“Minnis: its okay to change your mind – Defends his about-face over MPs’ pay” – The Tribune

Excerpt from this article; “PRIME Minister Dr. Hubert [Minnis] has suggested her is not wrong for changing his mind regarding a pay raise for Members of Parliament, adding that correcting the ‘dire’ structure of the public sector.

‘If I am headed out east and then somewhere I decide to turn and head out west, am I wrong?’ was the prime ministers response when The Tribune drew attention to his 2014 stance against MPs receiving a pay raise, as proposed by the former Christie administration

His position then was: ‘As long as I am leader of this country, the FNM would not support any pay increase with all the pain and suffering that is going on in this country.”

Well, to answer the prime minister’s question about heading east and changing his mind and then heading west; no changing your mind is no problem but the manner in which you would seek to change directions could be a problem, because if you were to do so in a reckless manner and thereby cause a major accident, subsequently causing the loss of life and/or damage to property of others, then you just may just have a problem.

“As long as I am leader of this country, the FNM would not support any pay increase with the pain and suffering that is going on in this country.”  Well the pain and suffering has not ceased but yet you still advocate for a pay increase by claiming that “correcting the dire structure of the public service is needed to change the ‘unfair’ pay scale in the government sector” and guess what? No one will disagree with this statement but most would find it rather hypocritical, given your prior statement and insensitive given the manner in which a lot of public servants are paid if you were to even consider to begin this ‘correction’ with yourself.

While Prime Minister Minnis says that it is okay for him to change his mind on this issue, he must realize that the Bahamian electorate is watching him and his government.  Already he and his government has changed their minds on certain immigration matters but it would seem that the public as a whole would not hold this against them, as they saw this as doing what was right.  It also would seem that the public voted against the very same issues when brought to them by the former Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) government just to send one simple and clear message – “Your time is up and we do not trust you anymore”.

 It is simple, if Prime Minister Hubert Minnis and his government were to keep this up, then the people will reach this point with them much more quickly then they did with the former administration.

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