THE PLP IS REMINDED OF ITS ROLE IN SHAPING PUBLIC OPINION

In a voice note to the PLP on Friday 20 December 2024, Fred Mitchell Chairman of the party, indicated that the PLP has forgotten its role in shaping public opinion.  Here is what he said in part:

..My political struggle during this past month when we have an opposition party preaching, doom and gloom is to keep the party, PLPs and people of goodwill focused on the bigger picture even as we fix the micro picture.

The long arc of history in my view is always toward joy and justice, even as we know in the midst of life, there is death.

I joined the Prime Minister when I returned from London on Wednesday to debrief him on a number of international and domestic developments. He was there having a Christmas lunch with the management of the National Insurance Board and also his close protection team, but I reminded him that when Taylor Cartwright in Stevenson founded the PLP, part of what they did in founding the PLP was they said public opinion was lacking in the masses.

So the PLP was formed in part to shape public opinion. We should remember as PLPs our mass mobilising function. 

It is our role not to be passive actors in the politics of the Bahamas, but to help shape the public opinion. We allow our political enemies, our foreign detractors of this country to paint  this country as corrupt, with ineffective comeback and push back. The Nassau Guardian, for example, wrote a long descriptive comment, essentially trashing the PLP in negative terms, but 90% of what they said has an effective answer. But who puts the case? 

These notes were started in 2017 to challenge us as pops to remember our role as the shape as of public opinion, not the passive recipients of negative public opinion shaped by others.