At this time the country is fixated on the meltdown of the FTX group of companies and there is a ‘fire storm’ with persons from each major political organization asking, who brought Sam Bankman-Fried, former FTX CEO to The Bahamas in the first place. But there are still many unanswered questions concerning how this will affect the future confidence in the county’s financial sector, especially its ‘virgin’ cyrpo-currency sector; one main question being, did the New Day government invest any of the taxpayers money in this venture?

While this issue plays out before us I would rather focus my attention on the incompetence and ineptitude which has caused my Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) utility bill to basically triple. 

I would rather focus my attention on the hypocrisy and duplicity behind this incompetence and ineptitude, which I find to be epic and the contradiction between the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Works and Utilities, which has left me wondering who is not being honest with the public and why would they attempt to tell such blatant lies in this digital age?

“Cooper: Gov’t should borrow $1 bil. to $2 bil. To shore up economy” – The Nassau Guardian 31^st March 2020

Excerpt from this article; “Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) Deputy Leader Chester Cooper said yesterday that the government should borrow 41 billion to $2 billion in order to bolster The Bahamas’ economy for the long-term, given the negative economic effects on the horizon for the country.

Cooper, who made the remarks in the House of Assembly, suggested the money be allocated to a myriad of programs designed to keep the economy afloat and argued this would be justifiable borrowing, given the local and global crises.

‘The government should, in my view, identify facilities in the area of $1 [billion] to $2 billion in this low interest environment, in order to shore up the economy,’ Cooper said.”

So here we have the Deputy Leader of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), now Deputy Prime Minister of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas, advising the Free National Movement (FNM) government to borrow one billion to two billion dollars to “shore up” the country’s economy while interest rates were low to avoid the burden on the tax payers of paying back a national debt at a higher interest rate. Of course this did not play out in the manner in which Mr. Cooper predicted in his “doom and gloom” speech that it would but what is more interesting is what he did when it came time for him to do basically the same thing – putting measures in place to save the Bahamian people and the county’s money.

“BPL CEO wrote Sears on hedging in Oct. 2021” – The Nassau Guardian – October 27, 2022

An October 18, 2021 letter written to Minister of Works Alfred Sears by the then-CEO of Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) Whitney Heastie provides comprehensive details of the company’s fuel hedge program, designed to lock in global oil prices at the lowest possible rates and stabilize the fuel charge to consumers.

Amid uproar in the House of Assembly throughout the day on whether Sears and other members of the Davis administration had been briefed on the need to continue the hedge trades, Opposition Leader Michael Pintard tabled the letter last night.

Despite objections from Sears, the House speaker allowed it.

The opposition contends that the failure of the Davis administration to execute hedging trades as advised by BPL’s hedging committee and board, left customers exposed and resulted in high fuel costs now being introduced incrementally by BPL.

Heastie started the six-page letter to Sears, the minister responsible for BPL, by stating, “Further to your email regarding the hedge program at BPL, I think it would be useful to provide a general overview of the strategic considerations that went into the structuring and implementation of this program, how the program works and the results, to date.”

Sears was advised in the letter that BPL through execution of the hedges was “seeing the huge benefits, given the price of oil on the open market…”

So at some point it was shown that the Minister of Public Works and Utilities knew about the hedging program and how it worked and did nothing about it but one would think that this would also cross the desks of the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. As this is tantamount to their campaign goal of “saving the Bahamian people”, as the Deputy Prime Minister said that the former government was not doing when he advised them to borrow money at a lower rate.

Now to add insult to injury.

“Sears concedes BPL hedge trade requests were rejected” – The Nassau Guardian 18 November 2022

Excerpt from this article;

“Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Philip “Brave” Davis told Parliament last month that he never received any briefing or saw any papers on the need to execute fuel hedging trades for Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) to lock in oil prices last fall, but Minister of Works Alfred Sears said in the House of Assembly on Wednesday that a Cabinet paper to this effect was addressed to the minister of finance, and the Ministry of Finance decided to reject the recommendation after reviewing it.

Sears’ acknowledgement on Wednesday came after he and the prime minister both repeatedly insisted in the House of Assembly that they had not had any briefings on the need to carry out the hedge transactions and had seen no documents on it.

After Opposition Leader Michael Pintard raised the issue in the House of Assembly on October 26, Davis said, “The member accuses my administration of failing to do an act that has impacted the Bahamian people.  “We deny that. That is not true, so I ask this member, he’s talking about executing trades. I want him to explain to the Bahamian people … what trades he’s talking about and what does he mean by executing trades and how it was not done.”

The prime minister insisted, “No recommendation came to me, and the minister for works (who is responsible for BPL) said there was no such information coming to [him] to do what he (Pintard) said we should do, and he characterized it as executing trades. There was no such recommendation that I was aware of.”

But yesterday, Sears’ revelation confirmed that recommendations were addressed to the finance minister and the finance ministry made the decision not to accept.”

Under the Free National Movement (FNM), borrowing was done but not on the scale that Cooper was adamantly suggesting and the money actually was directed toward a “myriad of programs designed to keep the economy afloat’, which it did.  Then Cooper and his team began the hypocritical and duplicitous cry of “All that money borrowed and nothing to show for it; just imagine if someone had actually listened to Cooper with the ‘recommendation’ of borrowing the $2bn!

Here we have one pointing the finger at the other blaming them for this inexcusable lapse in governance, which has now led to the increase in higher power bills and the increments in public servants pay and the fifty dollar increase in the minimum wage rate has come just in time for the people to put a ‘lil somethin’ on their light bill.

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

END