THE CRAZY MINNIS RULES ON COVID FAIL

If ever a time the phrase from the poem The Second Coming “: things fall apart” can be used  for The Bahamas, it is now.  This is like the situation where the dyke keeps springing holes and pretty soon the Government of Hubert Minnis is going to run out of fingers to plug those holes.

The rules of the anti Covid regime in the state of national public emergency are so arcane that even the most practiced lawyer cannot understand them or appreciate them. The public officials seem to be in a state of national confusion.

The borders of the country are obviously porous and unpoliced, if you take just one example of the Chairman of the PLP who landed in Grand Bahama and could see that the state of the airport was such that people can just walk in without let or hindrance.

There appears also to be a slow collapse of civil authority.  The Government no longer has a rule by laws but is now subject to political pressure at every turn. This is largely because the country has run out of the fiscal space to execute its programmes.  It owes everyone in town and so people are beginning to refuse their IOUs.

The shutdown rules have not stopped the virus from spreading.  If anything, it appears that the virus is in fact spreading exponentially and  more people than ever are dying. We report later in this column the experience of a union leader who said that the Prime Minister admitted that, at his health care facilities, triage is at the order of the day.  Some are dying because we have no facilities, no medicine , no doctors.

There is only one entity to blame for this state of affairs.  That is the so called competent authority, the name given officially to the Prime Minister, to manage this crisis. He has proven to be politically incompetent.  Clueless and insensitive As the economy continues to collapse, the deaths and sickness rise, things are falling apart.

Now more than ever the PLP needs to be prepared to govern.