Originally published as a column for the Freeport News and the Nassau Guardian, Friday, Nov. 9, 2007.
Reprinted here with the kind permission of Mr. Brown.
PLP refuses to accept defeat
It has been slightly more than six months since the Bahamian people decided that they could no longer tolerate the widespread corruption and mismanagement of this country’s affairs by the Perry Christie-led Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) government and voted them out of power.
Since their May 2 defeat at the polls, however, members of the PLP have been stubbornly refusing to accept defeat and have been conducting an ongoing campaign to frustrate and retard the efforts being made by Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham and his Free National Movement team to return good governance to this country. The PLP’s campaign in this regard has been unrelenting, so much so that a stranger visiting The Bahamas and knowing nothing about our political landscape would assume that a general election is not far away.
Actually, it may very well be part of the PLP’s game plan to create an atmosphere of political instability in the country, with the hope that this would force Prime Minister Ingraham to call a general election. Anyone remotely familiar with Ingraham’s political style, however, knows that this is not going to happen, not only because he is too politically savvy to be goaded into responding to their sinister plot in this manner, but more so because in the six months that his government has been back in power, he has already established a template of good governance that has put the country back on the road to a sustained period of progress and prosperity.
Constructive criticism certainly is a part of the political process, but it would behoove the leadership of the PLP to recognize that they are playing a very dangerous game by continuing their current strategy. Certainly, what precipitated the deplorable behaviour of PLP members in the House on Monday was not based on constructive criticism.
What makes this so dangerous is that both political parties have rabid supporters who have tunnel vision when it comes to doing their party’s bidding. This being the case, some die-hard PLP supporters who watched the tirade launched by PLP members in the House on Monday could very well have decided to take matters into their own hands to deal with the “wrong” they perceived to have been done to their party’s House members.
Surely, their counterparts on the other side of the political divide with a similar mindset would have responded in kind, and the escalating retaliatory actions could have resulted in violence of a serious nature breaking out. What makes such a scenario all the more dangerous is that no one knows just how many guns there are in this country, and any serious outbreak of violence would certainly have the potential to result in serious loss of lives. This is certainly something that the PLP members should keep active in the back of their minds as they burn the midnight oil devising strategy to discredit the Government.
It would be the epitome of irresponsibility if they continue to demonstrate total disregard for the possible dangerous consequences of behaviour similar to what they exhibited in the House on Monday. Obviously, they went to the House fully prepared to take a stand on an issue that Prime Minister Ingraham later described as an attempt to “make a mountain out of a molehill.” At a sitting of the House on Monday, October 22, Prime Minister Ingraham and Christie got engaged in a heated exchange, with both individuals hurling strongly worded remarks at the other when Ingraham, at one point, told Christie that he had been a “worthless” Prime Minister.
It was at this point that Christie should have demanded that Ingraham “withdraw” the remark, as generally is the case when a member feels that something was said about him that was “unparliamentary” or insulting. Christie did no such thing at the time, but at a press conference several days later – with Dr. Bernard Nottage, MP for Bain and Grants Town, speaking on behalf of the PLP – it was announced that the party would request an apology from Ingraham for calling Christie “worthless.”
The conclusion can easily be drawn that Christie was convinced to demand an apology from Ingraham by Dr. Nottage and possibly others in the party who understand better than he does how to gain political mileage out of a non-issue. Their strategy, of course, was to try and discredit Ingraham.
That strategy failed after Speaker of the House Alvin Smith ruled that the “worthless” remark made by Ingraham was not unparliamentary. Smith no doubt took under consideration the fact that the remark was made in the context of a heated exchange between Ingraham and Christie and only Ingraham’s remarks were amplified because he was the speaker at the time.
Prime Minister Ingraham made reference to this fact at a press conference following Monday’s ruckus in the House.
“This whole question arose because Mr. Christie just jumped to his feet while I was speaking and started to speak in a loud voice and I out-shouted him, and since I had the mic, what I was saying came across and his didn’t because the mic system is not capable of carrying two people at the same time,” Ingraham explained.
Then he made this startling statement: “He and I met on Wednesday, the 24th of October, and spent at least 45 minutes together and talked about this and other things. I didn’t get the impression that he was personally offended...”
Some people have a tendency to forget that as former law partners, Ingraham and Christie still are really the best of friends, and outside of the confines of the House – even after they have engaged in the most heated of arguments – their friendship remains firm. This recent incident is unlikely to change that, although Christie may have damaged it to some degree by refusing to disassociate himself from the very serious threats made against Ingraham on behalf of all 18 PLP Members of Parliament on the bahamasuncensored.com website on August 5.
“This is a warning from all 18 Members of Parliament of the Progressive Liberal Party,” the website noted. “You are hereby advised that in the future if you repeat the crude and boorish behaviour that you last displayed in the House of Assembly on Monday 30th July, you will find your back teeth floating.”
Given what transpired in the House this past Monday, Prime Minister Ingraham would be wise to strengthen his personal security, in the event those who issued that warning on behalf of the 18 PLP House members attempt to follow up on their threat.
What’s more, this is a serious matter and the police should by now have concluded their investigation into who is really responsible for making that threat and the individual or individuals should have been arrested.
It is still mind-boggling to me that none of the 18 PLP Members of the House have come out publicly and disassociated themselves from that threat. They all had a lot to say in the House this past Monday and will no doubt be equally as vocal if they follow through with their promise to move a “vote of no confidence” in House Speaker Smith when the House next meets. This would be an excellent opportunity for all of them to let the Bahamian people know that they are not thugs who make threats to do bodily harm to the leader of this country. In fact, Prime Minister Ingraham should insist that they do.
Oswald T. Brown is editor and general manager of The Freeport News.
Comments on this column can be sent to Mr. Brown by clicking here...
