I want to thank you for inviting me there this evening.  It is not often that I get an opportunity for a structured conversation with people of your age group on matters of public policy.  I am happy for the opportunity.

I want to take a circuitous route to get to the topic that you have asked me to address.  The question is; how do we deal with what is called a looming economic crisis, and what should our relations be with the United States of America?

I would prefer that we look at this time, not as a time of national risk but as a time of national opportunity.  Surely, the best trained generation in the history of our country can think their way out of this.  As a rich friend of mine said to me recently, all you have to remember is that the money did not disappear.  It is still out there, somewhere.  The issue is that confidence is gone.  And when confidence is gone, then people cut back on spending.  This is what has led us, in part, to where we are today.

Over the past year, I have had to rely on what I call the non-Bahamasair routes to get around the country.  To move from Freeport to Marsh Harbour, from Freeport to Bimini, from Bimini to Nassau, from Congo Town or Fresh Creek, Andros to Nassau, you have to depend on this non Bahamasair system.   This is a testament to our decision when in office to allow the full expansion of private carriers on routes that were once exclusively Bahamasair.  It was the right thing to do and it has led to hundreds of jobs and new business opportunities for Bahamians and I dare add young Bahamians.

What struck me about my journeys was, apart from the fact of the inelegance of the trips, little protocol was involved, and these airlines were in the main run by people hardly 30 years old and most visibly in their twenties.  There were some mature supervisors but in the main young people ran these airlines.  They ran on time.  They provided a safe comfortable journey and a pretty efficient service.

When I think today about our attempts as a political party to help frame the Bahamian debate, I look at who we rely on to help us in that journey.  Both major papers announced today that they are starting Facebook profiles to help get the message out.  But in the main, the people who run The Tribune, The Guardian, the Bahama Journal and the radio and TV stations are in fact the children or their contemporaries of many of my friends.  So, the national image is being shaped in the main by people in their 20s.

Those are but two examples, but I am sure that you can think of many more.  It certainly impressed me the same way when I visited China on official business.  That while the senior leadership was mature, the persons who actually did the nuts and bolts of running the country were the younger people in their 20s and 30s.

Countries need political parties.  Political parties are the management tool for mobilizing the society behind goals and objectives.  What exists in the country, then, is instructive about where a political party should be, especially one that is unexpectedly in opposition again after five years in office.

The question is how you stay relevant to the times.  You will see that this is a theme addressed most recently by me in Fox Hill in our last public meeting.  I also note comments made by the former Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe in this morning’s press about the need for a new image.

So the question of change is in the air and our political party when it faces the electorate the next time will, in my opinion, mirror the demographics of the country.

I said in Fox Hill last week and it bears repeating:

“There is an inexorable transition taking place in the PLP.  It is coming whether we like it or not.  All of us from the top to the bottom must know that; and each has to examine what our roles will be in that transition and be prepared to do what is necessary to effect it.  Tonight, mine is to promote the ideas for change.

“People look to the campaign of our brother Barrack Obama in the United States.  All I say is; you cannot simply talk the language of change; you must change.  Everyone wants to talk change but when it comes to change, no one wants to change.”

In our system, it is also clear that for the country to advance you need a pro and a con.  The cut and thrust of the debate leads to good public policy.  Frank Rich writing in the New York Times about his own country said: “that at a time of genuine national peril we actually do need an opposition party that is not brain-dead.”

We in the PLP can never fall into that category.  New ideas will always be in the mix.  No doubt, you agree on this vital part of our democracy, otherwise, I would not have been invited to speak to you this evening.

You will know that in the news there is a lot of talk about leadership in the PLP.  While that is important, there are some fundamentals that have to be fixed.  For me, the question is; where is the voice of the PLP, that inner cry that comes that says this is what we believe?  The country needs to hear that voice and to hear more of it.

I started out talking about young people.  It is clear that a political party has to foster and encourage the young to participate, but this was never a question for me when I started out in the PLP, the question of whether I had a place.  More generally, it should not be a question for you, about whether you have a place.  The country is yours, just like for our youth in the PLP, the party is theirs.  It is not an enterprise for which you need permission to join.

I would like to share a statement by Frederick Douglass, the African American abolitionist, made in 1857:

“If there is no struggle there is no progress.  Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.  They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
 
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.  Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and it never will.”
 
If you take all this together, then what is instructive for you in the country generally and for those who want to join and influence our political party is that you need to engage and to prepare yourself for the opportunities that exist and seize them.

Into this, then, comes what we do to take advantage of the national opportunity, as opposed to a national risk that we face in this ‘looming economic crisis’.

Young Bahamians like you have to create the new businesses.  We in the political leadership have to provide the legislative and policy framework with your input, help and participation.  You have to help shape that framework by your advocacy and appreciation in the politics and civic life of the country.  It cannot wait.  Now is the time.

Those who aspire to leadership in any organization must know that it requires discipline, commitment and loyalty.  There are too many summer soldiers. Too many like to hide in the tall grass.

You need to become advocates of a more expansive foreign relations that sees us actively engaged in seeking to influence American foreign policy toward us.  We need embassies in Jamaica, in Brazil and Argentina, in Brussels and in Geneva.

We need to upgrade our infrastructure, so that we have reliable power, telecommunications - including the Internet - and reliable transportation by road, by air and by sea.

Our tourism product has to be significantly upgraded and the service component improved.  Foreign relations and foreign trade ought to be more expansive.  We have to enter into more trade agreements to protect our country’s competitiveness in the world.  You must fight isolationism and protectionism.

Most of all, I would like you to be advocates for education.  My own view is that if we return to office, we need to make the University of the West Indies (UWI) free for any Bahamian student who can get in, regardless of the programme of study, in addition to tuition support at the College of The Bahamas.  We also need to return to a scholarship programme that is need and merit based.  I would suggest that by 2017 we need to triple the size of the education budget and the resources dedicated to actually teaching to our students including a substantial upgrade in BTVI.
As for us in the PLP, as this transition comes, I think that anyone who would be a candidate in our party for any office must be committed to the ideals of integrity, discipline and loyalty to country first and foremost.
There must be a commitment to the stability of the Progressive Liberal Party and to orderliness in any transition to come that avoids what happened with the meltdown of the FNM in 2002 and which respects all those who now lead us.
I am pleased once again to be here and I welcome your responses and additional thoughts.