THE PRIME MINISTER IS LOSING IT
The video we show above is the Prime Minister of The Bahamas Dr. Hubert Minnis speaking in the House of Assembly on Wednesday 19 June 2019 as he wound up the debate on the Government’s annual budget. He was making the false point that the PLP gave out 200 million dollars of untendered contracts and got only 3.5 million dollars in value. That was a big fat lie. The Budget Debate is a uniquely useless ritual in The Bahamas and its political calendar that almost never changes anything, yet we do the same thing every year.
This year we got a unique set of amusements. You got the groveling and embarrassing speech of Travis Robinson who proved to be just like any other political hack. He has run into economic problems and so went singing for his supper. Then we had the spectacle of the MP for Pinewood Reuben Rahming attacking one of his constituents after he was called out for publicly lying on the state of the community garden in Pinewood. Later we got to see him falling asleep as the Opposition took the Government line by line through the budget with that ritual ending about two in the morning.
We also got to see a fight break out in plain view between the Minister for Immigration Brent Symonette and the Minister for Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Peter Turnquest on whether the Government would park a bill in committee at the request of the Opposition Leader who pointed out obvious flaws in the bill. Mr. Symonette publicly overruled Mr. Turnquest, showing after all who is the boss. Mr. Turnquest was visibly upset and continued to argue the point as he was advised to sit down and leave it alone.
The palm d’or however goes to Miriam Emanuel, the MP for MICAL, who was the butt of every joke in town as she bumbled her way through trying to call the figures on the sheet of paper before her. The Minister of Foreign Affairs who was sitting on the side of her tried to help her but to no avail. She didn’t cut it. The comedians had a field day. Then she made things worse by going on to Clint Watson’s Behind The Headlines Show and dug a deeper hole for herself by saying that she has three degrees one in secretarial science, and then she botched the pronunciation of the word : secretarial. It was simply one of those cringing times when you wanted to say: “Lady, there is a time to be quiet.
That was Budget Week in The Bahamas. Now the ritual begins in the Senate on Monday 24 June 2019. That will be even more useless. But The law says it must be done.
What we know is that the week’s performance by the FNM in this their third budget shows how shockingly inept, foolish and lying that they are. The country should be done with them. The issue is we have three years to go and we must suffer the indignities of their ignorance for another 36 months. How long Oh Lord how long?
Our apologies: our statistics engine is down this week… Please check next week for updated site statistics. Editor