The Tribune

IT’S the FNM fight you’ve all been waiting for… in the red corner, former Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis, and in the other red corner, his former Health Minister, Dr Duane Sands.

While the report on the front of today’s Tribune may be about internal wrangling within the FNM, it feels like it is a long-standing disagreement bubbling to the surface.

Dr Minnis wrote a sharp letter outlining two occasions he says the now FNM chairman interfered to cause delays to association elections in his constituency. He called the alleged interference “and the proposed incursion into the constituency – hostile and needlessly divisive acts, which also happen to be unconstitutional”.

In short, he’s telling Dr Sands to get off his land. The letter itself was leaked to the media. Dr Sands says it wasn’t him who leaked it, Dr Minnis says the same.

For his part, Dr Sands says he’s responsible for every election within the party, regardless of whose constituency that happens to be in.

The details here are pure internal party politics, it’s the bitterness that’s the real story to be seen here.

Ever since Dr Sands offered his resignation over his actions related to six permanent Bahamas residents who landed in the country during lockdown with COVID-19 testing supplies and were allowed to quarantine at home, there have been some elements of that saga that seemed unresolved.

At first, Dr Sands said he wouldn’t resign. Then he offered his resignation letter. A document purporting to be from Dr Sands circulated on social media saying that Dr Sands had offered his resignation but Dr Minnis had “graciously refused to accept it”. Dr Sands said the statement on social media was not legitimate. And then Dr Minnis accepted his resignation in a very brief note.

Since then, it hasn’t seemed as if the two have been close, to say the least.

And now a new row, with Dr Minnis doggedly guarding his constituency – despite previously having suggested that had he won the election it would have been his last term as leader anyway.

Such determination to show who’s boss doesn’t suggest Dr Minnis is planning to go away from the parliamentary scene any time soon, despite a style that has seen him lose his job as Prime Minister once, and as Opposition leader twice.

In the past, not least of all with the Rebel Seven FNM MPs, he has upset sections of the party – and so when Dr Sands talks of the party leadership “rebuilding the organisation and restoring public confidence and trust and the concept of a team”, those comments are pointed.

So while this may be a soft fight, perhaps it’s a sign there may be more disagreements to come. If there’s a team, we’re not sure Dr Minnis is on it.

Illegal guns

Florida, Atlanta and Texas – that’s where the majority of the guns coming into our country are from.

That’s according to Police Commissioner Paul Rolle, who says that “literally all of the illegal weapons that we have recovered” trace back to those locations. The guns are largely bought illegally, smuggled illegally and possessed illegally. Last year, police seized 277 guns, but as Commissioner Rolle says, it’s a revolving door and “as you get them, the next shipment of guns is there”.

The question is what is being done about it at source – in the US. The commissioner says that police are partnering with agencies over there and tracing the locations – and the people involved. The same names keep coming up, he says.

We can ask the US to help, of course, but it has its own issues politically with limiting the sales of guns – you only have to look at the reaction every time there’s another mass shooting. The fact that you can say “every time” about mass shootings and that one isn’t enough to cause a clampdown and outrage is mystifying but that is America’s issue to deal with. We can only work with them as best we can to tackle those same names in the illegal sales, and to intercept the smugglers as they bring the guns over here.

When guns are as easily available in the US as they are, it’s no easy task to stop that flow – but the commissioner is right, we must do what we can. It feels, however, like that may never be enough.