Click the circle above to begin the audio of this podcast. Looking for the video version? [CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO VERSION] Glad you could join us on Thursday 7th June. On Tuesday 5th June, the debate on the country’s annual budget began in the House. This is a tiresome never ending ritual that occurs each year. We simply take too much time on something that few people will remember by next week. It is not the most efficient use of the Parliament’s time. The ritual will be worse this year and more unending because you have a Cabinet of 20 , each with a new responsibility and so each new Minister wants to have his say, and have their say they are, too much in fact. Promising the world and all, all as a result of the good economy that the PLP left for them. I have been asked by the PLP’s leader to shadow my old portfolios Foreign Affairs and the Public Service. Elsewhere on this site you can click into the presentation made in the House and see it on video. My major concern is the state of the public service today. I did not give the name in the House and I will not today but I want to bring to the attention of the listeners and viewers here the consequences of the rash actions of the now Prime Minister in dismantling the Ministries and in scattering the staff to the four winds. It was reported to me that some staff were sent to report to a Permanent Secretary who did not know they were coming and had nowhere for them to sit, and they were told to go home and report back in four days. The more egregious case though is that of a public servant with thirty years experience as a public officer and that officer has been sent to a place where the officer would have nothing to do. The gossip around the FNM is that the public servant helped one of our candidates in his office in the after hours and that the officer was seen at a PLP rally. The result is that the officer was identified as a PLP and was sent to a place where she was told that she would either have to sit in the kitchen or in the conference room when the senior man was not in. This is clearly a constructive dismissal. I cannot understand how John Pinder of the Bahamas Public Services Union has not been brought into the matter to resolve it. This is a case that I am inclined to take personally, since this seems clear evidence of victimization and in more legal terms a constructive dismissal. The public service is governed by public law and the contractual agreement between The Bahamas Public Services Union and the government. This means that the contract with the civil servant cannot be breached willy nilly. This matter has to be brought to the attention of the country. Why? Hubert Ingraham during his campaign claimed that he was a changed man, not a victimizer. Yet this is what has happened. It is not surprising since the first act of the new administration was to fire Steve McKinney and Philipa Russell from ZNS in what seemed a clear violation of the terms of their contract. There has not been an effective political response to this. The officer that I am talking about should be returned to a job that is equivalent to her standing and rank in the service with real work to do and forthwith. The Bahamas Public service Union cannot be silent in the face of this victimization of public servants. This is but one case of the victimization and displacement of alleged PLP supporters since Hubert Ingraham has come to office. There may be many many others. When I spoke yesterday in the House, I asked the country to go out and get a copy from your favorite video store of The Last King of Scotland, starring Forrest Whitaker. It is the story about the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada. So much of what is happening now in The Bahamas reminds me of what I saw there. The Ugandans thought they were getting a savior instead they had embraced a monster. Go see it. Juts a word about these pod casts, some people say that they have difficulty accessing the spoken word without downloading additional software. If you have DSL that should not be. Once you link to the site, the sound should come up right away and if not allow it to buffer for a few seconds and it starts. If it doesn’t start then you can click the start stop button that appears with the written message. You should have one of the programmes like Real Player in order to hear or see it. Alternatively to the sound, you can link into the video on youtube, which also has a link in the written message. Until next time. Good bye. Less