Former Tall Pines Member of Parliament (MP) Leslie Miller said there are numerous factors which led to the Progressive Liberal Party’s (PLP) defeat in the recent general election, one major point being a “serious disconnect in the party.”

In an interview with The Bahama Journal, Mr. Miller charged that this disconnect stemmed from the PLP’s 2012 campaign slogan, “A Bridge to the Future.”

This “bridge,” the former MP, said collapsed some time back.

“When those four young men who were with us decided to quit, we use to have parliamentary meetings every Tuesday to discuss Wednesday’s meetings in Parliament. I would say after about the fifth meeting the PM (prime minister) pretty much decided not to come to any meetings,” Mr. Miller said.

“Dr. Nottage would head the meetings and keep apologizing. After about six months, the ministers, most of them stopped coming to the parliamentary meetings. We had this massive disconnect. The four young men who I had so much respect and admonition for, Moss in Freeport, Dr. Rollins who I think really could have made a valuable contribution. I really respected him. He and Moss were the two that had so much potential to take our country to the next level.

“They became disenchanted after a while, and they just couldn’t take it anymore. The PM was saying this is the bridge to the future. I guess when he decided to take the bridge with him. The young guys who thought they were the bridge to the future, they got disenchanted.”

According to former Tall Pines MP, there was also the fact that former Prime Minister Perry Christie reneged on his promise to not spend a full term in office.

“The prime minister indicated that he was going to stay around for two and a half years. We told the people that he was not going to be here long and they accepted that. Brave was supposed to take over and that didn’t take place,” he said.

Additionally Mr. Miller also cited the party’s failure to hold a convention in a timely manner coupled with Mr. Christie’s failure to change how the government is run and by extension cater to the needs of the people.

“I don’t think the PM was prepared to face his supporters, and there was no change coming from him even though he had told them before that he was going to make changes on the public service, changes on how he ran the government, opportunities for those constituents who helped us and the wider Bahamas, the regular average Bahamians, the ‘pot cakes’ he said would be taken care of. Those things in their mind never really happened and people became disenchanted, and it kept going and going,” Mr. Miller lamented.

“After a while they had already made up their mind that changes had to come. I don’t see how he expected something else to take place on Wednesday when he made no changes himself. If we go with the same programme, at the end of the day, what did you expect when they saw that you were the same person and the mindset was the same?”

The Free National Movement dealt a crushing blow to the PLP, taking 35 of the 39 contested seats, in the process unseating even the former Prime Minister Perry Christie

Up until Wednesday’s general election, Mr. Christie had represented the Centreville constituency since 1977.