The Deputy Speaker Don Saunders Stands Up To Peter Turnquest

The Budget Debate in The Bahamas is usually just an empty talk fest.  This one this year is no exception.  What it is useful for however, is that it gives the public and the pundits a chance to look behind the veil of public secrecy and determine what is really going on within the government’s group.  One such telling vignette was the exchange between Deputy Speaker Donald Saunders and the Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Peter Turnquest on Thursday 11 June 2020.  Mr. Turnquest without foundation (we must add) got up to interrupt the presentation of Frederick Macalpine MP for Pineridge. He wanted him to withdraw the argument that the government would end up at the rate they were going, borrowing ten billion dollars by the end of their term. The Deputy Speaker who was in the Chair at the time said that he saw nothing wrong with what the MP was saying.  He asked Mr. Macalpine to continue.  Before Mr. Macalpine could get back into his address, the Deputy Prime Minister could be heard grumbling from the sidelines.  Unusually for the Deputy Speaker, he stopped Mr. Macalpine and told the House but clearly speaking to the Deputy Prime Minister what he had said before, he  had reviewed the matter and saw nothing wrong about what Mr. Macalpine was saying.  That was the ruling of the Chair. Mr. Macalpine should continue.  You could have heard a pin drop.  As they say in  The Bahamas: “ He name man”.