The Tribune

AFTER a second tour of Bay and Grants Town Saturday, Prime Minister Ingraham said yesterday he is confident that the FNM will win the once PLP stronghold – turning it from a stream of yellow to an ocean of red.

John Bostwick, son of former Senate president Henry Bostwick and former Attorney General Janet Bostwick, the first Bahamian woman to act as prime minister, is the FNM candidate for the area. This is the young man’s first official venture into politics.

Although the Prime Minister is unsure of Centreville, he says he plans to return to Bain and Grants Town before the May 7th election, where he believes his party can capture the votes.

Last week, PLP’s Bain and Grants Town candidate, Dr Bernard Nottage, chided the Prime Minister for failing to address hundreds of Bain Town residents, who he said had assembled at the Sarah Ingraham Park on Hospital Lane, to hear Mr Ingraham’s plans for their area.

This was not the full truth as PLP supporters from various other constituencies — such as Yamacraw and Nassau Village — were bused to the site by PLP operatives to swell the crowd. The police warned that they were unruly and advised the Prime Minister to change his planned route to avoid trouble. In the TV footage of the event, Mrs Melanie Griffin, Yamacraw’s PLP candidate, and the PLP candidate for Nassau Village could be seen in the background. The candidates and their constituency supporters had every right to be there as Bahamian citizens, but to say that they were Grants Town constituents anxious to hear the Prime Minister speak, was just not so. In the crowd were Grants Town residents whose ranks were enlarged by PLP outsiders. And, if police reports are to be believed, they were not breathing peace.

While PLP Leader Perry Christie calls for peaceful elections, his followers seem to be ignoring his pleas as they create potentially dangerous situations. These confrontational trouble spots also put an extra and unnecessary burden on the police who are desperately trying to maintain order.

Any leader who is sincerely interested in keeping the peace would not plan such demonstrations or hold rallies, where both sides are fired up by the platform rhetoric, on the same night in the same neighbourhood as their opponents. That just is not commonsense. It is dumb bravado looking for trouble.

And so for Dr Nottage to say that Prime Minister Ingraham was afraid to address the people is a misrepresentation of the facts. He knows that the Prime Minister was showing good sense in an attempt to keep the peace. As for those appearing to create situations to stir up potential trouble, maybe Dr Nottage should look in the mirror for at least one answer.

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Over the weekend, a young man drove to Centreville in a friend’s yellow-coloured vehicle. Seeing the display of yellow on the car, one of a group of ladies rushed up to him and gushed: “Oh, you must be a big time PLP!”

“Yeh, I don’t want Papa to come talking any nonsense around me! Ya better tell him so!” she babbled, as her waving arms sliced the air. She warned the gentleman, who in fact was an FNM supporter, of the good sense of keeping “Papa” away from her. Her friends agreed.

She made a little speech about supporting the PLP and what “Papa” better not come promising around her, then in a typical PLP gesture, she held out her hand: “Gimme sumt’ing,” she begged. He gave her and her friends a few dollars.

“Do you live in the area?” he asked. She said she did and pointed to a small shack a few feet away. “Do you have any running water in your house?” he asked. She pointed down the street to the public pump less than 50 feet away. This was the only water available to her and many of her neighbours, she said.

Her representative is Opposition leader Perry Christie, in politics for 38 years, a minister in the Pindling government for much of the time, and for five years PLP Prime Minister of the Bahamas.

The young man, pointed out to the anti-“Papa” voter that here she was out fighting for Mr Christie, when there was little evidence of Mr Christie fighting for her. He said that as her MP for all those years, and prime minister for five of them, it seemed that Mr Christie had not thought enough of her to supply her with running water. He invited her to measure off the short distance between her house and the water pipes to the pump. “All Mr Christie had to do as prime minister, if he was really interested in your welfare, was to phone Minister Bradley Roberts to have his staff hook you up to the water main. Do know how easy that would be?” he asked her. “In fact he could had done it himself. All he would need would be a handy man, a piece of PVC pipe and PVC glue – in no time you’d have running water if your MP were really interested in your welfare.”

He suggested that she should take a trip to Abaco if she really wanted to see how “Papa” took care of his constituents. As the young man kept talking, comparing the difference in representation between the two leaders, she fell silent, her head drooping. He told her that after all these years it was disgraceful that she was out fighting for Mr Christie, while still having to carry buckets of water from the public pump.

“Suddenly,” the young man told us, “she said she was going in for her daughter. She walked to her little house, and returned with her daughter.”

“I aint PLP no more!” she declared. “Bring me a red shirt!”