Bahamas: Voters in the Bahamas ousted Prime Minister Hubert Minnis in a quick election on Thursday as the economy was crumbling to recover from its deepest crash since at least 1971.
Minnis conceded and congratulated his rival Philip Brave Davis, according to a letter of resignation published in the local newspaper. In his victory speech, Davis said that the population ‘yearning for renewal’.
The Caribbean island of about 400,000 people is still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Dorian in 2019 when its vital tourism industry was hammered out by Covid-19. Amid closures and predecessors, the economy shrank by 16% in 2020, one of the deepest slumps in the world, and it is expected to recover only about 2% this year.
Davis, a lawyer and leader of the Progressive Liberal Party, blamed what he said was the administration’s overreaction to the pandemic, making it responsible for the economic crash. Despite no major ideological divide separating Minnis’s Free National Movement from Davis’s PLP, the winner’s party promises to reduce taxes and reduce public waste.
