In the midst of ongoing dispute between hundreds of College of The Bahamas (COB) students, COB’s Council and the government, Free National Movement (FNM) Chairman Darron Cash has jumped to the students’ defence and claimed that the announcement to increase school fees is a failure of the Christie administration and not the college president.
In a press release sent out Thursday, Mr. Cash said Prime Minister Perry Christie, Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald and their Cabinet colleagues are 100 per cent to blame.
Mr. Cash, a former College of The Bahamas Union Of Students (COBUS) president himself, and former president of the COB Alumni Association, said he fully appreciates the difficult position in which the council has been placed.
“We have also taken note of the calls for the resignation of President Betsy Vogel-Boze,” he added. “Whatever the president’s deficiencies in office, there is a proper time and place for the College Council to assess her performance. However, with respect to the need and announcement to increase tuition and fees, this is a failure of the Christie administration. This is not the college president’s failure. Messrs Christie and Fitzgerald and their Cabinet colleagues own this 100 per cent.”
“After setting the [chain] of events in motion by requesting that governmental agencies such as The College of The Bahamas develop a plan to “reduce direct and indirect subventions to your organization by 25 per cent within the next two fiscal years with at least 10 per cent in fiscal year 2013/2014,” Prime Minister Perry Christie and Minister Fitzgerald have once again been found asleep at the wheel.”
In fact, the FNM chairman said Prime Minister Christie has become so accustomed to having his directives ignored it is entirely possible that he expected the leaders of the college to ignore his request for cuts, but they did not.
“Unless he does not understand the finance component of his job as minister of finance, the prime minister is at best guilty of classic doublespeak or at worse is being intentionally disingenuous,” Mr. Cash added.
“The prime minister immediately began singing from the same hymn sheet, ‘I know nothing about this. Nobody told me about this. I need to speak to my minister.’”
On Wednesday, Mr. Christie told the media and those angry COB students that he had no clue what they were talking about and only found out about the cuts when he browsed the newspapers.
Mr. Cash said the country cannot endure much more of this and added that at some point, the prime minister’s “disengagement from his government and the details of governing” will have serious negative implications for the country.
