The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

It was in 1989 and I was just elected Secretary General of the Free National Movement when the MP for Inagua and Mayaguana, Vernon Symonette, asked me to conduct the election of Association officers in Inagua and Mayaguana.

He wanted to go to Mayaguana first. When we landed at the airport we went straight to Abraham’s Bay and we drove to the last house in the settlement. He told me he wanted to see one of our key supporters first. I said to him that we just passed a lot of homes but Uncle Vernie said he will see them on his way out.

The house we went to was that of Errol Cartwright. You see, Errol was a part of the great FNM heritage in Mayaguana. He was totally committed to our party.

Errol Cartwright was a chef at the US Military Naval Base at Mayaguana and also an excellent fisherman.

He worked very closely with all of our candidates over the years, including Vernon Symonette, Bill Farquharson, Johnley Ferguson, Sidney Collie and me.

When we narrowly lost in 2007, I pledged to do whatever I could for the people of MICAL. We had won Mayaguana with a comfortable margin and having been appointed by Hubert Ingraham as Government Leader in the Senate and Minister of Labour and Maritime Affairs, I met with leading Mayaguans like Earnal “Shortman” Brown, Tony Lewis, Nesbit Higgins and Reggie Charlton to see what we could to do for the residents of Mayaguana.

Among other suggestions, Tony Lewis said that we should engage Errol as a maintenance officer to maintain all of the navigational lights at Mayaguana. The navigational lights were never properly maintained and mariners, both Bahamians and visitors, frequently complained about them.

Well, we did that and Errol did an excellent job in not only making sure that all the bush and grass around the lights were always cleared but also making sure they were always working, sometimes spending his own money to repair them.

After the Progressive Liberal Party won in 2012, that same year Errol’s contract was taken away from him.

FNMs on Mayaguana suffered greatly under the PLP government over the years. You had to be plenty man or plenty woman to dare to support the FNM under Pindling’s PLP, especially in the Family Islands and more particularly in places like Mayaguana, where the PLP ruled with an iron fist. They mercilessly victimised FNMs.

If you were FNM you need not apply for Government contracts, jobs and other basic things. But in spite of this, men like Steadman Brown, Leon Burrows, Leonard Murphy, Sam Murphy, Fred Moss and many others, including Errol Cartwright, worked hard to help keep democracy alive in our country.

When the history of our great party is written, freedom fighters like Errol Cartwright must be remembered, and also families from Mayaguana like the Browns, the Murphys, the Mosses, the Charltons, the McPhees, the Blacks and the Edwards.

I want to thank his wife, Esmae, for her kind hospitality over the years. I know it is difficult for Esmae and the family at this time but I trust they can find comfort in this reading from the Holy Book:

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

May Errol Cartwright rest in peace.

DION FOULKES

Nassau,

July 24, 2015.