Monday, April 4, 2011

Dr. Andre Rollins and double standards

Dr. Andre Rollins and compromise. Or are we witnessing double standards?

By Rick Lowe


I think I can refer to Dr. Rollins as an acquaintance. He used to visit Nassau Institute events where we would exchange thoughts/ideas.

But as we pointed out in this post... in politics, Mr. Obama included, appears to force a double standard or compromise when it comes to his deciding when to send troops off to "war" for example.

We also have reports of a recently elected Republican in the US receiving farm subsides and when pressed would not offer to give his subsidy up. Saying something like, farm subsidies need to be rationalised. Go figure.

Now let's look a little closer to home, where we have a political figure stating that foreign investment is both good and bad.

According to a story in The Nassau Guardian on April 1, 2011 by Chester Robards, recently nominated PLP candidate Dr. Andre Rollins chastised the current government for not attracting foreign investors to The Bahamas.

He was quoted as saying; "We need to cause businesses to come here that are outside of the scope of our current economic model."

While he is correct that The Bahamas needs foreign direct investment he does not appear to have indicated what those foreign businesses are that should be asked to come in and invest.

But what's the double standard or compromise then?

Well Dr. Rollins party just came off a heated campaign against allowing a foreign company into the country to buy BTC the government monopoly phone company and now he says we need foreign investment.

I sometimes wonder how we say these things with a straight face. And to our College of The Bahamas students no less.

I must paraphrase Mencken yet again for a little respite from this:

I dislike double standards and the compromise of politics forces on values, common sense, common honesty. It seems this makes me forever ineligible for public office.

Oh, you might find this article on Politics as the Art of Confined Comprises interesting.

Monday, April 04, 2011

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