Senior Attorney in the law firm McKinney Bancroft and Hughes Brian Moree, QC, described the quality of governance in The Bahamas as “poor” and “lacking transparency.”
His comments came yesterday during Love 97’s radio talk show Jones and Co. where Mr. Moree expressed that The Bahamas has an “anachronistic model” of governance which seems to be a major issue for the country as a developing nation.
“The model (anachronistic) itself is a model that we inherited from our colonial days, which is obviously heavily influenced by the Western system. Whereas it served really well in the past, life has moved on. The world we live in today is a different world than the 70s, 60s, and even the 80s,” Mr. Moree said.
“I think as a small developing country we have serious issues with the quality of our government. We still have issues of transparency, corruption, inefficiency, poor productivity, inability to deliver within time frames,” Mr. Moree stated.
During the show he also discussed his tenure as a past public servant and noted that “there are many issues that need to be addressed” in the public sector.
Mr. Moree said he believes that there have been numerous “genuine” attempts over the last 10 to 15 years to reform the country’s public service. However, he said much of the attempts have been unsuccessful.
Mr. Moree noted that it will take a “very strong political will” and “the strongest and most committed leadership from the prime minister of the day” to substantively reform the country’s public service.
“We do have somewhat of a dichotomy in the public service. There are clearly issues concerning professionalism, competence and even to be perfectly candid about it, in some cases, honesty,” Mr. Moree said.
“The public service is heavily politicized, and I can tell you, many public servants told me that is one of the biggest problems. It is overtly political with regard to both administrations, and it many times leads to high levels of demoralization by members of the public service,” he added.
Mr. Moree, who referred to the public service as a “heavily centralized bureaucratic machine,” said the system is in need of major reform.
