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If you listen to the daytime talk shows these days, you’d get the feeling that the PLP government has become a public punching bag. A daily listener will note the same voices taking potshots and the same voices running defence. The same issues are repeated, over and over. Hearsay or partial truths are parlayed into airtight convictions. Selective reporting of news is translated into hard and fast evidence of corruption or fraud. Sometimes it’s downright depressing.

There are several reasons for the barrage. One is that these days the political climate is far more open for public criticism of the persons and policies of elected leaders. It wasn’t so long ago that the combination of conservative radio/TV stations and restrictive government policies exercised by the Broadcast Commission served to keep public commentary under control.

Another reason is media ownership. The stable housing the Royal Gazette and the Mid-Ocean News, for example, is not owned by allies of the PLP. These and some other media keep the PLP squarely in their sights, taking pot-shots and sniping at anything that looks like a mistake, readily giving a platform to friend or foe, so long as they’re shooting at the government.

A third reason is a systemic one. The Westminster model of governance dictates that members of the political party not in power derive their validity by how well they can criticize the government. Carried to the extreme, an opposition party is reduced to finding fault with everything the government does or doesn’t do. The opposition UBP criticizes the government for not consulting, as well as for consulting too widely; for not inviting participation as well as for inviting it; for not informing the public as well as for providing information. Westminster fosters a culture of criticism that, in effect, has us poisoning the well we all must drink from.

The most pervasive reason, however, is one self-inflicted by the PLP. A brazenness and self-serving attitude early in their reign, an apparent unwillingness to aggressively pursue wrong-doers, an inability to get housing out of the starting gate (and the secondary school construction to the finishing post), deceptive and punitive practices — these are all now haunting whatever the PLP attempts to do.

The PLP cannot correct yesterday’s mistakes that keep coming home to roost. However, they can and must reduce tomorrow’s roosters, knowing that everything being said or done (or not said, not done) today is going to haunt their tomorrows.

It must make the effort to a) refrain from trying to score political points against ordinary citizens, it almost always backfires; b) get a better handle on public lawlessness - speeding on our roads and noisy motorcycles would be a good place to start; c) become more aggressive in dealing with internal unethical behaviour - establish a Code of Conduct, publicize it and enforce it; d) streamline its processes for making and implementing its decisions; e) become as good at reminding us of its successes as its detractors are of its failures.

As for the talk shows, in the U.S. they have degenerated into mouthpieces for the hosts. As the content slips more toward partisan preaching, however, the number of ears listening will be reduced to those of the faithful choir. That’s less than ideal.[[In-content Ad]]

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