thebahamasweekly.com - Brown: Is Ingraham still leader of the FNM?

What amazes me is that even current FNM leader Dr. Hubert Minnis is finding all kind of silly excuses as to why their candidate Greg Gomez was defeated so convincingly. In addition to claims of victimization and intimidation by the PLP, they even repeated the outrageous claim by Zhivargo Laing’s sister Doc Margo Seymour' that Prime Minister Perry Christie was seen with wads of money in the back of his car, inferring that the leader of this country was involved in buying votes.

Probably out of fear of offending former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, no one has dared mention that the major reason the FNM lost the election was that Gomez was probably the worst candidate in Bahamian political history, and the only reason he was the party's choice was because he was hand-picked by Ingraham.

In fact, Dr. Minnis and other FNM leaders were in the process of interviewing three other far better qualified candidates when Ingraham insisted that Greg Gomez was his choice to be the candidate, and Dr. Minnis’ backbone was transformed into spaghetti as he allowed Ingraham to have his way.

So there's no question in my mind that even though he was terribly humiliated by the overwhelming rejection of his candidate in the Abaco bye-election, Ingraham shall remain the behind-the-scene leader of the FNM, no matter what Dr. Minnis says. And if Dr. Minnis develops enough courage to stand four-square behind his declaration that Hubert Ingraham's days as leader of the FNM are finished, in all likelihood the countdown will start officially on Dr. Minnis' remaining days as leader of the FNM.

Make no mistake about it, the FNM that exists today in no way resembles the political movement that was established at Jimmy Shepherd’s house on Spring Hills Farms in Fox Hill in 1971 by moderate members of the disbanded United Bahamian Party (UBP) and a group of former PLPs, historically referred to as The Dissident Eight: Cecil Wallace Whitfield, Arthur Foulkes, Warren Levarity, Maurice Moore, Dr. Curtis McMillan, James Shepherd, Dr. Elwood Donaldson and George Thompson.

The founding leader of the party was Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, a charismatic and skillful political operative. Wallace-Whitfield had a domineering personality and this led to a serious rift within the FNM, resulting in some leading members of the party establishing the Bahamas Democratic Party (BDP), under the leadership of Sir Kendal Isaacs, while the FNM remained under Wallace-Whitfield’s leadership. But both the FNM and the BDP were convincingly defeated by the PLP in the 1977 general election.

Realizing that they had made a drastic mistake by dividing the opposition forces, the FNM and the BDP reunited under the banner of the FNM, with Isaacs still as opposition leader heading into the 1982 general election. Once again they were soundly defeated by the PLP.

Five years later, with Isaacs still as its leader, the FNM was again defeated by PLP in the 1987 general election, after which Isaacs resigned and Wallace-Whitfield once again took over the helm of the party’s leadership.

Then in 1990, with Wallace-Whitfield battling lung cancer, Ingraham, who had been expelled from the PLP in 1984, joined the FNM, more than 18 years after it had been as well established political party. When Wallace-Whitfield died in May of 1990, Ingraham lied and said that on his death bed Wallace Whitfield passed the TORCH of leadership to him. Senior members of the original FNM made the mistake of believing him.

Ingraham then mapped out a strategy to get rid of all original FNMs who did not fall in line with his plans to take full control of the FNM and become its dictatorial leader. He certainly succeeded in doing this during his first two terms as Prime Minister, but it was in his third term, which ended with his defeat in the May 7 general election, that he unquestionably ran the party as if it were his personal fiefdom. Had he won the recent general election, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have become an absolute dictator similar to Haiti's late notorious despot Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier.

There’s no disputing the fact that Ingraham’s first five-year term as Prime Minister, from 1992 to 1997, was an unqualified success, but from the onset of his tenure as the country’s political leader there were reports of concern about his dictatorial tendencies among some of his colleagues. However, based on his promise that he only intended to serve two terms as Prime Minister, they considered this to be an ego issue.

After leading the FNM again to victory in 1997, Ingraham embarked on his second five-year term still promising to only serve two terms as Prime Minister He certainly indicated that he intended to keep that promise when he orchestrated a special election within the FNM in 2001 to select a leader-designate and a deputy leader-designate, throwing his full support during the campaign behind Tommy Turnquest as leader-designate and Dion Foulkes as deputy leader-designate.

But after the PLP’s stunning victory at the polls in 2002, Ingraham went back on his word to serve only two terms and urged his supporters within the FNM to mount a campaign to encourage the party to have him return as FNM leader, although he had given a firm promise to Turnquest that he would not seek the leadership position. Of course, he was restored as leader of the FNM, and led the party to victory in 2007. It was probably at this time that Ingraham really realized that he could do whatever he wanted to do within the FNM without worrying about a backlash from original FNMs.

In the five years between 2007 to the recent general election, Ingraham skillfully emasculated all original FNMs with leadership potential and cunningly made every effort to erase the leadership legacy of Cecil Wallace-Whitfield. His transformation of the original FNM into his failed Third Force party became a fact, if not in name in reality, during the recent election campaign when he demonstrated his dictatorial control of the party by successfully encouraging supporters of the FNM to call him “Papa.”

Many of those who slavishly started referring to him by this nickname probably did not realize that they were inflating his ego to continue what some political observers believe was his plan to become a total dictator similar to “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who ruled Haiti from 1957 to the time of his death in 1971. But the Bahamian electorate had the good sense to vote him out of power before he could accomplish what many were convinced was his objective.

Be that as it may, an argument could be made that Hubert Ingraham achieved what he set out to do. Many political observers believe that from the very outset his plan was to transform the FNM into the failed Third Force party that he established after he was kicked out of the PLP in 1984 by getting rid of all of the original FNMs, especially those capable of challenging him for the leadership. Indeed, all of the original FNMs who were considered to be possible future leaders of the party lost their bids for re-election, as the party won only nine of the 38 seats in the House of Assembly.

Humiliated and unable to accept such a crushing defeat of his FNM party, Ingraham, who was re-elected to the North Abaco seat he had represented for 37 years, resigned from the House of Assembly, establishing the necessity for Monday’s bye-election in North Abaco.

Because it was his seat, Ingraham no doubt felt that it was only right for him to choose who should replace him, and no matter what newly installed FNM leader Dr. Hubert Minnis said, Greg Gomez was his choice. On Monday, however, voters in North Abaco embarrassed and humiliated him by totally rejecting his hand-picked candidate.

You would think that Ingraham got the message loud and clear that it was time for him to make his final exit from front-line politics irreversibly official, but there were signs on Monday night, even before all the results of the North Abaco bye-election were in, that Ingraham may indeed remain very active behind the scene in the FNM. Clearly it was easy to reach this conclusion based on a press release he sent to the media “conceding” defeat, once it became clear that Gomez had lost the election. This was well before the “official” FNM leader Dr. Minnis did so during an interview with the media, and Gomez himself still has not done so.

Given this deliberate effort to undermine Dr. Minnis’ leadership, I don’t care what Dr. Minnis says: Hubert Ingraham’s days as leader of the FNM are not behind us. He will continue to make the important decisions within the FNM from behind the scene as long as he wants to. After all, the party is no longer the FNM; rather, it has been restructured into Ingraham’s failed Third Force Party.