The Tribune

By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

AN official from the National Election Debate Series has come out and accused the Free National Movement of being “in breach of good faith” because of its stance against participating in a national debate.

The University of The Bahamas organised a National Election Debate Series which commenced in April of this year. All political parties participated except the FNM.

Initially the FNM had agreed to participate, but later reneged citing the debate was not up to the standards the party required.

Christopher Curry, co-chair of UB’s debate series, has expressed frustration to The Tribune that he cannot get a response from the FNM on requests made for the party to participate in a national debate between party leaders.

“To begin with I would say I was excited to hear that the leader of the opposition, Philip ‘Brave’ Davis had challenged the prime minister to a debate,” Mr Curry said. “I was excited because all along the debate committee has called for this.

“In our initial conception of the debate, we always had plans for the two to debate. We were trying from the start to be inclusive in the process of formatting our debate so we planned to have debates that involved all the parties. We tried our best to work closely and privately with the various parties. Initially we had the FNM supporting the debates and then they pulled out at the very last minute of the first debate.

“Then they issued a statement explaining their reasons for pulling out of the debate. They said they had issues with the format and cited a number of examples in our jurisdictional area, including Canada and Jamaica as to why they would not be debating issues with thresholds for parties that did not meet a certain percentage of polling or did not have representation in the House of Assembly, etcetera.”

Mr Curry said the group has changed the format of the debate and wants to make it clear that his organisation has repeatedly reached out to the FNM to inform the party of the change and to extend an invitation. All attempts, he said, were ignored.

“We are asking for the FNM to rejoin the debate, understanding that this is an entirely different format and a format that is quite in line with their original objections to the first guidelines,” he continued. “I was expecting to hear a response, but generally speaking I have never received responses from Carl Culmer, he chooses instead to use media as his way of responding to me. I think that is not operating in good faith.

“I’m trying to set the record straight that we have made all kinds of overtures to the current government and I don’t feel that they have operated in good faith because they make these statements in public to media houses, but they don’t answer their emails or even our WhatsApp messages and we had changed our debate format to their liking in my opinion.

“This current format, which basically is just the prime minister versus the opposition leader, is precisely what the country wants. Everyone wants to see Minnis versus Davis. I want you to know that we have continuously reached out to the FNM through the Office of the Prime Minister and through Carl Culmer to get the FNM back on board with our debate.”

He said he has been able to have discussions with the PLP who have agreed in general to the new format of the debate: party leaders debating. He said the topics of discussion would be the economy, environment, constitutional reform, health care and COVID-19.