The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

PROGRESSIVE Liberal Party delegates kept the energy and hopes high on the second day of the party’s 52nd National Convention.

As candidate-hopefuls filed in to be nominated for various positions, onlookers expressed confidence in the party’s ability to effectively communicate their successes and challenges to the Bahamian electorate.

“I think it’s exhilarating,” Deputy Prime Minister Philip Davis said. “People are passionate, I think you can feel the electricity. If you’ve been around you can feel the electricity, I just hope you are connected by it.

“We hope that our message gets out, and we hope that the barrier for our message getting to our people will at least rest and allow it to get over to the people.”

Thomas Saunders, a 77-year-old stalwart councillor from Bimini, said: “I feeling fine, I think everything is about over as far as I can see because those other guys are all split up. It’s going to be a carbon copy of the last (election). (Opposition parties) they too breakup and ain’t together so it wouldn’t make sense for them to even try to run, probably just go through the motions.”

Mr Saunders continued: “The DNA, I don’t think they even gone get a seat they far from being ready. They split up between two or three parties so the PLP is the most stable one out of all.”

Owner of the Dot Miller Collection, Dorothy Miller, who had a booth in the convention’s lobby area, said: “I’m a PLP supporter, all my life. What I feeling is we going to win again. I see it. I always have a booth to conventions. The craft is selling, mostly the PLP colours are the fastest sellers, all handmade by me.”

Newly installed vice-chairman, 38-year-old Danielle Gibson of Eleuthera, said: “I am feeling excited, enthusiastic, this is a great and awesome time to be a Bahamian and to be a PLP.

“I think that this time and this convention will definitely speak to unity, that is something that every party needs and we need leaders that will rise up and keep us strong and united because this is the only way we’re going to change our country and keep our focus on what makes the Bahamas great.”

D’Angelo Whymms, Southern Shores branch delegate, said: “I think personally, if you’re looking options-wise you have two other parties out there that are disenfranchised. First off with each other, and they’re disenfranchised internally. You have persons who have no record of anything, the FNM who can’t get themselves together and then you have the PLP who have always been a party for the people, and the people encompasses the young persons as well.”

Mr Whymms added: “Rome was not built in a day, every thing happens with progression and I believe that the PLP is definitely a party for the youth.”