Bahamians love having power shut off all of the time and having some of the highest electric bills in the Western hemisphere, they line up excited to vote for the same proven failures every five years.

To be fair, most Americans don't support the groomer movement so I wouldn't describe it as part of their culture. It took a court ruling on questionable grounds to make same sex "marriage" legal across the US when even a state such as California outright rejected the notion as late as 2008. Same story in Taiwan. Similar story here with the PHellP legalizing numbers houses despite the Bahamian people clearly voting against it.

The truth is that regular people have zero say in what happens in any of these countries; "voting" and "democracy" are no realer than anything you see on "reality" TV.

Tal,

If I understand your prose correctly, I agree with you that Abaco's success is certainly not because of it's representation. That being said, there is only so much that an MP can do when it comes to development, so I would not judge the representation too harshly on that basis. The representation since the Ingraham era has been subpar, but I think that Pinder is trying to be a good representative and I give Henfield a pass because he had a senior level Cabinet role as MoFA that required him to be off island most of the time.

To be quite honest we should have been incorporated as a territory of the United States a long time ago. It makes no sense pretending to be an "independent" nation when the reality is that our economy is completely dependent on one country alone. We are, for all intents and purposes, a vassal state of the US.

I think that John Pinder has been a good MP for Abaco; he makes sure that his constituents concerns are heard and conducts himself in a dignified manner. Quite frankly he is too dignified for the ghetto mentality that runs rampant in the PLP.

That being said, I agree that Abaco's resurgence and pre Dorian economic success is in spite of the government and not because of it.

> If he isn’t going to rape his wife, he has nothing to worry about.

Except it isn't that simple. Are there going to be charges brought if a claim of marital rape years ago is made during a bitter divorce hearing? Are charges going to brought if a woman claims marital rape but there are no signs of abuse or other indicators that this may have happened? The answer to those questions should be no but is that really going to be what happens? Going to court is a time consuming, possibly expensive, affair, there is a cost even if the defendant is proven to be innocent. You can't just treat that as if it is some simple matter because it's not.

Women shouldn't suffer rape in a marriage but neither should men have to be victims of a prejudiced legal system that presumes them guilty before the case is even heard. The problem is that no one can look at this issue from a mature perspective and treat it as the complex issue that it actually is, everyone wants to get emotional and pretend that the process to fairly convict someone of this charge is easy when it's really not.

It's honestly a national disgrace that Bahamians have to pay money to make use of our own national symbols.

The FNM is about as useless as a wet paper bag when it comes to being effective as an opposition. Lincoln has made more waves in challenging the government without even having a seat in Parliament; he is a far more effective campaigner than anyone in the PLP or FNM right now.

Legal concerns are the most likely reason.

To be fair, I don't think emigration was the sole source of the drop but I can guarantee you that it did play a part. There are literally thousands of Bahamians overseas at this point, and more are leaving every year. Some go to the United States, but most are going to Canada because the immigration process is a lot easier and the schooling is cheaper (even moreso with the conversion rate) with a clear path to permanent residency once you finish. I can see a few thousand Bahamians leaving to go live overseas in a matter of a few years between the surveys which would make up part of the number. Obviously there are things like retirements to consider as well.

Tbh we have no idea how accurate these numbers are either, we all know that statistics collection is not a strong point of the government here.