When Bradley Roberts, Chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) announced that he would no longer seek re-election as chairman of that party, My Morning Paper was shocked and taken aback; as he had at some point intimated that he would ‘die’ as party chairman and apparently this is what he expects to happen in the government sector – for persons to die in the positions that they hold, without allowing for younger, more qualified persons to be allowed to ascend and contribute positively to the progression of The Bahamas.

Government disengagement ‘callous and uncaring” – The Nassau Guardian

Excerpt from this article; “The government’s foreshadowed disengaged pensioners demonstrates the Minnis administration is uncaring and callous, Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) Chairman Bradley Roberts said yesterday.

Roberts said the government appears bent on purging the public service.

He said the results will be increased numbers of Bahamians joining the unemployment line.

‘They are putting people out of jobs, rather than what they should have been doing-generating employment for our people,’ Roberts.

‘It does not bode well for them.’

As I read this articled this morning, I wondered was this statement made before or after the “On The Record” but then I tend to digress.

There are several things wrong with this statement made by the Chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) and the first is that the mentality that he exudes, that the public service is place where the retirement age is actually death from old age, and I say this with the greatest of respect for the older persons that contribute and contributed to the development of our society but there is a time to retire and allow for new vision, new blood and new ideas to take the country forward and in this regard it may true that the government is ‘purging the public service’.

Mr. Roberts would have it appear that the government is just going about disengaging persons without cause when this actually is not the case but then Mr. Roberts has been known, by some of his past statements, been known to have a problem with what the rest of us see as reality.

“According to the minister [Minister of the Public Service Bensil Rolle] these individuals are making between $60,000 to0 $140,000 per year, in addition to their pensions, which Rolle described as ‘handsome” but Mr. Roberts retorts with; “Roberts said the Free National Movement campaigned on the slogan “It’s the peoples time”, but the government is putting the Bahamian people out of work.”

It is clear that room is being made in the public service for younger persons to be able to move up but Mr. Roberts would take this opportunity to stand upon his ‘soapbox’ and ‘defend’ person who, if they had handled their finances properly, have a ‘handsome’ income’.

This statement only further perpetuates the poor regard in which the old guard within the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) views the youth in the country, seemingly only ‘tools’ to be used to advance the party’s message and image but to be discarded shortly thereafter; this was seen with the Progressive Liberal Party’s slate going into the 2012 general elections, where a young slate of candidates was introduced, in what can only been seen as an attempt to re-vamp the party’s aging façade, only to be pushed to the side and silenced – at this very point as the Progressive Liberal Party has suffered its worst defeat in the history, it still seeks to silence its youngest member of Parliament, the Hon. Chester Cooper.

The Progressive Liberal Party simply cannot be trusted to stand for the rights of those that would seek to move the country, as it seeks to silence the younger persons within its very own ranks that dares to be progressive but it seems ready to ride on the backs of those who are being asked to leave a system which they have probably been eligible to leave decades ago.

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

END