never a good idea to make crime a political issue, because it entails much more than the legislators and the police but it also involves the people at large, but at the same time to not acknowledge that maybe that something positive may have been done is very disingenuous; because if the crime rate had escalated beyond the statistics of the previous years many, if not all of us,  would look to the government to shoulder the blame.

There are many amongst us that would say that to ‘celebrate’ a low murder rate is a poor barometer of the state of a country but while I really do believe that anyone is ‘celebrating’; as the Minister for National Security suggests, we still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do, there must be some acknowledgment that maybe the Ministry of National Security, along with the Royal Bahamas Police Force and all other branches of national security are indeed making some progress and should be encouraged in their efforts if they are not going to be commended.

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