By Malcolm J Strachan

THE 2017 political season is upon us, and this will be an election to determine the future of this great country.

Both major political parties have squared up and put forward their slate of candidates. The PLP is littered with old faces, and even more baggage. The FNM has removed almost every candidate that ran before, and filled its team with many first-timers.

The DNA, for its part, is still struggling to fill its slate with the election now only a few months away.

Candidates should be in the field by now, walking door to door, meeting their prospective constituents and laying out their goals and objectives for the next five years. To handicap your candidates like this, at this late stage in the game, is simply unacceptable. It speaks to a larger issue of preparedness, and the risk involved with third parties that just can’t seem to get over the hurdle.

So there we are. Less than two months out, and the two political giants are out and running for all the marbles, as the DNA hobbles along.

The FNM so far, has been running a more tempered campaign, urging their supporters to vote them in promising change, and the opportunity to “save” the country from the PLP.

The PLP on the other hand, without any viable achievement on which to run, is warning the public that a vote for the FNM is a vote to “turn back.” Turn back to what, you may ask? Fiscal prudence? Accountability? Transparence? Respect for the public? Surely all those things are good, are they not? So what is the PLP warning about with their “we can’t turn back now” strategy?

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 30 odd years, let us tell you to which they are referring; slavery. Black oppression. Yip, the white boogieman over yonder, that is what the PLP is doing in 2017. That is the kind of strategy at play in a modern “stronger Bahamas” as they so often would say.

It is a tired and worn playbook of the PLP, but in an election where you can’t talk about what you’ve done, you might as well create a boogieman to scare and frighten the natives, right?

It is insulting, and a disgrace that this is the type of PLP we are seeing all over again.

Perry Christie, when he was booted out of office in 2007, promised the Bahamian people that he would learn from his mistakes. He took five years of introspection and Lord knows how much money to produce a report on exactly why his party was not given a second term in office.

The report, prepared by Greenberg Quinlan and Rosner, a large US media firm, was detailed and direct. Perry Christie was the reason why the PLP lost. Voters had lost faith in him, and his ability to lead them. They felt that Christie was unable to control his Cabinet, with his ministers landing in scandal after scandal, causing great shame and embarrassment on the nation. He had to be taught a lesson, and so defeat was the medicine they prescribed.

It should be noted for the public record that this same firm, Greenberg, which proudly lists the victory of the PLP in 2012 as one of their accomplishments is back in the picture today for the party. While the firm’s website lists the prime minister personally as its client, we would be interested to see who exactly is paying them to provide their disgraceful public relations strategy to the governing party.

Bahamians throughout the length and breadth of this country should be offended at what the government is doing in this election cycle with their advertisements and strategy. We could only hope that these firms are not responsible for the flood of adverts, memes, and gifs being shared around on social media that depict any anti-PLP voice as a “house slave.” To those of us who know our history, this type of racial baiting is beneath the standard that all parties should carry themselves in this day.

Likewise, the distasteful use of government run programmes being used as PLP achievements must be stopped.

Our loyal readers would recall that in September of 2016 we ran an Insight questioning how many PR firms does it take to spin a lie. In that article we outlined how another PR firm, Fleishman Hillard, the third largest in the world, had also been contracted by the government. It would be interesting to see when a new government comes to office what these firms were billing the government of the Bahamas to spin their propaganda and work on the PLP’s reelection campaign. To use the public funds in such a way is not only disgraceful and unethical, but a breach of the public’s trust. An FNM or DNA government should explore every avenue to recoup these funds if they are found to have been paid from the public purse. If the funds cannot be retrieved, the PLP should be made to pay them back to the Treasury, plus interest!

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