The Tribune

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell, during the budget debate in the House of Assembly earlier this year, made it clear that he wants to retire in the PLP government “with a comfortable life” and “continue to prosper with respect while no longer actively involved in public policy”.

Obviously to cushion this anticipated “comfortable life”, there had to be some kind of salary adjustment. One would have thought that during these tough economic times with so many jobless Bahamians, he would have been sensitive enough to know that this was not the moment to ask for a raise. But quite oblivious to a suffering nation, he invited House members to note that over the past year he had “spoken many times and in fact moved a resolution to support a Select Committee Request to review the benefits and allowances of Members of Parliament”.

“It is regrettable that the work of the Committee was not yet reported to the House, though largely it is finished,” he complained. “I had anticipated that our work would have led to some changes in the budget which would have buttressed and supported the work of Members of Parliament.”

A rather tall order, considering this government’s abysmal failure – failure at almost everything it has touched to date.

And so after making it clear what rewards he expected to take him into the sunset of his life, it was shocking to hear what Mr Mitchell wished on a prime minister who had done more for this country than any politician sitting in today’s parliament — either individually or collectively.

Not only did prime minister Hubert Ingraham pull this nation out of the backwaters in which the Pindling government had left it in 1992, but he was the first politician who had opened the previously locked doors to Mr Mitchell’s political ambitions. And those ambitions were huge. Mr Mitchell was determined to be prime minister.

At one time – as far as Mr Mitchell was concerned – former prime minister Ingraham was the greatest. Someone recalls seeing a photograph of Mr Mitchell one evening when Mr Ingraham was speaking at RM Bailey park.

“Mitchell,” he said,“was sitting beside him grinning like a Cheshire cat.” Those were the days when today’s Foreign Minister was delighted to be an Ingraham man.

Although he had won his electoral seat in his hometown of Cooper’s Town, Abaco, in last year’s general election, Mr Ingraham decided to retired after 37 years in parliament. For 15 of those years, he was prime minister.

When the FNM won its first election in 1992 with Mr Ingraham as prime minister, the Bahamas’ Treasury was not only broke, but unemployment was high, and after the drug years, the Bahamas was a pariah in the international arena. Our tourism industry had collapsed.

Sol Kerzner, who had first come to the Bahamas under Pindling, took one look, and walked away. However, he was attracted back by the new prime minister. It was Sol Kerzner, under Prime Minister Ingraham who breathed new life into tourism with the birth of Atlantis. Atlantis is still this country’s largest private employer.

The jigsaw puzzle then fell into place as other hotel developments followed. The Issa family were the first with the introduction of the all inclusive idea at Breezes. The Bahamas was back in business and indeed it prospered.

As a young man, Mr Mitchell, now 60, was desperate to get into politics. In fact, he had been trying to get into the House of Assembly from 1975 when he first joined the PLP.

However, he could never get his foot in the door. By the time the 1992 election came around, Mr Mitchell was particularly upset by the Pindling government’s curbing of freedom of speech, particularly to the closing of the Bahamas Broadcasting Corporation’s airwaves to the Opposition.

At that time, he considered prime minister Pindling the “head slickster of the PLP at his slick best”.

And so when one of Mr Ingraham’s first acts on winning the government in 1992 was to open the airwaves to private broadcasting, Mr Mitchell should have been a happy man.

Since then, Bahamians have not ceased to make their opinions heard. Mr Ingraham had given Bahamians what the Pindling government had denied them — freedom of speech.

Mr Ingraham even kept his promise and, although he headed his own political party, he gave Mr Mitchell an FNM seat in the Senate in 1992.

Mr Mitchell occupied this seat as an independent senator. It was his first step into the halls of parliament — and it was Mr Ingraham who had opened the door for him.

However, by 1996, the FNM’s national executive committee and central council was in a state of agitation.

The members met and passed a resolution recommending that Prime Minister Ingraham fire Mr Mitchell from his FNM Senate seat. An election was on the horizon and Mr Mitchell was looking for a nomination for a House seat. In 1997 – the election year — Mr Ingraham was in Canada on a promotion tour.

Uninvited, Mr Mitchell flew to Canada to secure a seat. It is understood that it was made clear to him that he would not be nominated for a constituency under the FNM.

It was said that on his return to the Bahamas, he flew to Washington where Sir Lynden was in hospital. He was obviously on the same mission.

He had to wait another five years — 2002 – before he was elected to the House as the MP for Fox Hill. He has probably never forgiven Mr Ingraham for denying him the requested nomination.

Last week, Mr Ingraham broke his silence from his retirement to write an open letter about a BahaMar agreement with which he had dealt as prime minister. In his opinion, the Christie government was not moving in the right direction.

As a result, a bitter Fred Mitchell flew into one of his vitriolic tantrums, and although wanting the Bahamian people to secure him a comfortable retirement after only 11 years of House service, compared to Mr Ingraham’s 37 years of real accomplishments, told House members:

“I wish the multi-headed dragon would crawl back under his rock. This is not your time. Your era is finished, your own leader said that your era is finished. So go back into the past, be quiet and stay out of big people’s business.

“The same fellow who sold BTC, gave away the national patrimony, go sit down. Makes you sick. He apologises? Apologises for us?

“People think that my objections to the former prime minister become idiosyncratic, but what I would say is this: my objections are so strong because he is the one who is responsible for this mess that we find ourselves in.

“It amazes me that he would come to the defence of a project that he wanted to sink. The only reason he went running and scurrying to support that project in the last year was because he had nothing else.”

This was the voice of a pygmy lost in the shadow of a prime minister of achievement, and complaining in his wilderness of confusion.