Election Politics in The Bahamas: Who gets to eat - and who doesn't

By Craig Butler:

Bahamian elections are too often not about governance. They are about access.

Access to contracts. Access to appointments. Access to the Treasury. That is the sickness.

The winning party does not merely win office. It gains control over how roughly $1 billion in public contracts is distributed.

And too often the real contest is not over policy; it is over who gets fed.

That is not nation-building. That is budget politics dressed up as democracy.