I can't believe that Minnis is making Davis look like a sensible option. This is just bad, even for the low standards that I have regarding Bahamian politicians as a whole.

The Bahamas truly is a banana republic. You don't pay your taxes in the US or Canada, and the IRS/CRA will be slapping interest on your bill, or putting a lien on your property, not giving you a discount.

Vandea Stuart for the FNM, Roscoe Thompson as an Independent, no public statement from the PLP yet although I am 99.99% sure of who it will be.

Abaco as a whole is a loss for the FNM right now. Darren has slim pickings to win in the North, and the Central and South is not voting FNM again any time soon. I think that Roscoe will win the Central and South tbh.

Yeah, the data is over a decade old. Unfortunately, accurate and up to date statistics are hard to come by for nearly anything in this country. I can only imagine that the current figure is a bit larger than that now.

As I stated, we can't decrease the size of the civil service now, doing so in the midst of an economic disaster is a horrible idea, but we have to start thinking for the future if things ever do get better.

We need to increase revenue and slash unnecessary spending at this point, we needed to do that a long time ago as a matter of act. That being said, an income tax is not going to do that. I don't know how anyone can ever think that an income tax is a good idea in this country. Most Bahamians make 20k or less ie. they don't make enough to survive now. Raising VAT to 12% made most of them ball out in agony, I can't imagine what taxing their income away will do.

The people that propose an income tax here have no clue how the average Bahamian lives. They are living far too cozy behind their gated communities.

To be fair, Holness eventually came into his own and recently secured another 5 years in power. The allegations of corruption and the Dudus Coke extradition affair meant that the JLP was probably going to lose the upcoming election anyways, regardless of whether it was held in 2011 or 2012. Holness was largely screwed over by events that were outside of his control in his first run imo.

I think that 2016 would be better to use as an analogy actually, rumours that the IMF were about to unleash a new set of economic measures on the Jamaican people were a big reason that Portia called that one early. Similarly, I believe that Minnis is in a similar position where he has no choice but to implement austerity measures at some point. The Bahamas cannot go another year spending like it has in 2020, we will be at the point of no economic return if so. Those austerity measures would seal his electoral fate (if it wasn't already), plus he has the fact that the Bahamas has largely escaped the "second wave" of COVID unscathed on his side. I honestly don't think his electoral odds are going to improve in 2022.

As it stands now, I can see the logic for him contemplating an early election. That being said, I think that his political fate has been sealed since May of 2018, he ruined his electoral chances on his own when he raised VAT to 12% despite promising otherwise a year earlier.

The fact that this statement even needs to be made speaks volumes about the current state of the FNM.

Debate? Debates are pointless and irrelevant when everyone there is going to conveniently "forget" everything that they said if their party comes into power.

Voting is a waste of time, and we just need to go back to the Queen at this point (she won't take us though, UK doesn't need any more leeches.)

BS. Trim down the bloated civil service (1), or better yet, actually collect on something as simple as Real Property Tax before you push a BS income tax on the people that actually do pay. Granted, now isn't the time to lay off the government workers, but the government needs to realize that they are not going to get blood out of a stone. Bahamians already pay duty, VAT, RPT if not in the Family Islands, etc. and we don't get a darn thing from it. Not even the roads, plenty of potholes where I live.

I would like to see these donkeys try and track income when they can't even collect on a friggin immobile physical structure, or vacant piece of property. How are you going to set the brackets, what is the exemption mark? Will Bahamians making 20k a year have to pay out of the meager earnings that they make, what rate? What are these donkeys going to do when the 2% of Bahamians that actually are in a "high-income" bracket start hiding all of their assets behind LLCs and trusts? How can anyone even be bright enough to not see that this will be used as a tool of political warfare, and only certain people will have to pay (just like BPL, water and sewage, and everything else in this country).

Anyone arguing for an income tax here needs to get their head checked to determine their sanity....or forced to take an IQ test.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c…

Prince Harry is the best modern example that we can use to warn our young men about marrying the wrong woman, and more importantly, what happens when you don't know how to put your foot down and let her completely destroy your life.

I agree with the third suggestion of stiffening sentences for those convicted of firearm offenses. For as much as they are derided, China and Iran put the literal fear of death in the heads of drug smugglers via execution if caught, and while we may not need to go to that extreme, harsher punishments definitely do work as deterrents.

The second suggestion is just garbage. The Bahamas is living proof that gun control doesn't work and is only pushed by politicians as a means of declawing their citizenry. Legal gun owners here aren't the issue, nobody is out there committing crimes with 8-20 gauge shotguns or .22 LR rifles. Instead, we have criminals running around with M4/M16s, AK pattern rifles, and military calibre handguns, all prohibited from ownership by the common citizenry.

Regarding the first suggestion, our borders are impossible to defend to that extent. The same problem exists with illegal immigration from Haiti, there is no way to monitor every square mile of water simultaneously. Us being an archipelago all but ensures that smugglers will always find a way if they need to, as history has shown through the drug trade of the 80s, Prohibition, Civil War blockade running, etc.

Imo, we need to focus on restoring our family values and sense of community within this nation if we want to make headway in the fight against gang violence/crime in this country. Community members need to hold each other accountable and look out for our young men/women in order to catch them before they drift too far into that lifestyle. Once you are in, there are only two ways out : death or jail, with jail leading to death eventually. We need to focus on catching the youths before they get to that point, not after. Prevention is better than a cure.

While I think that having a permanent voters register is a good idea in theory, how are they planning to remove the dead registrants or those who have left the country? I highly doubt that this government has a centralized database linking births and deaths together, or that it can keep accurate track of an individual's residency status. This will cause more problems than it solves imo.