By Neil Hartnell

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The deputy prime minister yesterday signalled a major shift in Bahamian culture by warning that the system of politically-based favours and patronage must come to an end.

KP Turnquest, unveiling the 2019-2020 budget in the House of Assembly, emphasised the Minnis administration’s determination to “break the cycle of dependence on government” by empowering Bahamians to take control of their own lives and destinies.

Describing the government’s economic and fiscal strategies as “a break from the past”, he said the 60-year practice of governments abusing taxpayer funds to award contracts to friends, family, lovers, cronies, constituents and political supporters “is not a formula for success and sustainability” and has to end.

Mr Turnquest also urged Bahamians to break with “conventional thinking” when it came to reliance on government and politicians to provide for their every need. He called for an end to the notion that problems are solved simply by throwing more money at them, or that the government will be able to address The Bahamas’ multi-billion “infrastructure deficit” by itself.

Highlighting the Small Business Development Centre’s (SBDC) creation as a key element in the Government’s business empowerment strategy, Mr Turnquest said its processes and structure had been deliberately designed to remove any possibility for political interference and favours.

Besides boosting job creation and economic growth, the deputy prime minister added of the SBDC’s purpose: “Central to our economic philosophy is breaking the cycle of dependence on Government, which requires us to empower our citizens and facilitate growth and expansion, particularly in the small business sector.....”

He added that the 13 entrepreneurs who have successfully accessed financing to-date went through the SBDC’s “rigorous” scrutiny of their business plans, “and no politician had any say or hand in the outcomes”.

“I’m proud of that,” Mr Turnquest said. “No politician, none, had any hand in the training, approval and funding of these businesses. This is exactly what was intended in setting up this programme, and I’m so happy to see this coming to fruition and benefiting all Bahamians.

“The system was designed to be independent and merit-based to remove any need or opportunity for these entrepreneurs to knock on a politician’s door. Their only qualification is that they were Bahamian, and that is how it will continue to be.

“No Bahamian need come to a politician to get a fair shake in their own country,” he continued. “The systems we put in place should work for the Bahamian people, and the SBDC is a clear example of this principle operating in practice.

“We do not care if a person is PLP, DNA, FNM or has no party affiliation. We care about citizen empowerment, particularly as it relates to supporting entrepreneurs and facilitating an expansion of jobs and economic growth.”

Mr Turnquest added that the Government’s drive to reform the “ease of doing business” in The Bahamas is also intended to improve governance and transparency in the private sector’s interaction with the public sector by removing political meddling from the process. 

“Bahamians have wasted too much time and money being reliant on the good favour of a politician or public official to get simple things done,” he blasted in a Budget presentation that contained multiple signals of an ambition to transform Bahamian governance and bring it into the 21st century.

Reiterating such themes at the end of his Budget presentation, Mr Turnquest said the awarding of contracts to party supporters of whoever holds office “is not a formula for success and sustainability”.

“We’re about creating the empowered and independent Bahamian who never again will have to beg favours from a politician to get their rightful opportunity to benefit themselves,” he added.

Achieving this will not be easy, as the Minnis administration is battling a deeply-entrenched culture that took root and flourished under, first, the United Bahamian Party (UBP), and then the Pindling administration.

Supporters of both major political parties have grown accustomed to receiving public contracts and other taxpayer largesse when their favourites hold the Government, but Mr Turnquest yesterday suggested that what may have passed for good governance in the 1960s to 1980s is not fit for purpose given the demands of the 21st century’s globalised, digitised economy.

Such a patronage culture undermines the concept of a meritocracy; results in poor taxpayer value for money and contributes to widening fiscal deficits and national debt; creates opportunities for corruption; and results in inefficiencies that threaten the overall competitiveness of the Bahamian economy and well-being of its people.

In a similar vein, Mr Turnquest also called on Bahamians to shed the belief that the Government will be able to take care of their every need. 

“We have to break out of the thinking that we need to spend more money to do more. To the contrary, we have an opportunity to spend the money we have more wisely and even deliver more benefits with increased efficiency and productivity,” he said during the Budget presentation.

The deputy prime minister said the same was required when it came to involving the private sector with public infrastructure projects through private-public partnerships (PPPs).

“This embrace of the PPP approach will require us to think about old challenges in new ways, and to foster a different kind of thinking about how public goods should be delivered,” Mr Turnquest charged.

““We must obviously ensure that we create scenarios where the private partner and the Bahamian public both benefit, but at the same time we cannot have a knee jerk negative reaction to anything that represents a departure from the old ways of doing things.

“We must ask: How can we create PPPs for constructing new roads and highways? Can there be a PPP for a school or hospital? Can private operators do car licensing or vehicle inspections? Can we use Bahamian entrepreneurs to deliver social services? Until we challenge our conventional thinking, we will not be able to unleash our full communal energies and talents to overcome our most daunting administrative and infrastructural challenges.”