Gibson got all that he was entitled to when he signed on to the FNM. No one other than the Prime Minister has an entitlement to a Cabinet seat. If and when Gibson distinguishes himself as a back bencher, maybe he will get a Cabinet appointment but until then his principal responsibility as an MP is to represent his constituents to the best of his ability and demonstrate to Dr Minnis why it might have been a mistake to have left him out of the Cabinet. Gibson has to show the world that he's a team player and not all about himself. He must remember that there is no "i" in team.

We have never had a coherent work permits policy that was tied to any long term objectives regarding the education, hiring and employment of Bahamians. The mantra during the times of Pindling's governments was "Bahamas for Bahamians" but whenever the banks, hotels, insurance companies and other businesses with offshore affiliations required "their" people in senior or specialist positions, they got the work permits they needed through either through genuine need, political clout or false advertising overstating the qualifications required for the job. However, nowhere in government policy, whether PLP or FNM, has there been a hard and fast rule that the permit is granted for a specified period of time (say 3, 5 or maximum 10 years) or a measurable requirement that both the employer and the permit holder mentor and upskill the permit holder's Bahamian understudies so that when the permit expired one or more of the understudies was sufficiently skilled and knowledgable to take over the position. One reason the British are getting out of the European Union is because of the free flow of labour and the perception that they are being unindated with Eastern Europeans who come for the jobs and other social benefits. One reason the Bahamas has never gone whole hog into caricom membership is because of the fear of being unindated with employees from West Indian countries who would take jobs away from Bahamians. If you check most job advertisements for skilled positions in the papers, the employer many times wants someone with specialised qualifications and years of experience, sometimes experience gained outside the Bahamas. The average college grad may have the paper qualifications but not the job related experience so they are excluded from applying before they have even begun. My recent advice to my son-in-law on graduating from college in Canada was to stay there and gain work experience because Bahamian employers now seem to want their skilled Bahamian workers to have some foreign job experience. The Bahamas does not do surveys to determine what types of jobs and qualifications are trending now and what types of jobs and qualifications are employers likely to require within the next 3-5-10 year cycle to assist with planning and training. So we stumble along doing things the same old way and making the same old promise of "Bahamas for Bahamians" but with no plan or information as to what types of skills should we be concentrating on. How many work permit holders do we have in the Bahamas, in what areas and what are their skills and expertise? To paraphrase someone else's question, do employers really need to import Costa Ricans and Chileans to be maids and housekeepers?

The divestment of state owned enterprises (SOEs) to private ownership cures one problem but also potentially creates others. The fascination for the new owners is profits and efficiency, often leading to costlier goods/services to cover profits and decreases in employees and benefits to employees to keep costs down. As one writer has noted above, poor management, poor business practices, lack of accountability and hiring of employees for political rather than business reasons has seriously hampered most if not all SOEs. Classic case in point is something as simple as the annual audit. All of these SOES are created by statute and require their governing legislation requires that each of them conduct (and publish) an annual audit. Last I checked, Water & Sewerage was about 5 years behind, ZNS/Broadcasting Corporation was about 8 years behind and had given up on some years, while other SOES say "where you put me"? The legislation governing the appointment of the board members of these SOEs and their management needs serious modernising. There is no need for any of them to have an Executive Chairperson; what expertise is this person bringing to the table that management does not already have available? And none of the board nor management are penalised for failures like not conducting annual audits although it is a breach of the governing legislation, much like the failure to submit annual public disclosure declarations. If we sell off these SOES we will need antitrust or fair trade legislation to protect consumers from unscrupulous companies. Whatever is done, the current subsidisation of many of these SOEs cannot continue without drastic changes in the way the Bahamas does business. Other areas in need of reconsideration are the way the salary increases of unionised employees (needs to be performance based rather than lump sum) and the pension system (defined benefits vs defined contribution).

Now that the government has changed, you and everyone else in the same situation need to write to the Prime Minister, Minister of Labour, Minister of Immigration, your local embassy or high commission in the Bahamas and anyone else with influence to bring this discriminatory and biased nonsense to an end. If all else fails, you might have to try find an attorney who will pursue the matter for you on a contingency fee basis. I am sure that if the shoe was on the other foot and it was a group of Bahamians who had worked in a foreign country but not been paid, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would have been pursuing it through official channels on their behalf.

When a party gets voted out of government, the good and the indifferent invariably get swept out with the bad. I will not miss any of these people. They were too caught up in covering up for one another without primary regard for the interests of the people who put them there. Fred and Allyson and Jerome and Brave telling us that anyone challenging news and statements emanating from the government was wrong, an idiot, didn't know what they were talking about, trying to undermine the government and on and on. But it was okay to give us half truths, slanted information, any and everything to make the government appear as if it could and was doing no wrong and everyone else has some grudge, is misinformed or just plain stupid. The final final straw for me was Jerome reading people's private emails from the floor of the house while trying to attribute them as destabilizing the government. When the Data Protection Commissioner pointed out that the only reason she could not take action against him was because it was done in Parliament, the PLPs answer was to fire her. When Jerome was fined by the Supreme Court for his actions regarding these emails, their answer was twofold, that the court had no jurisdiction over Parliament and then to conduct an investigation into the personal lives of the judge and her family. Those in the PLP who stood by and said or did nothing are as bad as the perpetrator.

For blaxploitation movie buffs who remember the famous line in the Superfly movie, "don't get high on your own supply". Perry got carried away with trying to create a political legacy for himself so that when the next version of the History of The Bahamas is written, people would speak of him and Bahamas Mar and NHI and Swift Justice in the same breath as when they talk of Sir Lynden Pindling and National Insurance, and Hubert Ingraham and freedom of the airwaves, expansion of the roads and improvement in the water supply, those sorts of things. Unfortunately, few if any of the things that he was so passionate about are likely to be attributed to him and I suspect that his legacy will be mentioned in muted tones due to an inability to find any. His leadership was plagued by indecision, inaction and corruption. Worse still to lose his seat in such an ignominious manner might wind up becoming the high point of his legacy. At least Pindling and Ingraham both got re-elected before deciding to move off the political scene for good. Not so with Christie; 40 years of consecutive representation brought to a screeching halt by being voted out with no goodbye, no official send-off, nothing. Was it deserved? Only time will tell.

I was a child when the PLP first came into existence. It took them 14 years to go from opposition to governing party. I was a young man when the Free PLP first started in 1970 and merged with the UBP to become the FNM, went through upheavals before becoming the FNDM for a short and then eventually reverting to the FNM. It took 20-plus years for the FNM to become the government, in the meantime gobbling up and spitting out a lot of men and women and burning up a lot of time, money, sweat and tears. Do the people at the forefront of the DNA have 14 to 20 years to give before their efforts might bear any fruit? If the early history of the PLP and FNM are anything to go by, the DNA will have to demonstrate doggedness, longevity, financial stability, a national presence through constituency branches with elected officers, regular conventions before they are likely to gain true widespread national acceptance as an alternative to either of the more established political parties.

LBT is a classic case of not being able to see the wood for the trees. She had a gift handed to her in 2012 when Hubert Ingraham resigned as FNM leader, elevating Dr Minnis to FNM leader and LBT to deputy leader. Had she been content to stay in that position today she would be Deputy Prime Minister. As it is now, she's like baseball's Roger Maris was for a long time after breaking Babe Ruth's major league home run record - an asterisk on the political landscape of what could have been but never was. When I review the whole political mutiny episode, I am left asking myself what was the purpose, what was the end game, what was it all designed to accomplish? Clearly LBT and her comrades were not expert at reading the political tea leaves. Who would have thought that while the FNM is now the government for the next 5 years, neither she nor any of the other mutineers is in the government or is even a member of Parliament? Without a strong party base, she didn't stand a chance of re-election.

Congratulations for Dr Minnis for staying the course despite the slings and arrows, the bad mouthing, the smears that have been thrown at you by people within your party who portrayed themselves as your friends and your foes in the PLP. You can take comfort from the fact that despite all of this crap that you have had to endure that firstly the people within your party on more than one occasion and now an overwhelming majority of the voters in the Bahamas have demonstrated their faith and belief in you that you are the best person to lead them and this country at this time. Yes, this might be a long distance race run in tranches of 5 years at a time but you have won the first leg of the race of wanting to govern and now start the second leg of actually having to govern. The people of the Bahamas are like a weakening giant and will hold you to your word that you are a servant of the people and that this is the people's time. I wish you the best as you begin this emotional and political roller coaster ride.

Sears, Galanis and Miller come out stabbing Caesar (Christie) in the back while he is down. If Sears was in charge, the result would not be any different. I don't know why Sears sees himself as some sort of knight in shining armour. His hands are just as dirty as the rest of his colleagues: COB, gambling referendum, Caribbean music festival, etc. His credibility is just as shot as Christie's and the other PLPs. Good time now for the PLP to remake itself from the inside out and find honourable men and women who believe in accountability, honesty, public service, truthfulness, humility.