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Last Updated: Jan 31, 2012 - 11:53:00 PM |
 The contests for the five House of Assembly seats in Grand Bahama are
emerging as arguably the most interesting in the upcoming general
election. This became quite evident on Tuesday after the fledgling
Democratic National Alliance (DNA) completed its slate of 38 candidates
by announcing its three final candidates for Grand Bahama.
At a
press conference in Freeport, DNA Leader Branville McCartney announced
the candidacies of Howard Grant Jr. to contest the Central Grand Bahama
seat; Ferline Bridgewater-Thomas, to carry the DNA’s banner in East
Grand Bahama; and Tolonus Sands as his party’s standard-bearer in Marco
City.
What made those announcements so significant is the fact
that both Grant and Bridgewater-Thomas are closely related to two
current Free National Movement (FNM) Members of the House of Assembly
who were treated very shabbily by Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham when he
hand-picked his slate of candidates to contest the upcoming general
election. Unquestionably, both surely have strong enough motives to do
whatever they can to see to it that the FNM loses the next election.
In the case of Howard Grant Jr., his mother is Verna Grant, the current
MP for Eight Mile Rock, whom Hubert Ingraham decided was not
“qualified” to be renominated as a candidate. Reports are that Ingraham
reached this decision because Verna Grant refused to step aside for
Ingraham to nominate one of his favourite Grand Bahama females, Kay
Forbes Smith, Bahamas consul general for Atlanta, for the Eight Mile
Rock seat. So to spite Verna Grant, he eliminated the Eight Mile Rock
constituency and reduced the number of seats in Grand Bahama from six to
five.
Bridgewater-Thomas’ reason for becoming a DNA candidate
may not be as clearly defined as the reasons that are believed to have
motivated Howard Grant Jr. to join the DNA’s slate of candidates. But it
is nonetheless true that Bridgewater-Thomas’ brother in law is former
Housing Minister Kenneth Russell, who was totally disrespected and
humiliated by Ingraham when Ingraham decided to act on his decision to
force both Russell and Neko Grant, the incumbent MP for Lucaya, to
retire.
Ingraham demonstrated that he has no loyalty towards
friends or compassion for them when he sent Deputy Prime Minister Brent
Symonette, the most prominent member of the old UBP faction within the
FNM, to inform Russell that he would not be renominated to run for Grand
Bahama.
Knowing the history of the UPB, clearly this was the
ultimate disrespect that the Prime Minister could have paid to one of
his most loyal and dedicated supporters, so it’s not surprising that
Russell reacted the way he did after he was fired as a cabinet minister
in referring to Ingraham as a “tyrant” and “a dictator.”
Therefore, no matter if she is prepared to admit it or not,
Bridgewater-Thomas may very well have decided to enter the political
arena because she wants to avenge the poor treatment meted out of her
brother-in-law.
Be that as it may, there are strong indications
that the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) will win a minimum of four
seats in Grand Bahama, and possibly all five, despite Ingraham’s
campaign blitz to induce voters in Grand Bahama into forgetting the
FNM’s total neglect of Grand Bahama over the past four-plus years,
resulting in tremendous stress, pain and suffering by Grand Bahamians as
they struggled to maintain some semblance of their relatively
comfortable lives before the FNM’s destructive policies eliminated what
used to be a comfortable middle class strata in Grand Bahama.
At the centre of Ingraham campaign of deception is his claim that he and
Sir Jack Hayward, one of the principal owners of the Grand Bahama Port
Authority (GBPA), have settled their differences and are now working
together to revive Grand Bahama’s economy. Making peace with Sir Jack,
of course, is supposed to lull Grand Bahamians into a state of amnesia
whereby they would forget that it was Ingraham’s dictatorial behavior in
refusing a work permit in December of 2009 for Hannes Babak, the then
chairman of the GBPA, that triggered his vindictive policies towards the
GBPA, resulting in the virtual destruction of Grand Bahama’s economy.
Try as hard as he might, however, even to the extent of drumming up
false claims that Grand Bahama’s economy is on the rebound, as evidenced
by his false assertion that the Our Lucaya Resort is experiencing a 75
percent occupancy rate, people who live in Grand Bahama know
differently. Far too many of them know things are brutally tough and
survival is a day-to-day challenge.
Voters in Grand Bahama are
also aware of the fact that Ingraham has hand-picked a slate of
candidates who will perpetuate his ambition to be an absolute dictator.
When you consider the fact that the current five FNM Members of the
House, including three who were members of the cabinet, remained
absolutely silent as Ingraham waged an unrelenting war against Sir Jack
and the GBPA, then it’s not hard to reach the conclusion that the three
“new faces” and two incumbents chosen by Ingraham as candidates for the
next election will be nothing more than political doormats for Ingraham
if they are elected.
Let’s take Pakeisha Parker Edgecombe, for
example. Unquestionably, she has a lot of explaining to do on the
campaign trail, having boldly proclaimed at the event held to launch the
FNM Grand Bahama candidates that she “has always been an FNM,” a public
admission that seriously raises questions about her professional
objectivity as the “senior” news anchor of ZNS News-13 in Freeport.
One question that must now be running through the minds of her
colleagues at ZNS is this: Was she the one who advised Ingraham to
discontinue national broadcasts of ZNS news out of Grand Bahama? There
is a body of opinion that Ingraham took this drastic step as part of his
campaign to downgrade the importance of Freeport mainly to spite Sir
Jack Hayward, but is it possible that Pakeisha may have been consulted
by Ingraham before he made that decision? Her candidacy and public
embrace of the FNM suggests that this probability cannot be ruled out.
In any case, she doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of winning
in the West Grand Bahama and Bimini constituency against PLP incumbent
Obie Wilchcombe, who has been a remarkably good representative for that
area. This surely raises yet another question about why Pakeisha chose
to abandon an established career as a broadcast journalist, knowing from
her experience in reporting the news that Ingraham runs a virtually
one-man show as leader of the FNM.
Then there are the two FNM
candidates that many in Grand Bahama have compared to gunslingers in the
Wild, Wild West who sold their services to the highest bidder.
Knowledgeable sources say that both Peter Turnquest, FNM candidate for
East Grand Bahama, and Norris Bain, FNM standard-bearer for Marco City,
initially sought nominations from the PLP, with certain financial
conditions attached, and it is now being speculated that the FNM’s offer
was more attractive. If this is true, then both of these candidates
have a credibility problem as a result of their mercenary proclivity.
Of course, Neko Grant unquestionably owes the extension of his
political life to Ingraham eventually deciding that he could not carry
out his plan to fire both Grant and Kenneth Russell after members of the
FNM Council reportedly challenged his authority to decimate the FNM’s
foundation in Grand Bahama so brutally.
Nonetheless, my
prediction that the PLP will win a minimum of four seats, and possibly
all five, in Grand Bahama is based on the unquestionable fact that the
PLP is offering Grand Bahamians a superior slate of candidates. In
addition to Obie Wilchcombe, those candidates are Gregory Moss, Marco
City; Dr. Michael Darville, Pineridge; Tanisha Tynes, East Grand Bahama;
and Julian Russell, Central Grand Bahama.
© Copyright 2012 by thebahamasweekly.com
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