UNSTABLE DUANE SANDS HAS LOST IT. LORD HAVE MERCY!

In recent days, the Bahamian public has been treated to a troubling spectacle: a senior political figure, Duane Sands, advancing what many observers regard as unjustified, untrue and unsubstantiated claims that seem less about safeguarding democracy and more about sowing seeds of doubt among the Bahamian electorate.

There is an unmistakable political pattern at play here, one that bears an uncanny resemblance to the now-familiar playbook popularised by an unpopular world figure: when the numbers look grim, cry foul early, cry foul loudly, and hope the echo outpaces the evidence. It is a strategy rooted not in confidence, but in pre-emptive excuse-making. In medicine, one might call it anticipatory triage; here, the patient appears to be the Free National Movement’s political fortunes.

And those fortunes, by all political accounts, seem to be haemorrhaging.

To extend the metaphor, since Dr Sands himself has made a career in the healing arts, the party looks less like a stable institution and more like a patient in the throes of uncontrolled internal bleeding. But Sands’ plan is designed to cast public suspicion on electoral processes, particularly the work of the Parliamentary Registrar, who is working assiduously to clean the register and bring the system into the twenty-first century.

When the focus of your campaign shifts from what you will do for the people to where and how the people are registering to vote, you are no longer running a race; you are questioning the track. This is not the posture of a movement brimming with electoral optimism. It is the stance of an organisation bracing for impact.

Reports of party supporters quietly disengaging, leaving in what some have described as a slow but steady exodus, only deepen the sense of unease. Political parties, like ships, do not take on water all at once; sometimes the first sign of trouble is the sound of lifeboats being lowered while the orchestra plays on.

First, it was the defection of the FNM Bamboo Town Constituency Association Chairman  and then three-time Women’s Association Chairman Carron Shepherd, a development that rattled more than a few cages. Add to that the recent public appearance of highly respected Meritorious Council Member Verdel Williams from South Beach in political company not previously anticipated, and it is little wonder that alarm bells may be ringing in the upper echelons of the party’s leadership.

Indeed, party leader Michael Pintard has joined the chorus of concern, amplifying anxieties that might have been better addressed with reassurance rather than rhetoric. When leadership pivots from persuasion to protestation, voters take notice, and not always in the way intended.

The broader concern for the country is not partisan; it is institutional. Democratic stability depends on trust in the process, trust in outcomes, and the belief that defeat, should it come, will be accepted with dignity rather than litigated through innuendo. Casting doubt without clear evidence risks corroding that trust in ways that outlast any single election cycle.

None of this is to deny the right, indeed, the responsibility of political actors to question systems where credible concerns arise. But there is a world of difference between scrutiny and speculation, between vigilance and veiled insinuation.

At this delicate juncture, what the Bahamian electorate deserves is clarity, calm, and commitment to the rules of the game. What it does not need is a narrative of impending injustice advanced absent substantiation.

Let us hope cooler heads prevail, and that in the heat of political contest, faith in our democratic institutions is not treated as collateral damage.