THE BERMUDA TRIP: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Prime Minister Philip Davis with Minister JoBeth Davis with their counterparts in Bermuda.
You have never heard and dealt with so much foolishness in all your life than with this simple trip to Bermuda with the Prime Minister Philip Davis serving both roles as Prime Minister and Leader of the PLP. This past week the PLP allowed itself to get off message by not dealing forthrightly with what was quite a simple matter.
For cogent reasons, the trips of the Prime Minister of this country whether private or public in nature are handled by the Office of the Prime Minister. When the deal is done, there is a reckoning between public and private expenses.
When the Office of Prime Minister spokesperson was asked who paid for the trip that ought to have been the answer or the matter should have been fobbed off to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Instead the press thought they caught them in a lie when the spokesman said that the PLP paid for the trip.
Turns out that the PLP reimbursed the government for the trip. So it was not correct to say the PLP paid for the trip.
Then the rush to put out copies of cheques and receipts all of which led to a skeptical public saying that this was patch work after the fact.
Fortunately the Prime Minister himself has a lots of goodwill and in the House of Assembly on Wednesday 26 October 2022, he brought all the nonsense to an end by simply telling the truth, The bill for the aircraft was paid by the Government. The PLP reimbursed the Government. The personal and party expenses will be settled when a reckoning is done, i.e. when the bills all come in.
Simple straightforward and direct.
At some point though, the Prime Minister may have to consider whether he is being served by a communications infrastructure that he constantly has to rescue from faux pas.
The press of course will never be satisfied with the PLP no matter how you try to get out ahead of them. So it is simply better to stick with the truth. In the end, the truth showed that this was much ado about nothing at all.
Number of hits for the week ending Saturday, 29th October, 2022 up to midnight: 804,222;
Number of hits for the month of October up to Saturday, 29th October, 2022 up to midnight: 2,429,876;
Number of hits for the year 2022 up to Saturday, 29th October, 2022 up to midnight: 15,213,478