thebahamasweekly.com - PLP Fort Charlotte Candidate: " Zhivargo Laing’s attempts to deceive The Bahamian people"

Last Updated: Jan 20, 2012 - 1:41:47 PM

PLP Fort Charlotte Candidate: " Zhivargo Laing’s attempts to deceive The Bahamian people"
By Andre Rollins, PLP Candidate for Fort Charlotte
Jan 18, 2012 - 6:00:36 AM

Email this article
Printer friendly page

This General Election must be about addressing the real issues facing our country and our people, not about using deception and lies to distract voters in an effort to cause them to forget just how bad things are presently in The Bahamas.

Our education system is producing alarmingly high rates of school leavers who cannot perform at basic levels; our economy and industries are shrinking; our skyrocketing national debt is prompting recurrent downgrades of our sovereign credit rating; the number of unemployed and discouraged workers is enormous; Bahamian workers are increasingly feeling squeezed by high numbers of immigrant laborers; and we are shooting our way to the top of the list of the world’s most murderous places.

Instead of dealing honestly with these very serious issues, the FNM has shown that they are prepared to instead deceive and distract voters in hopes of deflecting the Bahamian people’s attention away from their record of failure. This was evident when at the FNM’s Take 5 rally in Grand Bahama on Sunday past, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham made what can only be described as an ill-advised impromptu remark, and in the process inadvertently revealed that his junior minister of finance, Zhivargo Laing, lied to the people of Grand Bahama in a statement he issued a little more than a year ago.

In an article appearing in the Freeport News on Wednesday, December 8, 2010 written by Ms. Cleopatra Murphy, she wrote that Sir Jack Hayward reported in an earlier communication to the media that the Government’s refusal to renew Hannes Babak’s work permit left many of the company’s projects in a state of limbo. This implied that the Government’s lack of cooperation and engagement with the Port was playing a direct role in stalling and stifling the Grand Bahama economy.

Following Sir Jack’s remarks to the press, Mr. Laing called them “silly, misguided and offensive” and the article went on to say that Laing further claimed that:

“It is a terrible admission on (Sir Jack) Hayward’s part to acknowledge that the hopes of he and his family as well as the other Port families were entwined in Hannes Babak. If that is so, then the Grand Bahama Port Authority Board, its management and partners are not worth two dimes,” and “instead of laying the blame at the feet of the Government, Hayward should turn his sights to the GBPA.”

According to Mr. Laing, “…nothing has been more injurious to Grand Bahama’s economic health than the awful fight between the shareholders of the GBPA in which Sir Jack was a leading player”.

The article then quotes Mr. Laing as saying that the Ingraham administration was “working to improve the economy of the island regardless of the infighting that has been going on within the GBPA.”

This is in contradiction to Mr. Ingraham’s off-the-cuff remark at Sunday’s Take 5 rally, when he said:

“Since the last time I spoke to you, Sir Jack Hayward and I had a chance to talk. Now that he is willing to divorce himself from one Hannes Babbak, we can do business.”

Mr. Ingraham accidentally revealed that Mr. Laing’s claims that the Ingraham administration was “working” with the GBPA to improve the island’s economy, despite the infighting between the Port’s shareholders, was quite simply a lie. This admission also proved that this FNM administration has in fact been a major impediment to economic progress on that island, because only since this recent turn of events was this administration willing to work with this critical grouping.

If Mr. Laing would deceive the people of Grand Bahama about the true state of affairs involving the relationship between the Government and the Port, and its damaging affect on the economy of Grand Bahama and the lives of its people, then it stands to reason that there is nothing stopping Mr. Laing from attempting to deceive the constituents of Marco City and, by extension, Fort Charlotte about why he abandoned his seat in Grand Bahama to offer himself once again to the same Fort Charlotte constituents who rejected him in 2002.

There is nothing noble about Mr. Laing’s departure from Marco City. It has nothing to do with helping his party try and pick-up a seat in New Providence. It does, however, have everything to do with scientific polling done by his party that revealed just how unpopular he had become with the people of Marco City in just 5 short years, in the very same way that he alienated the constituents of Fort Charlotte after only a single term.

Mr. Laing is arrogant enough to believe that he can once again get away with trying to deceive the Bahamian people and Mr. Ingraham is wrong to believe that the long dollars of the FNM will create short memories in the minds of the people of Fort Charlotte. I believe that no amount of deception by Mr. Laing, or money spent by the FNM, can erase the bad memories they have of Mr. Laing’s 5 years in Fort Charlotte.

End.