THE WEAK MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Not only is Daren Henfield, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, uniquely unprepared for the office which he holds, he is weak as a politician and does not adequately stand up for the people of The Bahamas.  It has been four days since Donald Trump’s statement calling Haiti and African countries a shithole. We have not heard a word from him standing against that bigotry and racism which is a smear on all peoples of African descent.  Don’t hold your breath.  The Minnis administration is too craven to say a word.   Then you had to laugh as you read the statement published in The Nassau Guardian on 12 January in which he said that he would be seeking to find out if the Americans were still spying on us and that he would seek assurances that they are not.  This is a sign of his lack of preparedness. The status of that is all in the public domain and settled when the PLP was in power.  Mr. Henfield got on his high horse in the press to say that Bahamans have a right to privacy and yada, yada, yada, yada.  He does not mean a word of it. The Minnis administration does not believe in human rights any more than in the man in the moon. He gave as an example the fact that they shut down the National Intelligence Agency headed by former Defence Force Commodore Butch Scavella on the basis that it had no lawful authority to exist.  That is a gross prevarication.  It needs to be answered by the PLP.  There was nothing unlawful about that agency.   But while FNMs like Mr. Henfield are good at grandstanding on these false issues, he has wrought havoc on the personal lives of Foreign Service officers who were brought in by the PLP.  Under his watch, the Ministry has systematically discriminated against people thought to be PLP.  His orders have wrecked the lives of young people brought home and dismissed for no reason other than they are PLP.  This is a former preacher at work now.  Under his leadership, the boast that he was going to save money by bringing home the appointees under the PLP and sending out Foreign Service officers has proven to be absolutely false.  In the past six months three former Torchbearers have been hired at the Ministry, one as recently as last month, with the Minister’s office personally intervening to rush the appointment through so that the former Torchbearer can be sent to States.  There is no need for another officer in Atlanta and in any event the person has no Foreign Service skills like the Minister promised. What a travesty the thing is. Deceitful.