I used the term convention in a gathering of the party. The point I was making was that nobody remembers a vote being taken except Bran.

What you have forgotten to pontificate about on Bran, is his level of honesty. Being kind, I would use the word "disingenuous" and being blunt, I would call him a liar. Back when the DNA was formed, he said that he was democratically elected as leader of the DNA in a convention that nobody remembers. He insisted this was the truth. As it turns out, it was not.

The second issue that I have with Bran, is his ... do you want to me to be kind or blunt? Being kind, in Bahamianese, one would say he was a low fence or not the sharpest knife in the drawer (unlike you). Being blunt, one would say that he has terminal ignorance that is dangerous, because he doesn't know what he doesn't know. For example, during the last election, his economic adviser was an eye doctor who fancies himself as an economist, and has failed in every business that he has ever tried.

So, my vote would never go for the DNA.

I think that you underestimate Minnis and saying that he doesn't have confidence is just plain wrong. He is a physician who has made a few million in business. Both of those attributes require both confidence and brains. Where Dr. Minnis fails, is that he is not a charismatic politician and he doesn't have the slightest clue on how to be one. In my books, the sum total package is exactly what the country needs at this point. We don't need a politician, we need a manager who will do the right things when it comes to the economy. The business of government should be its business and business in general. None of the other leadership candidates have ever been in the park when it comes to understanding economics and how things operate. Just my 5 cents. I enjoy reading your writing as it is intelligent and cogent, and the country needs more people like you -- especially of your gender. The country needs more women leaders.

Right then. New curfew for the slavery crowd will be announced. Anyone caught selling slaves without a business licence, webshop licence or a slave trader identification card on the street corners after 9:00 PM will be prosecuted. Slave trading premises must be inspected by the immigration department to make sure that there are no Haitian slaves -- just Bahamians. All Chinese slave traders are exempt from the rules. Hotel slaves must get their 15% gratuities. VAT must be charged for all slaves bought, sold or traded. This lawlessness and crime with slave trading must be stopped.

Cogent observation of the rampant cronyism today.

More dead-good news.

Jokes. Two PLP pinheads. Galanis and Ortland are Brave operatives looking to help him take over the PLP criminal enterprise.

http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2015…

How can any "change movement" be successful when the power base of the country resists change, and really likes the status quo because they can manage it and enrich themselves? Corruption serves the existing power base. The change movement must address this issue first before any truly beneficial change becomes reality. The first course of action, is to obviate the machinations of the existing power base in the Bahamas.

And since the power base is so entrenched, and those seek to change it, desire the change for themselves to lead the status quo, an exit strategy is the only solution for those who want to lead significant, prosperous, fulfilled lives. The established paradigm for that in the Bahamas, is crumb-picking off someone else's table.

You can market all you want, but the sophisticated High Net Worth Individuals will see it for what it is -- putting lipstick on pig and trying to sell it.

Nobody will use the Bahamas arbitration in the same manner that we do not use the Caricom Supreme Court of the Caribbean. The reason is that one wants a body that is truly impartial and not influenced by politics, connections and money. This unfortunately is not the case in the Bahamas.

No one will want to come to the Bahamas for arbitration after what the government did to Sarkis Izmirlian and Baha Mar. We are not an impartial jurisdiction, and the corruption will prevent anyone from using Bahamians as arbitrators.

As usual, your insights are 100% correct, accurate and well articulated. I like your analogy to a city burning and others see it as just a campfire. You are right about the future, the prospects and about life in the Bahamas as depressing. Most Bahamians have never experienced anything different, or better and have never known the freedom that you describe.

I don't know why they have blinders on, other than to paper over a nasty, brutish, short, boring life. The level of hypocrisy is stunning when one takes into account religion, sweethearting, lack of moral compass and false standards.

The truth is that Bahamians have been well educated and value-programmed to believe that Life is never going be anything else other than what they have. There is no hope. One cannot reach for the stars and actually catch a bit of star-dust magic in life, career, money or love, like one can in America or Canada.

We've made a mess of independence. We have made a mess of our economy. We have made a mess of our patrimony. We don't know right from wrong, top from bottom, good from bad, or how to navigate to a reasonable point in our destiny. We are wandering in a desert, and things are getting worse. We can't recognise the truth when it is before our eyes.

The last thing that we have to make lives significant is Love, and that too, eventually becomes a victim of this toxic society. Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman, the Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist who is a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, wrote: *"We live in the age of the refugee, the age of the exile."*

That quote is cogent, because when one realises that the days of our lives are numbered, and adding significance to them means living the life of an exile, far from an archipelago of these islands in the sun. The more sentient, decent and intelligent that you are in the Bahamas, the more you suffer.