WHAT VALUES DOES THIS BAHAMAS ELECTORATE HAVE?

There is a euphemism that the political pundits now have for the electorate on The Bahamas and how it operates. They say that today’s electorate is transactional.  That is a generous way to describe everyone who seems to have their hand out for what they can get personally.  MPs have few requests on public goods like schools and making the economy better, instead people who have not taken care of their personal finances cannot fix the roofs on their homes, cannot bury their dead, and cannot buy their children’s uniforms. They cannot afford breakfast without the government. They all want a government job as a janitress or security. The translation of that is they want to be able to slack off on the government dime and do nothing.  They cannot even seem to keep food in their homes. So every week, every MP is faced with visits to their constituency offices with people begging for food and to bury the dead and also to take care of the sick.  This is just like the days of the dreaded racist United Bahamian Party.  So the mantra these days is people coming to a constituency office and saying that they have six or seven votes in the House and no one has come to see them yet. Translation, if you give me something, the six or seven votes are yours. This is corruption at its purest.