Chairman of the Free National Movement (FNM) Darron Cash has fired back at the Progressive Liberal Party’s (PLP) response to the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) inquiry, calling the PLP’s statement ‘shameless’ and ‘unrepentant’.
He claims that Prime Minister Perry Christie and his government only wants an inquiry into the sale of BTC to cover up the fact that the PLP Government has not been productive in their nine months of governance.
Mr. Cash says that when it comes to accountability in office, there is no comparison between the FNM and the PLP and that the prime minister needs to get on with leading the nation.
“Stop this trifling and very obvious effort to deflect attention away from your nine months of failures in office. Get on with the business of governing and drop this adolescent fixation with trying to undermine or outdo Hubert Ingraham,” he said.
“After nine months of being on the BTC board this government has yet to report to the Bahamian public on whether they used their positions on the board to get to the bottom of the poor service performance that the prime minister has had to repeatedly complain about. After nine months on the Board the PLP has not released to the public one single piece of information about how this new government has held BTC /Cable & Wireless accountable. Nevertheless, Mr. Christie is quick to engage in yet another witch-hunt in an effort to undermine the accomplishments or tarnish the reputations of his perceived political opponents,” he said.
In response to his critics saying that he had flip flopped on being against the BTC sale during the Ingraham administration, Mr. Cash stressed that at that time he was in fact against the sale of BTC, however, considering that it was in the best interest of the country he agreed.
“My position was well considered and well documented and I have never ever tried to run away from it. I disagreed with my government on that policy decision. I said they should not have done it and I did so publicly… I disagreed, but respected their willingness to take a strong position on an issue that was not favoured by the vocal opponents and possibly the silent majority. If only Perry Christie had the courage of his conviction to do likewise in the recent gambling referendum,” he said.
The FNM chairman says that his party has nothing to hide and that Prime Minister Christie should have very little to say about the BTC sale seeing that his prospective buyers were no better.
“The ‘behind closed doors’ secret Blue Water deal requires far more investigation than the FNM’s sale to Cable & Wireless could ever warrant. Cable & Wireless was an established and well-known company, with well-known principals and a long track record of success in numerous countries.”
“Contrast this with the PLP’s proposed Blue water scheme. They proposed a sale on credit to an unknown company, with unknown principals, with no telecommunications track record,” he said.
Mr. Cash believes that while the prime minister promised many things before the general elections, he has failed to deliver on almost all of them and says that Prime Minister Christie is too disengaged in his government’s affairs to even make comments.
“When the FNM was in office, the leader of the nation, the prime minister and minister of finance was 100 per cent engaged in the process. He did not outsource his responsibilities to others in his cabinet and he was not missing in action as this current Prime Minister usually is. He has three cabinet ministers working under him in the ministry of finance and still nothing can get done, especially investment wise. The minister of state for investments has done nothing new,” he said.
“If Mr. Christie’s fixation on the former Prime Minister yields nothing else, we do hope that Mr. Christie learns the lesson of the importance of a Prime Minister being fully engaged and on top of what his government is doing at all times,” he added.
When asked to describe the Christie administration’s performance over the past nine months, Mr. Cash said that they have been nothing but a ‘failure.’
“They promised an emergency jobs program, which hasn’t been delivered. But they started out on day one seeking out and destroying people that they believed to be FNMs. They started out taking away contracts from people perceived to be FNMs and giving them to their friends. They’ve failed because they’ve not prioritised and focused their attention on the right things. Education, transforming our public sector, a jobs program and inspiring a new generation of Bahamians to invest and own pieces of this economy; all of those they have failed to deliver,” he said.
Mr. Cash added that time is running out on the Christie administration and that they should get it together before they are “run out of town”.
