There is a particularly entertaining phenomenon in our politics.

It is called the Opposition Principle.

When you are in Opposition, something is a scandal.

When you become Government, apparently the same thing becomes policy.

And Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis has provided Bahamians with a rather impressive demonstration of this principle.

Back in 2017, when Mr. Davis was Leader of the Opposition, he was confronted with controversy surrounding a government contract that had been awarded without the usual tendering process.

His response was actually quite revealing.

Mr. Davis did not say that no-bid contracts were inherently illegal. Quite the opposite. He acknowledged that governments could award contracts without competitive tendering in certain circumstances.

But he was also perfectly happy to condemn the FNM government over the circumstances surrounding such awards and to accuse the administration of breaches of public trust.

That was then.

Fast-forward to the Davis administration.

Now the Government has presided over a procurement system in which direct awards—contracts awarded without competitive bidding—have become sufficiently commonplace to attract serious public criticism.

And this is not merely an Opposition talking point.

Reporting based on government procurement records found hundreds of contracts awarded without competitive bidding, involving everything from major road projects and government construction to security services, technology, consulting, Christmas decorations and even government Christmas parties.

The numbers are not exactly pocket change.

Among the contracts identified were a reported $183 million direct award involving an affiliate of Bahamas Striping Group. The Government subsequently said that contract had been placed on the procurement list because of an “administrative error” and that it had been paused. Another $180 million Eleuthera road contract was awarded to Caribbean Pavement Solutions, also associated with Bahamas Striping.

Then there were millions more:

A $7.2 million South Andros road contract.

A $2.8 million Bimini road-repair contract.

A $2.2 million contract involving repairs and renovations at the Queen Elizabeth Sports Centre.

A $2 million contract for national stadium electrical and lighting repairs.

A $1 million contract for Phase Two of the Family Courts complex.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in security, software, Road Traffic Department, consulting and other contracts.

And then, because apparently government procurement must also have a festive spirit, there were substantial direct awards for Christmas decorations and government Christmas parties.

One might almost conclude that somewhere inside the machinery of government there is a department called the Ministry of Immediate Things.

Of course, the Government has an answer.

And technically, it is an important one.

The Davis administration repealed the previous Public Procurement Act and Parliament passed the Public Procurement Act, 2023, which came into operation on July 1, 2023. Prime Minister Davis, then Minister of Finance, signed the appointed-day notice.

The new law permits direct awards in specified circumstances.

Among them are procurements below $100,000, certain situations where competitive bidding has failed or is inappropriate, limited-supplier circumstances and genuine extreme urgency. The legislation also requires justification for using the direct-award method.

So, to be fair, a direct award is not automatically illegal.

That is an important distinction.

But it is also precisely where the political problem begins.

Because the question is no longer:

“Can the Government legally award a contract without competitive bidding?”

The question is:

“Why does this Government appear to need so many exceptions?”

The Acting Chief Procurement Officer himself acknowledged that direct awards represented the majority of the contracts being awarded and conceded that the optics might not look good to the public.

Well, yes.

That tends to happen when “exceptional” becomes “routine.”

And that is where Mr. Davis’s political history becomes particularly uncomfortable.

When he was in Opposition, Mr. Davis was more than capable of identifying the dangers of procurement without competitive tendering.

In 2017, discussing the Stephen Dillet controversy, he said there was nothing inherently wrong with no-bid contracts because circumstances could justify departing from the tender process. But he simultaneously attacked the FNM government’s handling of the matter and described the controversy as a breach of public trust.

In other words, Mr. Davis understood perfectly well that the legality of a direct award is not the end of the political conversation.

Transparency matters.

Competition matters.

Value for money matters.

And perhaps most importantly, public confidence matters.

Yet now, under his administration, Bahamians are being asked to accept hundreds of direct awards while being told, essentially:

Don’t worry. It’s legal.

That may satisfy the lawyers.

It should not satisfy the taxpayers.

Michael Pintard has repeatedly raised precisely this concern. In 2025, he questioned why the Government had reported more than $300 million in no-bid contracts over a twelve-month period, while earlier reporting placed the value of direct awards at approximately $369 million across the procurement records examined.

And this is where the Government’s argument becomes politically awkward.

Because the Davis administration cannot simultaneously present itself as the great champion of transparency, accountability and fiscal discipline while treating competitive procurement as something that can apparently be dispensed with on a remarkably regular basis.

The Government can say the contracts are lawful.

Fine.

Lawful does not automatically mean wise.

Lawful does not automatically mean economical.

Lawful does not automatically mean transparent.

And lawful certainly does not automatically mean politically defensible.

The same problem arises with the Government’s discussion of the national debt.

It would be inaccurate to claim that the Davis administration has simply “ballooned the national debt to $1 billion.” The fiscal numbers are considerably more complicated. The country entered the Davis era carrying the enormous fiscal consequences of COVID-19 and Hurricane Dorian, and the Government’s own 2026 budget presentation says the debt-to-GDP ratio has fallen from more than 100% to 64.6%.

But that does not mean Bahamians should stop asking questions about borrowing.

The Davis administration itself returned to international capital markets with a US$1.067 billion bond in 2026, while saying that $767 million of the proceeds would be used to retire older, more expensive debt.

That is refinancing, not simply $1.067 billion of new spending.

But it is still debt.

And the Government cannot spend years lecturing Bahamians about the fiscal recklessness of previous administrations while expecting the public to suspend its arithmetic whenever the borrowing happens under a PLP government.

That is the real issue.

The Davis administration inherited extraordinary fiscal circumstances.

It deserves credit for reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio.

But it does not receive a lifetime exemption from scrutiny simply because it inherited COVID and Dorian.

And neither does it get to transform competitive procurement from a fundamental safeguard into something that appears, from the outside, to be an optional accessory.

There is a very simple principle here:

If competitive bidding is good enough to demand from the other fellow, it ought to be good enough to practise when you are holding the cheque book.

Otherwise, what we have is not a principled position on procurement.

It is merely the oldest political tradition in The Bahamas:

When our people do it, it is corruption.
When our people are doing it, it is procedure.

And perhaps that is the real lesson of the Davis administration’s procurement record.

The problem isn’t necessarily that every direct award is illegal.

The problem is that when hundreds of contracts are awarded without competition, the Government creates an environment in which the public is entitled to ask whether the exception has quietly become the rule.

And after all those years of hearing Mr. Davis speak about accountability from the Opposition benches, Bahamians might reasonably wonder:

What happened to the man who used to ask the questions?

Because now he is the man with the answers.

And unfortunately for the Prime Minister, some of those answers appear to begin with:

“It’s legal.”

That is a rather thin answer from a government that once demanded considerably more from everyone else.

The Bahamas deserves better.

END

Yesterday was World Literacy Day.

So, I feel reasonably comfortable writing a blog for my readers.

Now, I appreciate that literacy and comprehension are two different things. One can technically read every word on a page and still somehow miss the point entirely.

And then there is critical thinking.

But I digress.

Because apparently, when it comes to the finances of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, we may all need to go back to school.

Preferably accounting.

The Davis administration has spent years reminding Bahamians about the fiscal mess it inherited from the Minnis administration.

And there is no question that Hurricane Dorian and COVID-19 created an extraordinary fiscal crisis.

The Minnis administration faced a hurricane that devastated Abaco and Grand Bahama, followed almost immediately by a global pandemic that shut down tourism, businesses and much of the economy.

Government revenues collapsed.

Government still had bills to pay.

Public servants continued to receive salaries.

Social assistance programs had to be expanded.

Food assistance had to be provided.

And the country had to borrow to respond to circumstances that nobody could have reasonably described as normal.

In fact, the government at the time explicitly said borrowing was being used to finance Dorian recovery and provide support to people affected by the disaster.

Yet the Progressive Liberal Party spent considerable political capital criticizing the Minnis administration over the country’s rapidly increasing debt.

And when the Davis administration took office in 2021, Prime Minister Philip Davis made the fiscal condition of the country a central part of his government’s argument.

The debt, we were told, was a problem.

The previous administration’s borrowing was a problem.

The previous administration’s fiscal management was a problem.

Fair enough.

Government changes.

Governments inherit problems.

And governments are expected to fix them.

But now comes the awkward part.

The Central Bank’s second-quarter 2026 economic report shows that The Bahamas’ national debt increased by $1.071 billion during the 2025-2026 fiscal year, reaching approximately $13.17 billion at the end of June 2026.

That increase consisted of approximately $697 million in additional direct government debt and $373.5 million in increased contingent liabilities.

And this is where things become rather interesting.

Because according to the government’s April 2026 fiscal report, the fiscal deficit was only $121.2 million.

Even more interestingly, as late as June 2026, the Davis administration was projecting a $32.7 million Budget surplus for the 2025-2026 fiscal year.

Let us pause there.

A $32.7 million projected surplus.

A $121.2 million fiscal deficit reported at the end of April.

And a $1.071 billion increase in national debt over the fiscal year.

Somewhere in that arithmetic is a story.

And the Bahamian people deserve to hear it.

Economist Therese Turner-Jones has already raised precisely this concern, telling The Tribune that the lack of transparency surrounding the figures is “mind boggling” and that something is not adding up.

She is not suggesting that every dollar of the $1.071 billion was simply spent by central government.

And neither should we.

The $373.5 million increase in contingent liabilities matters. Those liabilities include government guarantees associated with state-owned enterprises, including borrowing connected to the Grand Bahama Power Company acquisition, LNG-related energy reforms and the Public Hospitals Authority.

But that distinction raises an even bigger question:

Why are these liabilities increasing by such an extraordinary amount while the government is simultaneously telling Bahamians that its fiscal position is improving?

What exactly is happening?

Where did the money go?

What was it borrowed for?

What was guaranteed?

Which entities received it?

What projects or acquisitions account for it?

How much of it remains sitting in government accounts?

How much was transferred to state-owned enterprises?

How much is connected to special-purpose vehicles?

And, most importantly:

Why doesn’t the government’s reported fiscal position appear to line up with the enormous increase in the national debt?

These are not unreasonable questions.

They are not partisan questions.

They are not FNM questions.

They are taxpayer questions.

And they deserve taxpayer answers.

Because this is where the Davis administration’s previous criticism of the Minnis administration becomes particularly interesting.

When the Minnis administration was dealing with the financial consequences of Dorian and COVID-19, the Davis opposition was perfectly entitled to question how much the country was borrowing and where the money was going.

But surely the same standard must apply when the government doing the borrowing is the Davis administration.

You cannot demand transparency when you are in Opposition and then ask the public to develop amnesia when you are in government.

That is not fiscal responsibility.

That’s political selective memory.

And there is another rather inconvenient fact.

Prime Minister Davis himself has repeatedly emphasized the fiscal turnaround achieved under his administration.

In his 2026 Budget contribution, he described the country’s progress as a transformation from a $1.3 billion deficit to a projected surplus and said the debt burden had fallen dramatically as a percentage of GDP. He also pointed to the government’s successful refinancing of older debt.

Fine.

But then somebody needs to explain the other side of the ledger.

Because while the debt-to-GDP ratio may have improved substantially from the extraordinary pandemic peak, the absolute national debt increased by $1.071 billion in one fiscal year.

Those are two different measurements.

Both can be true.

And pretending they are the same thing would be like telling a homeowner that his mortgage has become more affordable because his house increased in value while conveniently failing to mention that he borrowed another $700,000.

Percentages are wonderful things.

They can make almost anything look better.

Especially during Budget season.

But Bahamians don’t pay their bills with percentages.

They pay them with dollars.

And interest.

Lots and lots of interest.

The government’s own figures show that the national debt stood at approximately $13.17 billion at the end of June 2026, while the national debt-to-GDP ratio was approximately 74.7 percent.

So here is my question to the Davis administration:

What exactly happened during the 2025-2026 fiscal year that required the national debt to increase by more than $1 billion?

And before somebody reaches for the convenient Dorian-and-COVID explanation, let’s remember something:

Dorian happened in 2019.

COVID-19 arrived in 2020.

We are now in 2026.

Those were extraordinary circumstances.

But the $1.071 billion increase being discussed here occurred during the 2025-2026 fiscal year.

So what was the extraordinary circumstance this time?

Where was the hurricane?

Where was the lockdown?

Where was the collapse of tourism?

Where was the unprecedented economic shutdown?

There wasn’t one.

Instead, Bahamians were being taxed, revenues were increasing and the government was telling us that the country’s fiscal position had been transformed.

So why did the debt rise by another billion dollars?

And perhaps the most important question of all:

What do Bahamians have to show for it?

That is not an accusation.

It is an accountability question.

If the money was invested in productive infrastructure, show us.

If it went into BPL, show us.

If it went into Water & Sewerage, show us.

If it went into the Public Hospitals Authority, show us.

If it was connected to the Grand Bahama Power Company acquisition, explain it.

If it was related to LNG and energy reform, explain it.

If it was placed into special-purpose vehicles, identify them.

If it is sitting in accounts somewhere, tell us where.

And if there are legitimate accounting reasons why the increase in debt does not correspond directly with the reported fiscal deficit, then explain those reasons in language ordinary Bahamians can understand.

Because the answer cannot simply be:

“We have a surplus.”

The numbers are asking a rather impolite follow-up question:

“Then why did the debt go up by $1 billion?”

That is the question.

And it is not going away.

The government can point to debt-to-GDP ratios.

It can point to refinancing.

It can point to improved revenues.

It can point to international investors.

It can point to credit ratings.

All of those things matter.

But none of them answers the fundamental question being raised by the latest numbers.

Where did the additional billion dollars go?

The Minnis administration was criticized for the debt accumulated during one of the most extraordinary periods in modern Bahamian history.

Now the Davis administration has presided over another billion-dollar increase in national debt during a period when it is simultaneously telling Bahamians that the nation’s finances are stronger, revenues are higher and a surplus has been achieved—or is about to be achieved.

Perhaps there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

If there is, this should be easy.

Produce the numbers.

Show the Bahamian people the money trail.

Explain the accounting.

Explain the guarantees.

Explain the borrowing.

Explain the contingent liabilities.

Explain the difference between the fiscal deficit and the increase in debt.

And explain what the country received in return.

Because after all the speeches about fiscal responsibility, after all the promises of surpluses, after all the celebrations about the economic turnaround, Bahamians are entitled to ask one very simple question:

If everything is going so well, why did we just become another $1 billion deeper in debt?

Perhaps the problem isn’t that Bahamians can’t read.

Perhaps we are reading the numbers just fine.

Perhaps the problem is that the government hasn’t finished writing the explanation.

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas deserves so much more.

END

On Warren “Spy” Ellis, government contracts, political association—and the extraordinary difficulty of simply saying “No”

There are some questions in public life that require a Royal Commission.

There are others that require a forensic audit, three lawyers, two parliamentary committees and several months of Freedom of Information requests.

And then there are questions that require two letters.

No.

The Warren “Spy” Ellis affair, at least as far as the government’s housing programme is concerned, appears to belong firmly in the third category.

The Ministry of Housing and Land Reform has now done what one might reasonably expect a ministry to do when confronted with a question about whether someone received a government contract.

It checked the records.

And according to the Ministry, there is no record of Warren Ellis receiving a contract from the Ministry since the Davis administration came to office.

The Ministry went further. It said there is also no record of a contract being awarded to a company identified in its records as being owned or controlled by Ellis.

Well, there we have it.

No contract.

Simple enough.

Which makes the Prime Minister’s earlier performance all the more intriguing.

Because when asked about the allegation, Philip Davis did not say “No.”

He did not say, “The Ministry’s records show no such contract.”

He did not even say, “I don’t have that information in front of me, but I’ll have the Ministry check.”

Instead, the country was treated to an increasingly exasperated inquiry into the factual basis of the question.

“What is the factual basis to answer that question?”

The reporters were asked where they got the information.

The Prime Minister declared that he was tired of the allegations.

And then, with the dexterity of a politician who has spotted an escape hatch, the conversation moved on to UpSkill Bahamas, the school breakfast programme and the government’s other initiatives.

One could almost hear the collective whisper from the press gallery:

Sir, we asked about Warren Ellis.

The Ministry Apparently Found the Missing “No”

To be fair, the Ministry’s response is precisely what the government should have wanted.

It is specific.

It is factual.

It is based on records.

It doesn’t require anyone to speculate about photographs, friendships, political associations or who happened to stand next to whom at a political event.

It simply says: we checked, and the contract isn’t there.

That is a considerably more compelling response than telling journalists that you are tired of the question.

Indeed, it raises the most obvious question of the entire affair:

If the answer was no, why didn’t the Prime Minister simply say no?

Perhaps he didn’t have the records at hand.

Perfectly understandable.

Then say so.

Perhaps he thought the allegation was politically motivated.

Also, understandable.

Say that too.

Perhaps he was genuinely irritated by what he regarded as a continuing attempt to associate the government with a murdered man.

Again, understandable.

But none of these explanations prevents a Prime Minister from answering a straightforward factual question.

In fact, they make the appropriate response even easier:

“I don’t have those records in front of me. I’ll have the Ministry verify it.”

End of story.

Instead, the question became a political performance.

And now the Ministry has quietly come along afterwards and provided the answer that could have been given at the beginning.

Association Is Not Procurement

This is where the discussion needs a little intellectual discipline.

There has been considerable conversation about Ellis being photographed with politicians and supporters of the Progressive Liberal Party.

That is a separate issue.

The Prime Minister is perfectly entitled to point out that politicians interact with constituents and members of the public every day.

A photograph is not a government contract.

Standing beside somebody at a political event does not establish a business relationship.

And knowing, speaking to, or being photographed with a person does not make a politician responsible for that person’s actions.

All of that is true.

But it isn’t an answer to the housing-contract question.

The two things should not be mixed together.

Political association is one question. Government procurement is another.

One is subjective and potentially open to interpretation.

The other ought to be sitting somewhere in a filing system.

And that is why the Ministry’s statement is so important.

It moves the discussion away from political theatre and into the realm of documentary fact.

But Don’t Declare Victory Just Yet

There is, however, another trap here.

It would be just as irresponsible to take the Ministry’s statement and declare that every allegation concerning Ellis has now been completely disproved.

That isn’t what the Ministry said.

The Ministry said there is no record of a contract being awarded to Ellis or to a company identified in its records as being owned or controlled by him.

That is a narrower proposition.

It does not necessarily answer whether Ellis worked on a government-funded project through another contractor.

It does not necessarily answer whether he was a subcontractor.

It does not answer whether he had any other dealings with government agencies.

And it does not automatically disprove reports from construction workers who said they had worked for Ellis on the Central Pines project.

Those claims may ultimately turn out to be wrong.

They may turn out to be misunderstood.

They may turn out to describe subcontracting arrangements rather than government contracts.

But that is precisely why the matter should now be investigated with documents rather than political indignation.

The next question practically writes itself:

Who actually held the Central Pines housing contract in 2022?

Who was the principal contractor?

Were there subcontractors?

Who performed the work?

Who was paid?

Was Ellis involved in any capacity?

Those are questions that should be capable of being answered.

And if the answer to all of them is “No,” then the government’s position becomes substantially stronger.

The Prime Minister’s Real Problem May Be Communication

It would be tempting, in the overheated atmosphere of Bahamian politics, to interpret every awkward answer as evidence of a hidden scandal.

That would be a mistake.

The fact that Davis became aggravated does not prove that he was concealing anything.

The Ministry’s statement, in fact, gives the government a useful piece of evidence in defending itself against the specific contract allegation.

But there is a difference between proving wrongdoing and handling a question badly.

The Prime Minister may have done the latter without doing the former.

And that distinction is important.

Because when a Prime Minister is asked a factual question and responds with irritation, the public is left to fill in the blanks.

When the Ministry subsequently answers the question calmly and specifically, the contrast becomes even more pronounced.

The government has essentially demonstrated that the controversy could have been handled with a sentence.

Instead, we got a detour.

A lecture about political association.

A complaint about allegations.

A reminder of government programmes.

And finally, the answer.

It is a little like asking whether the Treasury wrote a cheque and being told that the government has done wonderful things for education.

Wonderful.

But did you write the cheque?

The Curious Politics of Being “Tired”

There is also something worth examining about politicians saying they are “tired” of allegations.

The public may well be tired too.

Tired of accusations.

Tired of denials.

Tired of counter-accusations.

Tired of photographs being treated as evidence of criminality and denials being treated as evidence of guilt.

But there is a simple solution.

Put the facts on the table.

If the allegation is false, demonstrate that it is false.

If the records don’t exist, say so.

If the records are being checked, say that.

If there was a contract, disclose who received it and under what circumstances.

That is how public confidence is built.

Not by becoming increasingly irritated that people keep asking.

Because there is a rather uncomfortable political reality here:

The more irritated a politician becomes while refusing to answer a simple question, the more interesting the question becomes.

It is not necessarily fair.

But it is politics.

The Government Should Welcome the Boring Answer

There is an old-fashioned virtue in boring government.

A contract was issued.

Here is the contract.

A company was paid.

Here is the payment record.

A person wasn’t awarded a contract.

Here is the procurement record showing that.

There is no need for drama.

No need for outrage.

No need to invoke Westminster.

No need to remind everybody about the breakfast programme.

Just documents.

The Ministry’s statement is therefore useful—not because it ends every question surrounding Ellis, but because it provides a factual answer to one of the most important allegations.

The government should now go one step further.

Tell the public who did receive the Central Pines contract.

Tell the public whether Ellis had any role whatsoever in the project.

If there was no relationship beyond what has already been reported, establish that.

If there was some other form of involvement, explain it.

And let the records speak.

Three Letters

Ultimately, the strangest thing about this episode may be that the government has managed to make a simple denial sound complicated.

The Ministry has now effectively said:

No.

That is the answer the Prime Minister could have given.

He could have said:

“No. The records show Warren Ellis was not awarded a Housing Ministry contract.”

And then moved on to UpSkill Bahamas.

Nobody would have objected to hearing about the breakfast programme.

But first, answer the question.

Because when the question is about whether someone received a government contract, the public is not asking for a dissertation on who is permitted to associate with whom.

It is asking whether the government’s records show a contract.

The Ministry says they don’t.

Good.

Now show us who held the contract.

That is how you turn a political controversy into a factual one.

And perhaps, next time, when the answer really is that simple, the Prime Minister will resist the temptation to take us on the scenic route.

Because sometimes the most reassuring thing a government can say is also the shortest:

No.

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas deserves so much more.

END

This past week was not exactly Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis’s finest week at the witness stand of public opinion.

One might have thought, listening to the Prime Minister respond to a reporter’s perfectly legitimate question about perception, that the reporter had committed some great constitutional offence by asking it.

The question was simple: could a photograph of Warren “Spy” Ellis and North Abaco MP Kirk Cornish, both wearing PLP paraphernalia, create the perception that there was some relationship between Ellis and the party?

The Prime Minister’s response was considerably more complicated.

Rather than simply saying, “No, there is no relationship,” or explaining precisely what the relationship was, Mr Davis embarked upon a philosophical expedition into the Westminster system, representative government and the inherent right of politicians to be photographed with constituents.

According to reports, Mr Davis said that politicians are obliged to hear constituents who approach them and argued that there was nothing inherently wrong with taking a photograph with someone. He then essentially asked: What is wrong with a picture?

Fair enough.

But nobody was asking whether it is illegal for a politician to take a photograph with somebody.

The question was whether the photograph could create a perception.

And that is where the Prime Minister’s response becomes rather curious.

Because, Mr Prime Minister, if there is one thing politicians should understand, it is perception.

Indeed, perception is practically the currency of politics.

Political campaigns are designed to create perceptions: perceptions of leadership, competence, trustworthiness, strength, progress and—most importantly—who should be trusted with the keys to the Treasury.

And the 2026 campaign was certainly not shy about putting Philip Davis front and centre. The PLP’s campaign material prominently featured the Prime Minister and sought to associate his leadership with the party’s message and electoral appeal.

So, when a reporter asks whether a photograph might create a particular perception, perhaps the appropriate response is not to lecture the reporter about how the Westminster system works.

Perhaps the appropriate response is simply to answer the question.

After all, if perception did not matter, why spend millions of dollars and countless hours trying to shape it?

The Prime Minister cannot reasonably have it both ways.

He cannot spend an election campaign carefully cultivating a public perception of himself as the leader who represents “progress”, “competence” and a “new day,” and then suddenly declare that perception is somehow irrelevant when a journalist asks an uncomfortable question.

That is a rather convenient understanding of perception:

Useful when the PLP is creating it. Dangerous when somebody else is examining it.

And therein lies the problem with the Prime Minister’s response.

Nobody is suggesting that a photograph, by itself, proves a political relationship.

It doesn’t.

A photograph is not a contract. It is not a bank transfer. It is not a government procurement document. It is not evidence of criminal conduct.

But neither is a photograph meaningless.

It can create questions.

And when those questions involve a public official, a political party and a person whose killing has generated public scrutiny about his alleged connections, asking the question is precisely what journalists are supposed to do.

The Tribune has subsequently reported that sources linked Ellis to housing work in Central Pines, Abaco, in 2022, although those reported government-contract links have not been publicly confirmed by the government. Housing Minister Keith Bell reportedly neither confirmed nor denied the reports when contacted.

That makes the questions surrounding association and government dealings even more reasonable—not less

And it brings us to the question that Mr Davis’s elaborate answer failed to answer:

Did Warren “Spy” Ellis ever approach the Prime Minister in his capacity as a constituent seeking representation or advocacy?

If the answer is yes, then what did he ask the Prime Minister to advocate for?

And if the Prime Minister’s answer is that he had no personal relationship with Ellis, as he has stated publicly, then perhaps the public would benefit from a straightforward explanation of the nature and extent of any official interaction.

That would be considerably more useful than a dissertation on Westminster government.

Because, Mr Prime Minister, sometimes a simple question really does require a simple answer.

And the more complicated the answer becomes, the more questions people naturally begin to ask.

And then there is that other $30,000 question.

The Prime Minister may wish that particular issue would quietly disappear into the political Bermuda Triangle.

Unfortunately, it has not.

In May, US authorities alleged that Jonathan “Player” Gardiner, a convicted drug trafficker, was rescued after the May 12 election-day plane crash carrying approximately $30,000 in Bahamian currency. US court documents referred to an envelope bearing the handwritten name of an unidentified “Politician-1.” The identity of that politician was redacted.

In June, Gardiner’s lawyer filed a court document arguing that some of the money was campaign-related cash. That is an assertion made in a US court filing—not a proven fact—and it should be treated as such.

When asked directly about those claims, Mr Davis declined to address them.

So, no, Mr Prime Minister, nobody is saying that a photograph proves something sinister.

Nobody should.

But neither should the government behave as though asking questions about photographs, associations, contracts or unexplained money is somehow an act of political persecution.

Questions are not allegations.

Perception is not proof.

But perception is also not irrelevant.

And perhaps that is the inconvenient little lesson here.

The same political world that spends enormous amounts of time, money and effort creating perceptions cannot suddenly become offended when journalists examine the perceptions those images create.

So rather than appearing irritated that the question was asked, perhaps the Prime Minister should simply answer it.

Because every time a straightforward question receives a complicated answer, the public is left wondering whether there was actually a straightforward answer available in the first place.

And that, Mr Prime Minister, is how a question about a photograph becomes a story about why there are so many questions surrounding the photograph.

As for that $30,000 question?

Well, apparently it is still waiting for its simple answer too.

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas deserves so much better.

END

A word of advice to the Minister of Energy and, for that matter, to the entire Progressive Liberal Party government:

Applause from people who are impressed by failure is not evidence of success.

And when the lights are going out across the country, Bahamians are sweating in their homes and businesses are losing money, the government’s job is not to congratulate itself for being technically prepared. Its job is to keep the electricity on.

Minister of Energy, Utilities and Aviation JoBeth Coleby-Davis initially assured the country that Bahamas Power and Light was ready for the summer demand. In June, she told Parliament that BPL had sufficient generation capacity for anticipated summer peaks, citing 300MW of expected demand in New Providence against 340MW of installed capacity at the time.

Then came the summer.

And apparently, somewhere between the minister’s assurance and reality, summer changed the rules.

By August 31, after months of outages, the Minister conceded that officials had underestimated the impact of unusually high temperatures. She now says she has learned not to give “too much assurances.” A review is being prepared to examine peak demand, substations and the capital works required to strengthen the network.

Well, there is certainly one lesson the Bahamian people have learned:

When the Minister tells us the system is ready, perhaps we should bring a flashlight.

So, what exactly happened to the “technical advice”?

The Minister has explained that BPL’s annual summer-readiness programme was based upon historical system information.

She said June normally produced approximately four days above 90 degrees. This year, she said, there were approximately 18 such days.

She also said that the heat placed additional pressure on the system while foundational infrastructure work was taking place.

That explanation raises a rather inconvenient question:

What exactly is the purpose of preparing an electricity system for the future if the preparation is based primarily on the climate of the past?

Because this is where the government’s own rhetoric comes back to haunt it.

Prime Minister Philip Davis has spent years telling the world that The Bahamas is on the front line of climate change.

He has called climate change an “existential threat.”

He has warned internationally that The Bahamas faces a warming planet, stronger storms, rising seas and increasing climate impacts. In 2024, he told the United Nations (UN) that global temperatures had crossed the 1.5°C threshold for an entire year and argued that The Bahamas must adapt to this new reality.

And in his August 2026 national address, the Prime Minister made the connection even more directly: heat increases electricity demand, increases stress on equipment and accelerates its deterioration. He described the country as operating an old system in a “new climate reality.”

So here is the rather simple question for the Energy Minister:

If the Prime Minister understands that The Bahamas is operating in a new climate reality, why did the government’s summer-readiness planning apparently rely so heavily on the old climate reality?

Was the Prime Minister speaking about climate change to the international community while the Ministry of Energy was preparing BPL as though climate change had politely decided to take the summer off?

Because that is the contradiction Bahamians are entitled to have explained.

And then there is the matter of “assurances.”

The Minister now says:

“Don’t give too much assurances.”

That is an extraordinary lesson to arrive at after the assurances have already been given.

The public did not ask the Minister to guarantee that nothing could possibly go wrong.

They expected the government to make a competent assessment of the risks, prepare accordingly and communicate honestly.

If the Minister relied on technical advice when she assured Bahamians that BPL was ready, then the obvious question is:

Was the technical advice wrong, was the interpretation of it wrong, or was the preparation itself inadequate?

And if the answer is that the weather was simply unprecedented, then surely the next question must be:

What contingency planning existed for an unprecedented event?

That is what preparation is supposed to mean.

Otherwise, “we were prepared for normal conditions” is rather like saying a hurricane shelter was fully prepared—as long as no hurricane actually came.

Don’t throw BPL’s employees under the bus

There is another danger here.

The Minister’s explanation can easily leave the impression that BPL’s technical personnel somehow failed to appreciate what was happening.

But that would be an unfair conclusion without evidence.

The public needs to distinguish between technical staff executing an approved plan and the political leadership setting the assumptions under which that plan was developed.

The Minister herself said the summer-readiness programme was based on historical system information.

So, the proper question is not:

“Why didn’t BPL employees predict everything?”

The proper question is:

Who was responsible for ensuring that the planning assumptions reflected the climate and electricity-demand realities that this government itself has been warning the world about?

That responsibility ultimately belongs to management and political leadership—not to ordinary BPL employees who are trying to keep an aging system functioning.

The Prime Minister knows. Does the Minister?

This is perhaps the most politically awkward part of the entire episode.

Prime Minister Davis says we are living in a “new climate reality.”

The Energy Minister says BPL prepared for the summer using what had been considered normal historical conditions.

The Prime Minister says heat increases demand and accelerates equipment deterioration.

The Energy Minister says the system was prepared for what was “normally captured here,” but that the heat was unusually severe.

So which version of climate reality is the government actually planning for?

The one the Prime Minister talks about at COP conferences, or the one BPL uses when preparing its summer-readiness programme?

Because Bahamians cannot afford two climate policies—one for international speeches and another for the electrical grid.

And perhaps the most revealing development is that the government is now preparing a review to determine what went wrong, while the Minister says September is normally the system’s peak and that the lessons will be presented to Cabinet after that peak.

In other words, after the summer has already demonstrated the weaknesses of the system, we are now going to study the summer to learn how to prepare for the summer.

That would be funny if Bahamians weren’t sitting in the dark sweating.

The people deserve more than another explanation

Nobody expects BPL’s aging infrastructure to be transformed overnight.

Nobody expects the Minister to control the weather.

But the public is entitled to expect something much less ambitious:

competent planning, realistic assumptions, accountability and honesty.

The government cannot spend years telling the world that climate change is an existential threat to The Bahamas and then act surprised when extreme heat affects electricity demand.

It cannot tell Bahamians that BPL is ready and then, after months of outages, explain that the summer was simply more unusual than expected.

And it certainly cannot respond to legitimate questions about planning by allowing responsibility to drift downward onto the technicians and employees who were working within the system they were given.

The real issue is not whether anyone could have predicted the exact number of 90-degree days.

The issue is whether the government planned for a range of increasingly severe conditions consistent with the climate reality it has repeatedly told us is already here.

Because if the answer is no, then perhaps the lesson from this summer is not merely:

“Don’t give too much assurances.”

Perhaps the lesson should be:

Don’t give assurances until you have actually prepared for the reality you spent five years telling everyone else was coming.

The Bahamian people deserve better than political applause for promises that the power grid itself cannot keep.

END

There was a time when Philip “Brave” Davis had a very clear explanation for the Bahamas’ debt problem.

It was the Minnis administration.

Hurricane Dorian.

COVID-19.

Poor fiscal management.

Excessive borrowing.

Too much spending.

In fact, when the PLP came to office in September 2021, Davis repeatedly portrayed the country’s finances as a fiscal disaster inherited from the FNM.

And to be fair, there really was a fiscal disaster.

The COVID-19 pandemic had devastated tourism revenues, while Hurricane Dorian had caused damage exceeding 25 percent of GDP. The IMF itself acknowledged that Dorian and the pandemic substantially worsened the country’s fiscal position.

So yes, there were legitimate reasons for the debt explosion.

But here is the inconvenient part.

That was then.

Today, the hurricanes are not being used to close the borders. The pandemic is not shutting down the tourism industry. Hotels are operating. Cruise arrivals are at record levels. Government revenues have improved.

And yet the borrowing continues.

According to the government’s own Debt Management Office, central-government debt reached approximately $12.466 billion at the end of June 2026, an increase of $696.9 million in just one year. Public-sector debt was even higher, at approximately $14.6965 billion.

So, when The Nassau Guardian reports “Govt adds $700m in debt,” this is not some opposition invention.

It is sitting in the government’s own numbers.

And here comes the delicious irony.

The same political administration that spent years telling Bahamians that the previous government had to be held accountable for borrowing during a national emergency now wants Bahamians to admire its fiscal discipline while almost $700 million is added to central-government debt in one year.

Apparently, debt is only dangerous when somebody else is borrowing it.

Welcome to PLP Mathematics

Remember the $75 million surplus?

The government projected a $75.5 million overall surplus for FY2025/26. But by the end of March 2026—the first nine months of that fiscal year—the country was carrying a $157.3 million fiscal deficit. The government nevertheless maintained that the full-year surplus could still be achieved.

And, for clarity, that $75.5 million was a projection, not a final audited result.

Meanwhile, the new FY2026/27 budget has moved the goalposts again, projecting a $223.1 million surplus.

One might therefore be forgiven for wondering whether Bahamian fiscal policy has become less about arithmetic and more about faith.

Perhaps the formula is:

Spend + borrow + transfer + refinance = surplus.

And if the numbers don’t quite cooperate?

No problem.

Just move the decimal point, add a forecast, invoke economic growth and ask everyone to remain confident.

It is a rather remarkable system.

And Then There Is Beaches and Parks

Which brings us to the Bahamas Public Parks and Beaches Authority.

This is where the government’s fiscal-management story becomes particularly difficult to explain.

The authority had an approved budget of $29 million for the entire 2025/26 fiscal year.

By December 31, 2025, it had already spent $25.18 million.

In other words, after only six months, it had consumed approximately 87 percent of its entire annual allocation.

That should have set off every fiscal alarm bell in the Ministry of Finance.

Instead, the Treasury subsequently advanced another $18.7 million in loans to the authority between January and June 2026—$8.4 million in the third quarter and another $10.3 million in the fourth.

So let us understand this.

An authority receives a $29 million annual budget.

It spends $25.18 million in six months.

It then requires another $18.7 million in government loans.

And we are expected to believe that this is somehow compatible with a government boasting about fiscal discipline?

No, not again.

Where Is the Accountability?

The problem is not simply that Beaches and Parks spends money.

Government agencies are supposed to spend money.

The problem is that Bahamians deserve to know why the spending repeatedly exceeds expectations, where the money is going, what was delivered for it and who is being held responsible when budgets are blown.

Reporting by The Tribune in April noted that the authority had spent more than $141 million through December 2025, while audit reports that had been promised had not been publicly released.

That is the part that should concern taxpayers.

Because a government cannot demand more taxes from the Bahamian people in the name of fiscal responsibility while simultaneously treating budget overruns as though they are merely suggestions.

If an authority repeatedly exceeds its allocation, the answer should not automatically be:

“Here is another cheque.”

The answer should be:

“Show us the books.”

The Slush-Fund Question

And this is where the political hypocrisy becomes almost theatrical.

When Davis was in opposition, he lectured the FNM about spending, debt, accountability and the need to demonstrate a return on borrowed money.

In 2023, as Prime Minister, Davis himself declared that debt incurred by government should have a “sufficient return on investment” and criticized the previous administration for borrowing without enough to show for it.

Excellent principle.

But principles become rather less impressive when they are applied only to the opposition.

If $18.7 million more has to be borrowed for Beaches and Parks, the public deserves a simple explanation:

What exactly are Bahamians receiving for that $18.7 million?

And more importantly:

How does an authority with limited revenue-generating capacity repay the loans?

Those aren’t political questions.

They are accounting questions.

Tax Us, By All Means — But Show Us the Receipt

The government has now introduced new mechanisms intended to improve tax administration and collection.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

As the old saying goes, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

But there is another principle that governments sometimes conveniently forget:

Caesar should be able to explain what he did with the money.

You cannot continually tell Bahamians that they must pay more, comply more, register more and contribute more while government entities appear unable to control expenditure.

The public should not be expected to live by austerity while government agencies operate on the philosophy of:

“Don’t worry, Treasury will find it.”

And perhaps that is the real difference between the FNM debt argument of yesterday and the PLP debt argument of today.

When Minnis borrowed during Dorian and COVID, Davis demanded to know:

Where did the money go?

Today, Bahamians are entitled to ask Davis the same question.

Only now the question comes with a rather inconvenient sequel:

Where is the money going—and why are we borrowing more of it?

Because if the Bahamas can supposedly have a surplus while adding nearly $700 million to central-government debt in a single year, perhaps the real national shortage isn’t money.

Perhaps it is accountability.

And when Beaches and Parks can burn through almost an entire year’s budget in six months and then receive another $18.7 million in loans, perhaps the country doesn’t have a revenue problem after all.

Perhaps it has a “don’t ask too many questions” problem.

But Bahamians are asking.

And they should keep asking.

Because the government’s money isn’t government money.

It is the people’s money.

And unlike a Rolex, Cartier, Tiffany, Louis Vuitton or UGG purchase, taxpayers don’t get to return it when the receipt doesn’t add up.

The PLP once demanded answers about the debt.

Now it is the PLP that owes the country some.

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas deserves better.

END

The July 22 Nassau Guardian report describing the Bahamian economy as being on a stable growth path should not be treated as proof that every sector of the economy is functioning efficiently. In fact, developments immediately afterward expose a significant vulnerability: an economy cannot sustainably grow if one of its most basic productive inputs—reliable electricity—remains unreliable.

What the evidence shows

The IMF projected real GDP growth of about 2.2% for 2026, following estimated growth of 2.8% in 2025. It also specifically identified electricity-sector reform as important to sustaining growth and improving the cost and reliability of power.

Then, within days of the July 22 economic-growth story, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce warned that businesses across New Providence and the Family Islands were suffering financial losses from persistent outages. Restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies, manufacturers, retailers and service providers reported closures, lost sales, payment-system failures and spoiled inventory.

That matters economically for several reasons:

1. Lost electricity becomes lost GDP.
When a restaurant closes for several hours, it doesn’t simply lose electricity—it loses meals sold, wages paid during productive hours, sales tax generated and income that would otherwise circulate through the economy.

2. Businesses incur costs even when they remain open.
Generators require fuel and maintenance. Employees may have to be paid overtime to recover work delayed during outages. Refrigerated businesses face spoiled inventory. The Chamber has specifically reported these consequences.

3. Productivity falls.
A business that should complete 100 units of work but can only complete 70 because of repeated interruptions has experienced an effective reduction in productive capacity. The problem becomes particularly serious for manufacturing, technology, professional services and businesses dependent upon electronic payment and communications systems.

4. Tourism becomes vulnerable.
The Bahamas’ economic growth is heavily dependent upon tourism. An unreliable electricity system raises operating costs for hotels, restaurants, attractions and other tourism businesses. The IMF has already identified electricity costs and reliability as important factors affecting investment and competitiveness.

5. Investment decisions are affected.
This is perhaps the most important long-term issue. Central Bank Governor John Rolle cautioned in July that it was premature to conclude that the summer outages had already materially reduced overall economic growth. But he also acknowledged that the cost of energy is a factor in investment decisions and competitiveness.

That distinction is crucial.

It is entirely possible for the Central Bank to say, “We don’t yet have evidence that the outages have materially reduced GDP,” while simultaneously acknowledging that unreliable and expensive electricity is damaging the country’s investment environment.

The warning from the IMF is particularly significant

The IMF’s own research provides some historical context. It found that more than 80% of Bahamian firms experienced power outages in 2019/20, compared with 67% across the Caribbean. Those outages occurred about three times a month and were associated with an estimated 2.5% loss of annual sales for affected firms.

So, the economic question isn’t simply:

“Did the July/August 2026 outages reduce GDP?”

The more important question is:

“How much economic growth is The Bahamas failing to achieve because businesses cannot depend on the electricity system?”

Those are two very different questions.

The July 22 headline versus the August reality

This is where the political and economic contradiction becomes interesting.

On July 22, the story was essentially: the economy is on a stable growth path.

By July 28, the Chamber was reporting businesses closing, customers being turned away and inventory being spoiled because of power outages.

By July 31, the Central Bank was saying it was too early to quantify the impact of the outages on overall economic growth.

And by August, BPL was still issuing updates concerning extended outages affecting areas and islands around the country.

That creates an important analytical point:

The absence of measured GDP damage is not the same thing as the absence of economic damage.

GDP statistics are backward-looking and aggregate. A small business owner who loses $5,000 in spoiled inventory, a restaurant that closes for an afternoon, or a contractor who loses a day’s productivity may feel the economic impact immediately—even though the national GDP statistics may not yet capture it.

The bigger problem: confidence

There is also a less visible economic cost.

Businesses make investment decisions based partly on whether they can predict their operating environment. If an investor has to ask:

• Can I operate eight hours a day reliably?
• Do I need to purchase a generator?
• How much fuel will I have to keep on hand?
• What happens to refrigerated inventory?
• Can my customers pay electronically during an outage?
• Will my employees be productive?
• Will outages affect hotel guests and tourism customers?

then electricity becomes more than an operating expense.

It becomes an investment-risk calculation.

That is precisely why the IMF has described electricity reliability and cost as a constraint on private-sector growth.

The uncomfortable conclusion

The July 22 “stable growth” narrative may be economically defensible at the macro level, particularly because tourism, construction and major investment projects continue to support the economy.

But it would be misleading to interpret that headline as evidence that the underlying economy is without serious structural problems.

The IMF’s 2026 projection is only 2.2% real GDP growth, and the IMF expects growth to moderate toward roughly 1½% over the medium term.

Against that relatively modest growth trajectory, persistent electricity disruptions are particularly dangerous.

If businesses are losing operating hours, inventory, productivity and sales, then the country isn’t merely experiencing an inconvenience.

It is potentially destroying some of the very economic activity it is trying to grow.

And that raises the most important question for the Davis administration:

If the economy was supposedly on a stable growth path on July 22, how stable can that growth really be when businesses cannot depend on the electricity required to produce, sell, communicate, preserve inventory and serve customers?

The government’s economic scorecard cannot simply measure how much GDP grew.

It should also ask how much growth was lost because the infrastructure necessary to produce that GDP failed.

That is the real economic test of the electricity crisis.

The Bahamas deserves so much better.

END

“I laid out what I perceive to be the issues, and they will be dealt with” – Prime Minister Davis regarding the energy crisis that The Bahamas is currently experiencing.

I find this statement very troubling because then one must question if the prime minister is addressing the truth or the truth as he perceives it?  This differentiation could be a problem.

That word matters.

Because there is a difference between describing what you perceive to be the problem and acknowledging what citizens are actually experiencing.

Bahamians do not have to perceive a blackout.

They know when the lights go off.

They know when the food in the refrigerator spoils.

They know when a business cannot operate.

They know when elderly people, children and vulnerable residents are left without air conditioning in extreme heat.

They know when generators become necessities rather than conveniences.

And they certainly know when the electricity disappears while the government is telling them that the system is being transformed.

With this statement, Prime Minister Davis seems to be telling the country that he does not see things as being as bad as the people experiencing them claim that they are because he apparently perceives the blackouts as a minor setback to the citizens that actually suffer through the, each and every day.

The country has been dealing with repeated outages across New Providence and the Family Islands. In June, Energy Minister JoBeth Coleby-Davis acknowledged that officials had underestimated the severity of the outages. Earlier that month, she had maintained that BPL had sufficient generation capacity for the summer.

And then came more outages.

By August, Grand Cay residents had endured prolonged interruptions, while other islands and communities continued experiencing unreliable electricity. The crisis became serious enough for the Prime Minister to address the nation on August 17.

The lack of empathy by the prime minister in light of all of this was totally unacceptable.

And, in a moment of almost perfect political symbolism, some residents were actually experiencing another outage while the Prime Minister was explaining the country’s electricity crisis.

You really couldn’t script it.

The lights were out.

The Prime Minister was talking about why the lights were out.

One would have figured that after the power went off seconds into the national address by Prime Minister Davis, that he would be more empathic toward the citizens of The Bahamas that elected him to his second consecutive term, but this does not seem to be the case.

“PM on BPL Crisis ‘The buck stops here’” – The Tribune

Excerpt from this article; “PRIME Minister Philip “Brave” Davis yesterday defended Energy Minister JoBeth Coleby-Davis amid questions over her relative silence amid ongoing controversy at Bahamas Power and Light (BPL), declaring that “the bucks stops here”.

Mr Davis made the comments after touring schools with Education minister Chester Cooper, where he was questioned about the fallout from BPL’s allegations of overtime abuse, its unions’ work to rule mandate, and the silence of the minister responsible for the electricity provider.

Mr Davis said: “The buck stops here, and that’s the answer you’ll give to those who are concerned about whether she is quiet or not.”

The prime minister also declined to comment on whether members of BPL’s management would be held responsible for the alleged abuse of overtime hours.

But he said he was not concerned about the work-to-rule action.

“I gave a national address on the subject matter. I laid out what I perceive to be the issues and they’ll be dealt with,” the prime minister.

So, now we have Prime Minister Davis telling us that “THE BUCK STOPS HERE” [with him], and it is a good thing that he finally realizes this but the question is exactly what does he perceive it to be and why when questioned about the state of the power crisis here then refuse to answer any questions?

Is it time for him to actually begin to show true leadership and do what it actually takes no matter the fall out or does he perceive this to be what he counted on to get elected and then re-elected – “likeability”?

Right now, only time will tell but how but more must the citizens of The Bahamas suffer while he shows us exactly what this means?

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas deserves better.

END

There are few things quite as entertaining in our Bahamian politics as Fred Mitchell lecturing the country about the evils of the Free National Movement (FNM) while standing on a piece of political history that the FNM itself helped create.

Today, August 19, Fred Mitchell would apparently like right-thinking Bahamians to regard the election of the FNM government in 1992 as some sort of “National Day of Infamy”.

That is quite a performance.

Especially from a man who, although never an FNM member, entered Parliament in 1992 because FNM Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham appointed him to an independent Senate seat. Mitchell served in the Senate from 1992 until 1996/97 before eventually joining the PLP and winning election to the House.

So here we are, three decades later, watching the Chairman of the PLP attempting to turn August 19 into something resembling a national crime scene.

Apparently the FNM’s greatest historical offence is that it won.

And apparently Mr. Mitchell’s first parliamentary appointment is to be treated as an unfortunate clerical error because without it he would probably still outside of parliament burning constitutions.

Mitchell describes the FNM’s 1992 victory as a day that “lives in infamy.”

One almost expects the next sentence to begin:

“Previously, on Days of Our Political Lives…”

But before we allow the Chairman to rewrite the history books, perhaps we should read a few of the pages he would rather have us skip.

Yes, the FNM changed the direction of the country in 1992.

Yes, reasonable Bahamians can debate the merits and consequences of individual FNM policies.

Yes, the International Persons Landholding framework remains a legitimate subject for criticism and debate.

But here is the inconvenient part for Mr. Mitchell’s historical sermon:

The PLP has had ample time to change policies it believes were disastrous.

The FNM did not remain in office for the next thirty years.

The PLP has governed for substantial periods since 1992, including the present administration.

So, if the land policy is responsible for today’s problems, the obvious question is not merely:

“Why did Ingraham do it?”

It is:

“Why hasn’t the PLP fixed it?”

At some point, blaming a government from the last century becomes less an explanation and more a substitute for governing.

Then comes BTC.

Mitchell presents the privatization of BTC as though Hubert Ingraham wandered into the Cabinet one morning, spotted the national telephone company and announced:

“Let’s sell that.”

History is slightly less theatrical.

The Ingraham government completed the privatization of BTC in April 2011, selling 51% to Cable & Wireless for US$210 million.

And, rather inconveniently for today’s political mythology, the government’s stated plan included offering shares to Bahamians so that the public could participate in ownership. Ingraham told Parliament that the government intended to sell approximately 9% of the shares to the Bahamian public.

That does not mean everyone must agree with the BTC sale.

It does mean that honest political debate requires something more than selecting the portions of history that fit neatly into a press statement.

And there is another little historical wrinkle.

The privatization process did not originate in a political vacuum. Ingraham said the government had concluded that privatization and liberalization were necessary to improve telecommunications, after years of considering different arrangements.

So, by all means criticize the transaction.

But criticize it with the facts.

Mitchell also invokes the destruction of Bahamian agriculture.

Fair enough.

Agriculture deserves serious discussion.

But if the PLP wants to present itself as the permanent guardian of Bahamian farmers, perhaps the public is entitled to ask a wonderfully simple question:

After all these years, where is the agricultural revolution?

Where is the dramatic reduction in the nation’s dependence on imported food?

Where is the corresponding reduction in grocery prices?

Where is the transformation that ordinary Bahamians can actually see when they walk into a supermarket?

BAMSI can be discussed.

Government expenditure can be discussed.

Programs can be discussed.

But eventually the conversation has to leave the conference room and arrive at the grocery counter.

Because the Bahamian consumer doesn’t eat press releases.

And then we arrive at the port.

According to Mitchell’s argument, the FNM’s legacy includes handing the country’s principal seaport over to a handful of families and contributing to monopoly pricing.

Yet when the cruise industry generates record or increased passenger numbers, governments are perfectly happy to celebrate the economic benefits.

One begins to wonder whether the port is a national disaster or an economic triumph depending upon which microphone is switched on.

Perhaps it can be both.

But again, political honesty requires acknowledging the complexity rather than converting history into a morality play with the FNM permanently cast as the villain.

The really delicious irony in Mitchell’s speech is that he wants Bahamians to believe that August 19, 1992, should be remembered principally as the beginning of everything that is wrong with The Bahamas.

Except that August 19, 1992, was also the beginning of Fred Mitchell’s parliamentary career.

That is not an opinion.

That is history.

The FNM won.

Hubert Ingraham became Prime Minister.

And Fred Mitchell received an independent Senate appointment from the government he now describes with such extraordinary contempt.

Politics can produce some remarkable transformations.

Apparently one of them is the ability to receive a parliamentary appointment from a government and, three decades later, describe the election that produced that government as a day that “lives in infamy.”

That is some Olympic-level political gymnastics.

Mr. Mitchell concludes:

“Let the FNM rest in peace. Amen.”

But that may be the one part of his speech that requires correction.

The FNM is not dead.

It is a political party.

It has won elections.

It has lost elections.

It has made mistakes.

It has accomplished things.

It has been criticized.

It has been praised.

And, most importantly, it remains part of Bahamian democratic history.

August 19, 1992, cannot be erased because Fred Mitchell finds the anniversary inconvenient.

The FNM’s victory ended 25 consecutive years of PLP government under Lynden Pindling. That fact alone makes the date historically significant.

One does not have to support the FNM to acknowledge that.

And one certainly does not have to pretend that everything the FNM did was perfect.

But neither should we allow politicians to turn their version of history into a political weapon by demanding that the public forget the inconvenient parts.

So perhaps, before Fred Mitchell asks Bahamians to remember August 19 as a day of infamy, he might take a moment to remember something else:

The FNM government he now wants the country to despise was the same government that opened the door to his first seat in Parliament.

That little historical footnote doesn’t quite fit the sermon.

But then again, inconvenient facts rarely do.

And if the Chairman wants to bury August 19, he might want to be careful about digging the grave too deep.

He may discover that his own political biography is buried in there with it.

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas deserves better.

END

My Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

How exquisitely appropriate.

There you were last night, addressing the nation about the darkness enveloping The Bahamas — explaining, reassuring, diagnosing, promising.

And, almost as if the electrical grid itself had developed a rather refined sense of political irony, a large portion of New Providence was plunged into darkness as you began speaking.

One almost hates to interrupt such a perfectly staged moment.

But let us examine your explanation, shall we?

You told Bahamians that the electrical system you inherited was effectively “on life support.” You described ageing infrastructure, failed equipment, decades of temporary fixes and a system that was never properly modernised. You said more than 60 percent of New Providence’s generation equipment needed replacement when your administration took office, with the figure even higher in the Family Islands.

Quite a dreadful condition, pure doom and gloom.

One question, however, keeps scratching at the door:

Who, exactly, was supposed to have noticed?

Because, Mr. Prime Minister, this is where your little tale becomes rather interesting.

You were not some unsuspecting gentlemen who wandered into the Ministry of Works one morning and discovered, to his horror, that BEC had been neglected.

From 2012 to 2017, you were Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Works and Urban Development, with responsibility that included BEC and the country’s physical infrastructure.

And it was your own Christie administration, under your ministerial responsibility, that formally confronted the miserable state of BEC.

In 2015, you announced PowerSecure as the preferred bidder to manage the corporation. In 2016, under your watch as Minister of Works, the government entered into a five-year management agreement giving PowerSecure responsibility for generation, transmission and distribution.

Indeed, your own government’s presentation of the problem was remarkably familiar.

BEC, you said at the time, was unsustainable, debt-ridden and suffering from inadequate generation assets. The government identified the need for at least $450 million in capital investment over five years to address the problems confronting the system.

So, forgive the question, Prime Minister:

When did the infrastructure become old?

Was it sometime after you left the Ministry of Works in 2017?

Or was it already old when you were sitting in the ministerial chair?

And if it was already sufficiently decrepit in 2016 to require hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, why are we sitting here in August 2026 listening to essentially the same diagnosis?

Perhaps the infrastructure did not age.

Perhaps the explanation did.

Because now, after five years as Prime Minister, we are being invited to contemplate the fascinating proposition that the principal problem confronting your government is the condition of a system that you have known about for years.

You became Prime Minister in September 2021.

You were subsequently returned to office in May 2026 for a second consecutive term.

That means the word “inherited” has now had rather a long life in your administration.

Five years.

Then another mandate.

And yet the electrical system is still being presented to the Bahamian people as though it were a recently discovered crime scene.

My dear Prime Minister, you have had five years to investigate the body.

You have had another five-year mandate to repair the morgue.

At some point, one must stop asking who killed the patient and start asking who has been holding the clipboard.

The Overtime Mystery

Now, to be fair, you raised a legitimate issue last night.

The Tribune reports that BPL spent approximately $20 million on overtime last year. Three employees in the Fuel and Performance Department reportedly received a combined $601,295.16 in overtime between May 2025 and April 2026. One employee’s records reportedly showed 18 hours claimed on Christmas Day followed by 24 hours on each of the next three days — 90 hours over four days.

You quite properly called that a management and oversight problem.

Quite right.

But management and oversight, Mr. Prime Minister, have a rather nasty habit of eventually finding their way upstairs.

If there has been a failure of management, controls and oversight “across administrations,” as you said, then perhaps the country is entitled to ask:

When does “across administrations” become “this administration”?

Because those three employees did not apparently collect that $601,295 in 2016.

They collected it between May 2025 and April 2026.

That is your administration.

The policy you are now defending is your government’s policy.

The management structure is operating under your government.

And the company was spending the money while you were Prime Minister.

So yes, investigate the overtime.

But please don’t mistake investigation for absolution.

And Then There Is the Fuel

There is another little detail history has inconveniently preserved.

When your administration came to office in 2021, BPL’s fuel-hedging programme was already producing significant savings.

An October 2021 letter from then-BPL CEO Whitney Heastie to Works Minister Alfred Sears said the programme had produced approximately $30 million in fuel-cost savings through September 2021, with estimated savings of $55 million by January 2022.

The subsequent argument over whether the Davis administration received and acted upon specific advice regarding additional hedging trades remains politically contested.

So, I would not present the matter as the simple fairy tale that “Davis cancelled the hedge and therefore electricity bills exploded.”

That would be too convenient.

But this much is beyond dispute:

Your government inherited a fuel-hedging mechanism designed to stabilise costs, and your government subsequently had to confront rapidly rising electricity charges.

That deserves examination.

Especially because governments cannot simultaneously claim credit for everything that works and blame everybody else for everything that doesn’t.

That is not governance.

That is accounting by séance.

What Went Wrong?

You told Bahamians last night that you could have simply rented another engine and patched another cable — as governments had allegedly done for decades.

But, Mr. Prime Minister, you were one of the people who occupied the room when those decisions were being made.

Your government in 2016 understood the system needed massive investment.

Your government established PowerSecure to manage the utility.

The succeeding FNM administration ended that management agreement in 2017.

Then you returned as Prime Minister in 2021.

Five years later, you are telling us that the system is still old, still fragile, still requiring massive investment, still dependent upon temporary generation and still vulnerable to catastrophic outages.

And now you tell us:

“I am not here to manage this. I am here to fix it.”

Beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful.

Except, Mr. Prime Minister, that was the job description five years ago.

The Curious Case of Responsibility

You also said something else rather revealing.

You said:

“The responsibility to act is ours.”

There we agree.

Entirely.

It is yours.

It has been yours.

And, before that, you personally had direct ministerial responsibility for BEC.

That is precisely why the constant invocation of the word “inherited” is becoming less persuasive with every passing blackout.

A government can inherit a problem.

It cannot reasonably inherit the same problem for five years, repeatedly diagnose it, announce reforms, make promises, spend money, change ministers, create companies, launch initiatives and then return to the electorate saying:

“Look what we inherited.”

At some point, Prime Minister, the inheritance becomes an estate you have been administering.

And the beneficiaries are beginning to wonder where the money went.

And What of Minister Coleby-Davis?

Which brings us, rather delicately, to the question of the Minister responsible for Energy.

JoBeth Coleby-Davis has been one of the public faces of the government’s energy agenda. Yet last night’s address had the unmistakable character of a Prime Minister stepping directly into the centre of a crisis that has become too large to leave at ministerial level.

That raises an uncomfortable question.

Is the Prime Minister merely taking charge during an extraordinary national emergency?

Or has the BPL crisis become so politically radioactive that the Prime Minister now has to personally explain what the responsible ministry has been unable to explain convincingly?

Either way, the optics are not particularly comforting.

Because if the minister has the authority, why must the Prime Minister rescue the portfolio?

And if the Prime Minister must rescue the portfolio, why have we been paying for the portfolio?

One begins to suspect that somewhere inside the machinery of government there is a very lonely switch marked:

“ACCOUNTABILITY.”

Perhaps someone should turn it on.

Assuming, of course, BPL permits it.

The Final Question

Mr. Prime Minister, nobody seriously expects you to manufacture electricity with a wave of your hand.

Nobody expects you to prevent every mechanical failure.

Nobody expects an ageing utility to become modern overnight.

And nobody should pretend that the FNM bears no responsibility for the decisions it made while in office.

But political accountability has a rather simple principle:

You inherit circumstances. You own decisions.

And after five years in government — followed by a successful campaign for another five years — your administration cannot forever occupy the comfortable territory between “we inherited it” and “give us credit for fixing it.”

You cannot have both.

If the infrastructure was already in crisis when you arrived, tell us precisely what your government did about it.

If you spent five years rebuilding it, show us the results.

If you say the system is finally being transformed, show us the contracts, the timelines, the expenditure, the milestones and the measurable improvements.

And if there were failures in management, controls and oversight under your government, investigate them without using the word “inherited” as a diplomatic fog machine.

Because last night, while you were telling Bahamians that you were going to bring light to the darkness, the lights went out.

Some might call that coincidence.

Others might call it irony.

And somewhere, I suspect, the electrical grid itself was quietly smiling.

Yours rather darkly,

My Morning Paper

P.S. Prime Minister, when you said “What we inherited is not what we will leave behind,” the country heard the promise. After five years, however, Bahamians are entitled to ask whether the next inheritance will be another explanation — or finally an electrical system that works.

The Bahamian people deserve better.

END