EDITOR, The Tribune.

I always find the proposition intriguing when commentators or columnists anticipate the likely death of the Bahamian two-party establishment as a third party seemingly gains ground. Nicole Burrows is the most recent columnist to raise this spectre as she foresees the political dynamic shifting steadily in the Democratic National Alliance’s favour.

Yet the two-party political dominance rarely, if ever, dies, and surely not in countries where it has become entrenched.

This third partyism is not a uniquely Bahamian phenomenon, as many countries in the Caribbean, with a political culture similar to the Bahamas, have been witnesses to the rise of third parties, only to see them disappoint on ballot box performance.

The pattern operates as if scripted. An economic crisis feeds rhetorical support for a third party, as well as the perception that the two established parties are failing to deliver viable solutions to long standing problems.

Then on polling day, the fortunes of the third party surprisingly goes bust. On those rare occasions when a third party makes a mark in the seat distribution sweepstakes, its success is marginal unless it forges an alliance with one of the two major parties. This body of experience clearly provide lessons for which the DNA cannot be unmindful.

While the prospect of a third party promised land is conceivable, it has no reasonable basis, unless we address the Bahamian story in isolation, divorced from its shared history with other English-speaking Caribbean countries.

Our analysis of political and social issues is always weakened when we fail to take account of parallel situations elsewhere.

Electorates in the Caribbean over the years have never been predisposed for radical turn, at least not in terms of concrete action and not to my knowledge.

I would venture that the future of the Bahamas is more reliant on new and transformational leadership emerging in the two established parties than the messianic rise of a third party that pushes the so-called over-age dinosaurs onto the wayside and forever gone.

WESLEY HICKEN

Nassau,

May 10, 2015.