As the Bahamas’ general election draws near, the two leading national political parties held simultaneous campaign rallies across different islands this week, reinforcing their core messaging and clashing over their competing visions for the country’s future. The Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), the current governing party, hosted a well-attended rally in Exuma, where top party officials doubled down on their pitch to voters for a renewed term, framing the PLP as the only force capable of delivering sustained, inclusive progress across the archipelago.
PLP leader and incumbent Prime Minister Philip Davis told assembled Exuma and Ragged Island residents that the upcoming election is far more than a routine vote – it is a decision that will shape the entire trajectory of the nation for years to come. Davis emphasized that only his party has the track record and plan to push the country forward, pointing to the strong local leadership delivered by Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper, who serves as the Member of Parliament for Exuma and Ragged Island. “There is still much work left to do,” Davis noted, highlighting ongoing priorities to lower the cost of living for Bahamian families and ensure that economic growth and development reach every community across the islands.
Davis spotlighted a slate of ongoing infrastructure and development projects across Exuma and Ragged Island that the PLP administration has advanced, including the construction of a new airport, a new hotel development, and the successful completion of a hurricane-resistant solar microgrid on Ragged Island – a project designed to protect the island’s power supply from the extreme weather that threatens the Caribbean regularly. “We are not just investing in concrete and roads; we are investing in the Bahamian people,” Davis added, noting that the administration’s work has gone far beyond just recovering from the economic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, which devastated the country’s tourism-dependent economy.
For his part, Deputy Prime Minister Cooper laid out the governing party’s full track record and future agenda for his constituents, noting that the PLP has attracted more than $1.4 billion in new investment to Exuma, delivered value-added tax reductions to ease consumer costs, and upgraded critical public infrastructure across the district. Cooper outlined upcoming projects, including additional road repairs on Little Exuma, completion of airport upgrades at Black Point, new affordable housing developments in the Exuma Keys, and strengthened local immigration enforcement. He also laid out plans for further expansion of affordable housing, construction of a new primary school, a new centralized government administrative complex, and a multipurpose youth facility, adding that expanding access to high-quality healthcare remains the administration’s top unwavering priority.
Turning to Ragged Island, which was nearly destroyed by Hurricane Irma in 2017, Cooper said the PLP has restored hope to a community that he claimed the Free National Movement (FNM), the main opposition party, abandoned after the storm. “After Irma, the FNM wrote you off,” he said, outlining the PLP’s ongoing investments in the island, including construction of a new medical clinic, expansion of sustainable eco-tourism, and development of heritage tourism centered on the HMBS Flamingo monument. “You are never an afterthought to this government,” Cooper told Ragged Island residents, “I work for you every single day.”
Cooper repeatedly attacked the FNM, arguing that the opposition party has little more than empty rhetoric and no substantive policy plan to move Exuma and the country forward. Prime Minister Davis doubled down on that criticism, framing the FNM as a divisive political force that would halt, stall and roll back all the economic and social progress the PLP has delivered over its term. Davis claimed the FNM would “break up progress” the same way the party fractured its own internal unity in recent years, adding: “That is the core difference between our two parties. We build opportunities for the many, they are focused on taking from the many to benefit the few.”
The PLP rally in Exuma featured additional campaign speeches from other prominent party figures, including Fred Mitchell, Glenys Hanna-Martin, Clay Sweeting, and Robyn Lynes, who all echoed the party’s core messaging to voters ahead of the election. The event took place at the exact same time the opposition FNM held its own campaign rally in North Abaco, where FNM candidates stuck to the party’s long-held campaign message that the FNM works for all Bahamians, not just a small, privileged elite. This election cycle has followed familiar partisan framing: the PLP campaigns as the party of steady progress and inclusive development, while the FNM has positioned itself as a populist alternative focused on delivering for working and middle-class Bahamian families.
