I sat down to read the latest from Fred Mitchell — a press statement urging calm, praising “the professionals,” and scolding the opposition for “creating anxiety” over the Bahamas Power and Light mess. Charming. If only rhetoric powered a grid. 

It is simply amazing that now the PLP’s chairman would like “all hands of deck” and would like for persons to put politics aside on this matter when he was the first one to make it political and creating unnecessary anxiety; “State of collapse – Mitchell blames FNM for power owes” – The Nassau Guardian 30th July 2026.

Let’s cut to the chase: asking everyone to put politics aside while absolving your own party of responsibility is rich. Mitchell now wants “all hands-on deck” and for people to trust the experts — after the PLP’s loud energy-reform promises, after the pronouncements, after the changes that, by all appearances, left the system more fragile, not less. And no one is blaming the experts; the ones being blamed are those whose failed policies took us this far back.

And yet the chairman’s statement reads like a moral sermon: “come with clean hands,” “confess our sins,” “let us give the professionals an honest opportunity.” Fine. Start by putting the facts on the table. Publish the timelines, the emergency fixes, the budgets, the procurement records. Show the public the concrete steps being taken to finish transmission and distribution upgrades that everyone agrees are needed. Until then, pious calls for unity sound suspiciously like finger-pointing in a slow-motion collapse and we can all agree that the PLP’s hands are always “clean”, now this may be because they have never done anything wrong – that they would like you to believe or it is more likely because they really do not do any “heavy lifting”.

If Mitchell truly wanted bipartisanship, he’d show leadership by owning what his administration can fix immediately, admitting what it inherited, and committing to a clear, accountable plan with deadlines and costs. Instead, we get the rhetorical equivalent of a beach recommendation while the lights go out.

Final brew thought: if you ask for trust, earn it. Otherwise “leave it to the professionals” is just polite shorthand for “let us avoid responsibility.” The country deserves better than platitudes. It deserves schedules, budgets, and functioning substations.

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