Home

In politics, there is an art to pivoting. You have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. You have to know when to walk away and know when to run. Clearly, Michael Pintard, the Leader of the Opposition, has not learned that.  He only knows one speed: slash and burn. He comes off as an angry man at the age of 64 who cannot understand when it’s time to get off the subject. Last week, he was pleading for people to understand him as a true patriot of The Bahamas as he spoke in the House of Assembly on 14 October 2026.  As you know two of our columnists Abagail Cartwright and Felix Sands have been relentless in their attacks on Mr. Pintard because of his inability to defend The Bahamas. Even as he was pleading for understanding in the House, he was still bad mouthing the country calling its people crooked and slashing and burning. We think that his other members get it. Even rowdy Andre Rollins seems to have developed some graciousness. We are asking Kwasi Thompson and Andre Rollins to have a word with their leader and ask him to pipe down and take it easy. He should do this for his own sake and sanity. He should get off the subject and learn to pivot.

The power broker in the Free National Movement is Hubert Ingraham. He is the one who has told them the bitter facts of life. He warned them not to waste time with bye-elections that they could not win. During the last campaign of 2026, he told them that they should stop saying that the PLP could steal the election because that was not possible. Since the election he has told them that they need to find a new leader. Last week we reported that since the push over the last two months to get rid of Michael Pintard as Leader of the FNM, the energy behind the move has dissipated. They cannot determine who it should be. Hubert Ingraham has cobbled up a plan to put the former Minister and his protégé Zhivargo Laing in place as interim leader from the Senate but they could not raise the finances to persuade Mr. Liang to leave his good day job at the University of The Bahamas. Then they were sorely disappointed in Andre Rollins. Kevin Harris, the FNM publicist, wrote  a scathing attack on Mr. Rollins, essentially saying that while he made good headlines, Mr. Rollins does not have the stability for leader of the party. Our conclusion last week was that the putsch had failed and Michael Pintard would survive. It’s none of our business really who they pick but after this last performance in the House of Assembly on 14 October 2026. where Mr. Pintard was running on excessively in answer to this column  and claiming he loved his country, we believe that he must go for the sake of the survivability of his party and for his own sanity and for the betterment of the country. We think the best man to make an attempt to get him to go is still Hubert Ingraham. We think he should speak to the Bay Street Boy donors in the party and arrange a financial package for Mr. Pintard and ease him out before he causes more damage. We understand his real problem why he won’t go voluntarily is that he has no other source of income on which to depend.

The promised budgetary surplus by the Government was delivered by Prime Minister Philip Davis with his announcement in the House of Assembly on 14 October 2026 that indeed there was a budget surplus of just shy of 40 million dollars for fiscal year 2025/26. The Opposition immediately cried foul and the financial mouthpiece from the Fiscal Responsibility Council Gowan Bowe all pooh-poohed the result. It is interesting how these folks like to talk down the country. The immediate response from the government was the fact that Michael Pintard simply did not understand or want to understand what a budgetary surplus means.  The simple fact is that what Michael Pintard does is like a stuck record. Just repeating the same mantra every week: crooked, fiction, lies, corruption. The mantra is tiresome and what he needs to do is to move off the subject. The fact is that the experts at the Ministry Finance shepherded a surplus budget in accordance with all the normal rules and strictures of the international standards. That cannot be impugned. So Michael Pintard simply lives in ignorance but the PLP must not allow him to muddy the waters.

Those who watched the career of the late Paul Farquharson know that he spent many of his formative years in the Royal Bahamas Police Force as the aide-de- campe to the late Governor General Sir Gerald Cash. From he left Sir Gerald’s service, he had the rise to Commissioner of Police. The fact is that when you get these high profile details with the leaders of the country, you end up as high level police officers or at least that is the expectation.  Then there was the late BK Bonamy who was Commissioner of Police for the longest in the post-independence period. He spent almost his entire career in the Security and Intelligence Branch of the Force and ended up becoming Commissioner of Police. Who can forget the late Sir Albert Miller who should have been Commissioner of Police instead of the late Salathiel Thompson but everyone knew that once the PLP took over the man for the job would not be Sir Albert but Mr. Thompson. Sir Albert ended up being one of the most successful businessmen in the country, knighthood and all, but he to his end would have given it all up to be commissioner of police. Myles LaRoda is now the police minister and the question of who got promoted was put to him after the recent announcements.  Looks like he spoke outside the House of Assembly to Eyewitness News on Wednesday 14 October. Surely, there were deserved officers that were overlooked and surely there are some who should not have been promoted. The woman who helped to plot the case against Shane Gibson is one who should have been fired from the force instead of promoted.  However, the point of the walk down memory lane is to say that police promotions are a mixture of merit, history, longevity and politics.  That’s just the system, and no matter who gets promoted or how many, there will always be complaints. Finally, you get to be commissioner by a political decision. That should be clear so that those who are arguing that you should have this or that experience in the ranks of the Force prior to promotions: nice of them to say so but it’s not necessary for the top job. Desirable but not necessary.  The present Commissioner superseded other officers and no doubt a politician had to make that decision.

Last week, we reported that the cost of gas in The Bahamas had topped seven dollars. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the issues of cost of living that have been precipitated by the Americans going to war in the Middle East and causing knock on effects in the world that local governments are unable to control. The FNM has been raising hell about the cost of living but what would they have us do? The inputs into our lives are all costed in US dollars and imported from the United States. The US is the cause of the price inflation and while our government has some limited room to tinker with taxes, there is little we can do to actually control the prices. Last week, the bus drivers complained that they are in a price crunch. Last week, the garbage collection people complained that their costs had gone through the roof. No doubt there will be problems for costs for Bahamasair and Western Air.  No doubt BPL costs will going through the roof. Net result is that this note today is a reflection about how helpless we are in the face of world events but we must do the best we can to address this. Perhaps now we will actually turn to solar and be less dependent on fossil fuels in the longer term.

Ambassador to the United States Wendall Jones, Deputy Secretary of State of the United States Christopher Landau, Fred Mitchell, Foreign Minister and Ashley Cargill, Foreign Service Officer.

Last week the American masters of the hemisphere summoned their Caribbean minions to a conference called the US-Caribbean Dialogue in Washington D C.  The invitation came from the Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, not the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and not the President but it was a summons to heads of government.  Interesting. Four Caribbean Heads of Government turned up: Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime of Haiti, Prime Minister Terrance Drew of St Kitts and Nevis and Prime Minister Philip Pierre of St Lucia. The others countries were represented either at the Foreign Ministers level or by an Ambassador. The session as a daylong session in the State Department. The question is what has changed since the last time foreign ministers of the Caribbean were summoned to Washington and told that multilateralism was dead and that each country had to come with their own asks.  The meeting this time was a pitching for partnership and working together on a range of issues from security, to crime, anti-drug, weapons interdiction, communications policy.  There seems now to be a pivot to the fact that there is a need to work together. There is an expression in The Bahamas: talk is cheap but money buys land. Let us see whether the US has found the old time religion and they mean what they now say.

Fred Mitchell, the Chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party, spoke to the press in Grand Bahama and announced that the Prime Minister would be coming to Grand Bahama to make a major policy statement and proposal with regard to the future of Freeport. That set the cat amongst the pigeons. The Prime Minister intends to go to Grand Bahama on 21 October 2026 to do just that. Ministers of the government are expected to turn up in full force for he event. He will ask the Chamber of Commerce and licencees of the Grand Bahama Port Authority generally to show up for the event and to listen intently.