FOR THE PLP: DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS?

Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
Nobody OD’d, viagra generic cialis sale nobody burned a single building down
Nobody fired a shot in anger…nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today
–Anne Murray

(The photo shows Candia Dames accepting an Icon Award last Sunday for her work in journalism, cialis but no mention of journalistic ethics.)

We have done the analysis many times in this column.  Not sure to what effect.  Does anyone out there hear or listen? If you read the newspapers last week, and the social media which they drive, listened to the talk shows, you would get the impression that there is no good news for the PLP in The Bahamas at all.  Just one bad headline after the next.

The one man who seems to get it is Bradley Roberts, the Chairman of the PLP.  He never stops swinging back.  Always at bat and most times knocks them out of the park.

It would be fine if the newspaper headlines were actually a fair and balanced reporting of what is actually transpiring in the country.  Life cannot just be a steady diet of “the government cannot do anything right”, one conflict after the next, one misstep after the next.   In part it is designed that way, to look that way in a concerted effort to try and defeat the PLP. A good deal of it is self-inflicted and a failure to correct the self-inflicted missteps.

What had to be the laugh of the week was the Icon Award for Journalism given to Candia Dames for her work in the media where she is now the Managing Editor of the Nassau Guardian but who specializes in gotcha journalism, and in her opinion pieces she is as bad or worse than the lousy John Marquis who came to The Bahamas at the behest of the nasty Eileen Carron over at the Tribune to simply smash, slash and burn the PLP and everything Black in its wake.

Yet there she was in her finery last Sunday receiving an award and the usual statements from her about thanking God, country and family.  No doubt her family is proud of her.  But the starting point has to be a recognition that with journalism comes ethics, and journalistic ethics for a paper of record requires a special breed of conduct: called fair and balanced and no self-dealing. Journalism in The Bahamas is everything but that.

Hubert Minnis issued a press statement at the beginning of last week in which he gave a laundry list of what he said were the missteps in governance by the PLP under Perry Christie and he called for the PLP to resign and call a general election.   It took the PLP two days to answer that laundry list, one an answer from the Chairman which we publish below, the other from the Prime Minister who called Mr. Minnis’ comments silly, and said there he was calling for a general election but he was not ready nor his party to fight a general election.  Mr

. Roberts reminded Mr. Minnis that he was calling for a national election when he was unwilling to hold one in his own party.  It was laughable really.

Then there is the hapless spokesman on Foreign Affairs Hubert Chipman who made an allegation about Lloyd Smith, the Reverend and contractor, claiming that he was too close to Shane Gibson the National Insurance Minister and that he did not deserve the NIB contract that he got for the construction of the new building on John F Kennedy Drive.  We publish the answer to that which shows how the procedures were followed and Mr. Smith received a building contract and how Mr. Chipman said nothing when under similar circumstances Hubert Ingraham his buddy was the Prime Minister.  Mr. Chipman even questioned whether Lloyd Smith was a citizen of The Bahamas.

No probing by the press however.  They just published anything that the FNM said uncritically so.

Now here is the twist.  The leaders of the PLP seem to think or so it appears that making these one off bomblets in the press will staunch the flow of the anti PLP tide, a narrative which has taken hold and may be beyond the tipping point.  We are going to quote now from a note posted on What’s App by a Young Liberal, who supports the PLP with all his heart:

[After asking the question of why the PLP continues to associate with Peter Nygard at Lyford Cay, and listing a number of other questions, he says:

“I applaud Leslie Miller in his efforts but I would ask him to resign…  Wells would have been suspended until the outcome of the issue before the Bahamian people (in which individuals of the company personally told me cabinet ministers are aware of the deal) Ishmael Lightbourne would have been fired.  Someone needs to account for this money missing from customs in Abaco for the third time”

Point is this: death by thousand cuts is the strategy of the FNM.  They and their media progenitors believe all that has to be done is publish every little peccadillo real or imagined and in the end, it will add up to a bloody mess.

Point also is this: young PLPs are adopting the FNM narrative; the Young Liberal has the same list as Mr. Minnis.  They don’t see it as an FNM narrative but as a commonsense narrative; the right things to do. That is what the leaders of the PLP are fighting and don’t seem to get.

But guess what, we hope the PLP will soon get it because the cause is right and we ask again to for our people to stand up and fight back by doing the right thing.

Number of hits for the week ending Saturday 19th July 2014 up to midnight:127,729;;
Number of hits for the month of July up to Saturday 19th July 2014 up to midnight:378,909;
Number of hits for the year 2014 up to Saturday 19th July 2014 up to midnight:4,889,215.