Lashing out against private businesses is futile.

In a market driven economy businesses will charge as much as the market can bear without pushing their costumers to a competitor.

The problem is the Bahamas is actually a an economy of monopolies with very large players like Supervalue having near monopoly powers because of the barriers to entry by better capitalized foreign competition and a highly beaurocartic, inefficient and politicized business environment.

The Bahamian government through VAT, duty, stamp, business license are taxing activity (individual goods and services) which harms the consumer. They should be taxing profits...all profits including capital gains taxes on rich foreigners on their global wealth. Thats where the money is.

Secondly allow anyone to compete in the shipping business (Arawak Ports is a monopoly for 20 years - all goods coming into the Bahamas must use them at crazy prices, Power generation BEC/Focol are a monopoly, Water and Sewerage / monopoly on water, fuel importation Focol monopoly, Post Office / barely functional for the efficient deliver of goods and services through out the Bahamas, Potter Cay / what a disgrace, lack of banking / Canadian bank monopoly, exchange control/government control of the free movement of funds into different currencies, blocking Bahamians from investing abroad and making enough on their money to buy food.

No matter how much foreign investment comes in, it will not trickle down to the poor because its being consumed by the monopolies first.

That's why so many ppl can't afford to buy groceries anymore.

Cayman Government fiscal surplus larger than expected
Higher revenue and costs savings

https://www.caymancompass.com/2021/08/2…

I am not a Doctor but it seems to me that the General Election on September 16 will be the Mother of all Super Spreader Events.

Everything has aligned against voting being done safely starting with delta, political rallies and motorcades laying the unfortunate ground work for the final event.

On September 16 all 200,000 Bahamian adults will wait in long lines in the hot sun, file into small rooms filled with ppl, touch multiple documents touched by others then go home to our respective families.

Wow, fixing the grid? All the half way dropping down light polls, thousands of rusted transformers on electric polls, antiquated grid engineering, old substations, dozens of islands to deal with?

Ok, ok, we need to borrow another $500 million for that and pray a Dorian class hurricane don’t hit Nassau between now and the next 20.

Excellent points John.

By moving focus from the Pandemic, securing vaccines, continuous evaluation of protocols including the need to reimplement negative antigen tests for all persons entering the Country may not end well.

Did you see the video on social media of the partying last night outside a major resort? No one wearing mask in close proximity to each other, only 15% of population vaccinated.

Reward says we will reach heard immunity in August! Let’s pray he is right.

Good points baclarke.

Everyone arriving into the country should have at least a negative antigen test until 70% of our population are vaccinated.

The Delta variant is being carried by asymptotic vacinnated ppl and spreads quickly through the 85% of our population which are not vaccinated at all.

...sadly in our rush to independence and our hastily drafted constitution, local government, substantive checks and balances leaving parliament severely subservient to the executive and the executive subservient to the PM, we have the mess we have today.

Incapable DDK.

You can just read their resumes, look at their education and the narrowness of their exposure and experiences and it’s no wonder we are poorly governed.

You are absolutely correct Bonefish.

This is exactly how the flawed Westminster system works with no fixed election dates or term limits and no local government.

So, to sum up, we have no Census in 2020, we have no new Voters Register in 2021, the constituencies are unbalanced/non proportional because we have no idea where the ppl are, the Boundaries Commission sent an unsigned report to the Governor without first sending it to the PM, thousands of ppl moved from Abaco and Freeport to Nassau but can't change constituencies because you need proof of residency like basic passports and utility bills (washed away in the flood)....we don't need an election until May 2022, if they would remove the focus from the election we could get out a new voters register and complete the census, maybe focus on covid and prepare for Dorian 2.

Bahamians are being kept in constant state of apprehension between Covid, election, emergency laws, Covid Delta Variant possibly being brought into the Bahamas by symptomatic visitors which haven't been tested, PMH full, no more first dosses of vaccinations, only 10% of population having 2 doses of vaccines.

Even if you go to large political rally and you don't have your vaccination ID you could be in big trouble with the law.

So the opposition parties are crushed.

Where is the transparency in this entire process.

When you look at it from a distance it almost seems intentional...but to what end? What is the government trying to achieve?

Good points Tribanon.

We already had 2 referendums on the citizenship these same citizenship issues and attempting to give equal rights to women. One referendum under the PLP and another under the FNM.

The Bahamian ppl have soundly rejected equal rights for women and an advanced society concept of birth citizenship.

So why is everyone complaining about 100,000 undocumented ppl and the extremely high levels of crime?

We have the society we deserve.

Now if we could just lift the Emergency Laws for a couple of days with the 1990 Census and 2007 voters list.

Once the elections is held we can reimplement Emergency Laws so we can stamp out Covid through lock downs.

As Bahamians we really need to behave ourselves otherwise we will continue to get punished.