Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis last week called on the business community to come up with a vision for what the next 50 years of The Bahamas would look like while offering no suggestions himself.
However, if he needs a vision beyond the Progressive Liberal Party’s (PLP) 2021 “Our Blueprint for Change”, he need not look far.
The National Development Plan (NDP) was drafted during the last Christie administration, then essentially shelved by the Minnis administration, much to the PLP’s chagrin.
Davis, for his part, has spoken about the plan, which was put together in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Yet, he appears to no longer think it as useful as the last PLP administration.
Last year, during a lecture held at University of The Bahamas by the Government and Public Policy Institute, the prime minister explained the plan as “a consensus of what Bahamians think needs to be done in order to move the country forward”.
“The data contained in the plan, and the recommendations built upon it, are refined into a number of specific, tangible goals, with strategies attached on how to deliver them,” he said. “The advantage of this is that we are able to understand what success looks like.
“That said, it is not the specific step-by-step planning document which some imagine it to be. The government of the day would still need to detail substantive policy and a delivery plan, in order to make it effective. In other words, each administration still has a responsibility in determining ‘how’ specific goals are to be delivered.”
Having read the NDP, it is quite clearly a step-by-step planning document, but he is correct in that policy and commitment to delivery by the government are needed to action it.
Davis insisted last year that Hurricane Dorian pushed climate change to the forefront of national issues and the COVID-19 pandemic led to a health crisis and an economic crisis whose effects still persist with the latter having been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
In other words, plans and priorities change.
Davis set his administration’s priorities as being education, health and wellness, the economy and the environment, and the “cultural and social”.
He explained that those priorities intersect and are of equal importance.
The prime minister said many nice words, but the nation has yet to see how his administration plans to tackle these priorities in a way that will bring meaningful, generational change.
The PLP’s last election manifesto is a five-year plan that speaks in many generalities.
And it misses many things the NDP covers.
During the lecture, Davis said he hopes conversations about the NDP and our future development will be part of our approaching golden jubilee of independence.
But it is incumbent upon the government – the Davis administration – to set the plan in motion.
Where is the “substantive policy” and “delivery plan” to implement the NDP he spoke to last year?
Yes, the NDP is based off of ideals such as the ones the prime minister espoused.
But it is also an incredibly comprehensive, nearly 500-page document that speaks to action in almost every area of our society in which government plays a part.
It outlines actions, output, outcomes, time frames for implementation, who is responsible, level of impact of indicators of success in meticulous detail.
And it attempts to set a vision that can be achieved by 2040.
It is far beyond the scope of a speech and hoping to focus conversations around a few ideas.
It is meant to change the trajectory of our entire country on a specific schedule.
It is an affront to the many people who put so much money and effort into it that it now appears to have been an exercise in wasting time and resources.
Accompanying the NDP was a Sustainable Development Master Plan for Andros Island funded by the Inter-American Development Bank.
That 440-page document is breathtaking in its detail and scope.
It does not appear that anyone has touched it.
During his lecture, the prime minister insisted politicians should he held accountable.
It is in that vein we suggest his administration finish the NDP, fund an office to coordinate its implementation and stop downplaying it as a simple set of suggestions put out there in 2017 we can now blithely discard.
