The Tribune

By LARRY SMITH

POLITICS is a strange game in The Bahamas – full of “crazy per-sons”, as Holly laughs to Megan in the Coca-Cola commercial that plays endlessly on television.

You wouldn’t know it from Perry Christie’s tragicomic remarks last week, but Bahamian parliamentarians have been “crossing the floor” in one way or another ever since the beginning of party politics in 1953.

Randol Fawkes left the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) in 1958 to form the Labour Party. And a decade later he cast the deciding vote that enabled his erstwhile rival, Lynden Pindling, to become the country’s first black premier.

But a few years before that, three PLP parliamentarians had resigned to help form the National Democratic Party (NDP), which was wiped out in the 1967 general election that brought the PLP to power.

In 1970, Education Minister Cecil Wallace-Whitfield and other leading PLPs split the party and went on to form the Free National Movement (FNM). And for the next 20 years, opposition politics was heavily fractured, with MPs sloshing back and forth in the House like dirty water.

In the 1980s, the PLP suffered another split – when widespread drug lord corruption led Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Hanna to resign from the Cabinet, and got Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie fired as they were about to quit. Ingraham and Christie spent time in the House as independents before returning to one or other of the main parties. Ingraham was to lead the FNM to victory in 1992 while Christie (who became PLP leader in 1997) had to wait until 2002 to become Prime Minister.

Christie’s accession to the party leadership caused a major rupture, with his former co-leader - Bernard Nottage - leaving in a huff to form the Coalition for Democratic Reform. The splitters suffered a humiliating defeat and eventually disbanded, with Nottage returning to the PLP as a Christie acolyte.

Before Christie and the PLP were elected in 2002, three parliamentarians had split with the FNM over the leadership struggle that followed Ingraham’s resignation after two terms in office. Tennyson Wells, Pierre Dupuch and Larry Cartwright were all re-elected as independents with tacit support from the PLP. Wells and Dupuch faded into political oblivion in the 2007 election, while Cartwright returned to the FNM.

In 2009, PLP MP Kenyatta Gibson crossed over to the FNM, while his equally disgruntled PLP colleague, Malcolm Adderley, left in 2010 to sit as an independent and eventually retired from politics. And the following year, Dr Andre Rollins and Renward Wells folded their tents as unelected splinter party leaders to join the PLP for the 2012 election.

Also in 2010, immigration minister Bran McCartney histrionically resigned from the FNM and was soon anointed leader of a new party called the Democratic National Alliance (DNA). In 2012, the DNA was able to split the FNM vote without winning a single seat in parliament.

That brings us more or less to the point of Greg Moss’ recent resignation from the PLP. He now sits in the House as an independent with the declared intention of forming another splinter party, while Wells and Rollins last week crossed the floor to the opposition FNM.

Whenever this sort of thing happens, it generates debate on the rights of an MP to abandon the party under whose banner he or she was elected in favour of another party. In our present case, Prime Minister Perry Christie threatened legislation to outlaw the practice - by forcing a resignation, which would trigger a by-election. But it’s a safe bet this won’t happen.

Floor crossing is not unusual in Western democracies. In Britain, the practice goes back to the 1600s. In the 20th century, Winston Churchill is perhaps the best known politician to have done this - twice in fact. In 1904, he switched from Conservative to Liberal before switching back in 1924.

Apart from the years of fractured opposition politics in the 70s and 80s, floor crossing has not made much difference to critical votes in The Bahamas. Cecil Wallace-Whitfield almost managed to topple Pindling in a 1970 no-confidence vote, and the game of musical chairs was popular during the long political realignment that followed, with opposition MPs coalescing around the FNM, the FNDM, the BDP and the SDP from time to time.

Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie sitting as independents in the 1980s had no immediate affect on the PLP. But the defection of three MPs (two of whom were senior figures) from the FNM in the late 90s was a serious blow to that party’s fortunes in the 2002 general election.

The move by Bran McCartney to leave the FNM and take on the leadership of a new splinter party just before the 2012 general election probably threw the result in favour of the PLP by splitting the FNM vote. The PLP won on a plurality - 48 per cent to 42, with the DNA taking 8.5 per cent.

Rollins and Wells burned their bridges with the PLP some time ago, for reasons that are still unclear. And it remains to be seen whether their move to the FNM reflects some political disintegration of the PLP as we begin the run-up to 2017 - or whether it is just a “blip on the screen” as Perry Christie referred to the bankruptcy of Baha Mar recently.

Whether or not Rollins and Wells are opportunists, there is no question that Dr Hubert Minnis and the FNM scored political points here. Some observers have accused Minnis of playing a sneaky game for his own benefit, but we think the absorption of Rollins and Wells has the capacity to reinvigorate the opposition to some extent.

One certainly shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth - especially in the face of the PLP’s monstrously incompetent and unaccountable governance. And if there ever was a serious plan afoot to oust Minnis as parliamentary leader while he remained party leader, the unintended consequences of such a move appear to have been neatly avoided. If the FNM is to avoid losing this upcoming critical election - despite the PLP’s rising unpopularity - it must move ahead with a united front and draw a line under intra-party spats. The focus should be on uniting opposition forces by cutting some sort of deal with the DNA.

When they collapsed the NDP just before the 2012 general election, Wells and Rollins no doubt believed in the reality of the PLP’s public relations. On the surface, it was a good campaign, well-presented and well-thought-out. But it portrayed a reality that Christie and his ageing cronies were either unable or unwilling to deliver. And Christie’s current term has been even more incoherent and disappointing than his previous administration.

There remains the matter of the infamous Letter of Intent (LOI), which Wells signed last year in his capacity as parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Works. This appeared to authorise a waste-to-energy company to start project investigations at the Harold Road dump. But Deputy Prime Minister Philip Davis (Wells’ immediate boss) had already transferred control of the dump to a recycling firm headed by a former client of Davis’ law firm. The story is that Wells had been directed by a senior government leader to sign the letter - even though it was above his pay grade as a parliamentary secretary. What followed was a game of cat and mouse with Davis, Christie and Wells all claiming coyly that the matter would be explained in the course of time.

But predictably that never happened, and Wells was eventually relieved of his position at the Ministry of Works. He claimed last week that he was forced to accept responsibility for the letter because he had “proceeded without written authorisation”. Minnis and the FNM had a field day on this issue last year, and still have questions on the parliamentary record which the government has signally failed to answer. Christie can now cast all the blame on Wells. Davis can continue to mumble his meaningless phrases, and Minnis seems to be left holding the bag.

Before this imbroglio, Wells had headed the government’s energy task force, and the LOI matter goes to the heart of energy reform in the country. It also speaks directly to the PLP’s lack of transparency on every significant issue it touches.

So, in my view, it would be worthwhile for Minnis and Wells to clear the air on this matter in the context of presenting a plan for true energy reform in The Bahamas.

• What do you think? Send comments to lsmith@tribunemedia.net or visit www.bahamapundit.com