The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

FORMER Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham yesterday saluted ex-Cabinet minister and Grand Bahama MP Warren Levarity, 82, who died on Sunday after a lengthy illness, as a patriot and someone who devoted his life to improving the Bahamas.

“He was selfless in his dedication to making life better for others regardless of the obstacles, regardless of the personal cost to himself,” Mr Ingraham said.

Mr Levarity, who served as minister of Out Island Affairs under the first PLP government after majority rule, is best remembered as being part of the group know as the Dissident Eight and one of the founding fathers of the Free National Movement.

His body is lying in state at the House of Assembly and he will be given a state funeral on Thursday at Christ Cathedral Church, George Street.

In 1960, the then 28-year-old Levarity won a roughly contested by-election seat after being declared both winner and loser by a margin of three votes over two days.

Mr Ingraham, recalling the political triumphs of Mr Levarity, said: “He defended his election before the magistrate’s court, as it was done at that time, and won his seat in the House of Assembly.”

Mr Levarity lost his seat in the 1962 election, but with typical perseverance, returned victorious in the 1967 ”Majority Rule” election.

On January 10, 1967, both the PLP and the United Bahamian Party (UBP) won 18 seats. The remaining two seats went to Randol Fawkes of the Labour Party and Alvin Braynen, at that time an independent member of Parliament. Both Fawkes (who became Minister of Labour and Welfare) and Braynen (who became Speaker of the House) gave their support to the PLP faction, making it the governing party.

Two years later Mr Levarity was fired by the PLP.

“Many could not understand why he broke with his party’s leadership just two years after the victory of Majority Rule. What they did not understand was that for Warren country came before party,” Mr Ingraham said.

“His quarrel with the PLP leadership was not about his position or his influence or lack thereof; it was about the party’s loss of direction and abandonment of certain goals.”

Mr Ingraham claimed that Levarity was fixed on the idea that the quality of life experienced by Bahamians could be drastically improved. “As the Minister for Out Island Affairs he had been responsible for initiating some of the more important infrastructural developments ever undertaken in the Family Islands. On his watch the highway connecting Eight Mile Rock and West End was built,” Mr Ingraham said.

“No other road built in any other Family Island has ever been built to that quality and standard. And, the length of the sea wall constructed in West Grand Bahama has yet to be exceeded anywhere in the Bahamas.

“A man of lesser conviction may have compromised with the leadership of the party. But Warren Levarity could not be tempted nor bribed. Warren was the man in the arena, willing to get dusty and a little bloodied; brave enough to recognise and acknowledge failure and always willing to try again.”

In 2010 an Ingraham-led FNM government named the highway leading into Eight Mile Rock after Mr Levarity. That was followed by him being recognised by Her Majesty the Queen and made a Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG).

Prime Minister Perry Christie yesterday described Mr Levarity as “an astute political strategist with a deep knowledge of Family Island politics”.