Towards The Future:
Bahama Journal Editorial -
Nassau, Bahamas:

Despite the views of some who are today saying that the Bahamian electorate is polarized and divided, this is somewhat misleading.

Contrariwise we are convinced that those Bahamians who did in fact vote were - for the most part - united in their desire to send a clear message to some old-style seniors.

As we see it, that message was to the effect that while Bahamians in their majority did want some change, they remained fairly conservative with most of them clustering around the political center.

While tens of thousands of Bahamians did in fairly even numbers vote for either the Progressive Liberal Party or the Free National Movement, there is little room for the one to despair or for the other to gloat.

Both have work to do if either expects to gain the overwhelming support of the Bahamian electorate.

And for sure, the recent vote confirms us in our considered notion and conclusion concerning the extent to which Bahamians are averse to large scale change, and that there is every indication that they move forward by inches rather than by feet and yards.

So it is that at this juncture we reiterate a point previously made in this space. That view indicates that the Bahamian people - like people elsewhere in the region and world - want to know that the schools work: that the hospitals provide good health care; that they have sufficient food; access to proper housing; that they are protected; and that they are allowed space in which to live out their allotted days in dignity; and for sure, that the courts dispense justice as opposed to delay piled upon delay.

We might also note that when they become ‘sick and tired’ of this or that person’s antics, they are sent packing. In this regard we would argue that those hugely successful crowds that cheered on both the Free National Movement and the Progressive Liberal Party were very much so like two peas in a pod.

Under girding this electoral process was what seemed to be a concerted effort on the part of both major political parties for the both of them to seem so much like each other.

And so they did.

Both parties would have been well advised to get their members not to panic.

Now that the elections are over, very many Bahamians are waking to the fact that the Rt. Hon. Hubert Alexander Ingraham is back.

As they take stock of this "new" force on the Bahamian political landscape some of these Bahamians are not only ecstatic about the hand that fate has dealt them, but are today effusive in their praise for Ingraham.

In one or two isolated instances, we have come across people who would like to depict this man as some kind of ‘political messiah.’

Interestingly enough, Prime Minister Ingraham has gone to some pains to say to his supporters that they should not all expect posts at the Cabinet level, that due to the fact that there just is not enough of these kinds of goods to be doled out to this or that one.

Quite evidently, the new leader must at all times be mindful of the fact that while he has won a mandate, his margin for manoever is constrained by an opposition that will be obliged to fight back if it wishes to live to fight another day.

And fight it should.

Indeed we are of the view that this stint in the political wilderness might provide the Progressive Liberal Party a sterling opportunity to so get its act together that it might once again gain the trust of that politically astute segment of the political market that always makes the decisive difference.

Things are such in today’s Bahamas that the current regime would do well to take its time, orient itself and then get on with the people’s business.

That business involves far more deliberate attention than most would at first blush imagine.

That is so because social progress has to be put on the political agenda in the same way that economic progress via this or that investment is usually put.

In the absence of such deliberate initiatives, much is left to chance.

This is not good enough.

The nation’s social health is as vitally important as economic growth and development. Indeed we wonder and ask albeit rhetorically whether economic growth and so-called development can ever mean anything real if they are not accompanied by requisite social progress.

Put otherwise, political success is guaranteed to any and all who keep faith with the rightful aspirations of the vast majority of the Bahamian people.

8 May 2007