(The following was originally published as a voice note by the Chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party Fred Mitchell on New Year’s Day 2026—Editor)
Fred Mitchell, Chairman of the PLP made this statement on New Year’s Day:
Freeport and Grand Bahama are places where the PLP has grown the economy over the last four years, and the economy there is set to explode in the coming Months. Never mind the naysayers. We are pledged in the PLP to defend its people.
In my end of year interview with the press people in Grand Bahama, I was constrained to answer the negative headline based on a story written by Candia Dames in the Nassau Guardian a couple of days ago. She claimed that the year and that of the PLP in the year 2025 was characterized by a lack of transparency, the by-election and the affordability crisis. My response is, here we go again, this is lining up to trash the PLP because elections are in the air.
My response is, if I were to criticize or respond or characterize Ms. Dames and her penchant for negativity, all year long, in 2025, I would describe it as follows: as a history of gatcha moments, crackpot conspiracy theories and lies and megalomania leaders of the opposition.
Ms. Dames could have used the Christmas season to even damn us with faint praise by saying, you know, over the Christmas season “you did well, but you need to do better.” But Christmas be damned, she went to the trash can instead.
She could, for example, have said that crime was down. Murder was down 30% under the PLP in 2025; she could have congratulated the female commissioner of police and credited the commissioner of police with the crime statistics even if she didn’t want a praise us, she could have told the crack pots who lead the opposition with their theories on passports and immigration and work permits that they should stop their lies. Stop the mud and deal with the truth. The truth is that it’s been fully transparent.
The national statistics institute tells us the facts on the population, and they point us in the direction of sensible public policy. Instead, she chose a platform where all year long she spun one conspiracy theory after the next and sought to destabilize an injure. And in the end of the year piece, you have a self-fulfilling prophecy in the form of the headlines on Tuesday past. Loftus Roker used to say break it up, go right ahead. It’s your country.
I said to the reporters in Freeport, the PLP is not boastful. We’re not setting our hat so high that it’s hifalutin. We want to reasonably manage our country, keep it safe, free. Well off and at peace with all our neighbours and maintain easy access to the United States. We hope that we’ve done that. And it appears that some are simply to gain power trying to muddy that simple record.
Even on this this marina tax, it is causing some temporary pain.
Bahamians have to say to themselves: what can we do to stand up for stopping the unfair extraction of our resources out of the sea; at what point do we stand up and say people can’t come in and do what they like?
You’re really wrong for that, give us a break and say, well done for the BLP, but you have promises to keep and miles to go before you sleep.
End
Number of hits for the week ending Saturday 3 January 2026 up to midnight: 936,333;
Number of hits for the month of December up to Wednesday 31st December 2025 up to midnight: 387,642;
Number of hits for the year 2025 up to Wednesday 31st December 2025 up to midnight: 387,642;
