ANDREW ALLEN WRITES: OUR 2017 VOTE CAUSED THIS MESS

This letter first appeared in The Nassau Guardian

Dear Editor,

Anyone who can’t see that it was the Bahamian people, rather than the PLP, who were the big losers of the 2017 election must either be a member of Minnis’ Cabinet or an enthusiast of its most ambitious project to date: legalized weed.

Four years of gimmicks and distractions from the big issues facing this country (which I have long said is the primary function of the FNM from the standpoint of its vested financiers) have left the population broke and the public domain defunded at the worst possible time.

The COVID-19 crisis came on the heels of the ejection from office of an administration that was for the first time in our history directing the wealth of this country into an advanced and transformative universal healthcare system. It was opposed by wealthy lobbies who benefit from our current parasitic insurance/healthcare industry and their polished puppets in the FNM.

Today, after the Public Hospitals Authority’s “cost-cutting” (FNM-ese for transferring the costs to the poor, via fees), the cessation of the National Health Insurance program to upgrade clinics and facilities nationwide and the degrading treatment of medical professionals, the wealthy Bahamas finds itself at the bottom of the regional league in an emergency pandemic, “borrowing” vaccine doses from tiny, poor Antigua.

Meanwhile, we just paid $66 million on a shuttered hotel and borrowed billions more with nothing to show for it.

Don’t be stupid again, Bahamas.

— Andrew Allen