The Tribune

By ADRIAN GIBSON

ajbahama@hotmail.com

THE Free National Movement is in a ‘quagmire of web’. The so-called Official Opposition has become the laughing stock of Bahamian politics … and the jokes aren’t even funny.

With the controversies surrounding the Save The Bays (STB) and Peter Nygard court filings, videos and other revelations – including the unpolished, highly questionable response of various government ministers – the showdown in the FNM for the chairman’s post, in the wake of Michael Pintard’s resignation, has become the most entertaining sideshow in local politics.

Is the FNM serious? They have gone through the trifecta … the good, the bad and now the ugly!

With their streak of bad luck, someone in the FNM “mussy tief” church money. At this rate, the FNM will soon be renting a chairman (going online at www.rentachairman.com).

At the close of nominations on Monday, the candidates in the race for chairman were former Cabinet Minister and Blue Hills MP, Sidney Collie, and former leader of The Workers Party Rodney Moncur, who ran as the Democratic National Alliance’s candidate for Bain Town in 2012. Mr Collie is purportedly FNM leader Dr Hubert Minnis’ choice for the post whilst Mr Moncur, who was denied a nomination for his beloved Bain Town constituency, has decided to enter the race to fire-up a languid FNM machinery.

Strangely, whilst Michael Pintard resigned because he had been mired in controversy since he was named in a lawsuit last month filed against Mr Nygard and his lawyer, Keod Smith, by four STB directors and Reverend CB Moss, the FNM now proposes to nominate and possibly elect Mr Collie – a former attorney for Nygard – as the party’s next national chairman.

Yes, there are those who are howling at the fact that only two people nominated to challenge for the FNM’s chairmanship and that, in the case of both, there are detractors who dismiss them as either weak, crazy, insufferable, flimsy, politically unattractive, etc.

Sidney Collie is a sure fire cure for insomnia. To use the words of Republican Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, Mr Collie is very low energy. Mr Collie is, politically, one of the dampest squibs in the box.

In 2008, tongues were wagging throughout the country following Mr Collie’s sudden resignation as Lands and Local Government Minister in the face of a possible firing and Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham’s reshuffling of his Cabinet.

Though I praised him at the time for accepting responsibility for his mistakes, overall Mr Collie was a flimsy minister who performed dismally. He was the first Cabinet minister out of the door in the last Ingraham administration.

According to The Tribune, then PLP chairman Glenys Hanna Martin claimed that she wrote to the former minister (Collie) on June 1, 2008, to advise him of her concerns and urge him not to act contrary to the law.

The letter was copied to Mr Ingraham and then Parliamentary Commissioner Errol Bethel. She also asserted that she had spoken to Mr Collie on several occasions and had personally alerted the Prime Minister about the brewing fiasco. Yet, Mr Collie and his underlings at the department of Local Government stubbornly charged ahead with a flawed poll. In this instance, the tenacious Mrs Hanna Martin truly performed as Opposition chair, and detected and questioned certain erroneous conduct in some of the elections slated to be conducted throughout the Family Islands.

According to Mr Collie, he made mistakes in the process of that year’s local government elections “which led to a court action and the consequent frustration of many Family Island voters”.

If these blatant blunders had occurred during a general election, the perception of the Bahamas having fair electoral and democratic procedures would have been tainted and consigned to the bin, while possibly subjecting our elections to intense United Nations/international observation. As a chairman of the FNM, could Mr Collie now better organise Family Island branches and branch elections or would we see more of the disorientated approach that was on display in 2008?

Sidney Collie is a nice guy. He is a salt-of-the-earth fella. I like him. But, he is unexciting. He reminds me of a tuna casserole - edible and perhaps nutritious but you’ll never remember eating it. He is the type of person who could easily get lost in a crowd.

In an environment where the leader and the deputy leader of the FNM are clamouring for attention and neither can command heads to turn or draw the undivided attention of a crowd, to now triple-down on that makes no sense for the FNM. The FNM needs someone who will excite and interest a politically hungry public offended by the PLP, a public that wants someone who is able to steam-roll the party’s chairman Bradley Roberts. The public wants someone who can challenge Mr Roberts, not with venom, but with information, with evidence and quick thinking. They want somebody who will make Bradley Roberts stammer politically!

Relative to the disputed land, Mr Collie negotiated with the government on behalf of Mr Nygard. In documents filed in court and referring to talks with the fashion mogul’s then-attorney, Mr Collie, the Government said it was its “intention to cause the coastline at Simms Point ... to be reinstated.”

Does Mr Collie’s former professional relationship with Mr Nygard now complicate things for the FNM?

Public disappointment in the FNM is due to the fact that the Bahamian people must now stomach an offensive PLP.

I see Mr Collie as neither fish nor fowl. One can’t really see him!

On the other hand, cab-driver and radio talk show host Rodney Moncur is vying for the chairmanship. There are those who would say that Mr Moncur’s candidacy is yet another doomed attempt on the citadel of power. I disagree.

Say what you may about Rodney Moncur, he is a man of conviction. Yes, he is unpredictable, sometimes hot-headed and sometimes so outspoken that people become uncomfortable or dismiss him with contempt. However, he is a bare-knuckle fighter and, given the FNM’s two choices, he is possibly the party’s best bet at having a fighting chance against Bradley Roberts.

Some would argue that Mr Moncur can be likened to Donald Trump. Our nation’s most outspoken Justice of the Peace, Mr Moncur is a well-known social and political activist who, even whilst he has faced his own financial challenges over the years, never gave up his will and fight to assist so many of the poor, downtrodden and victims of seeming injustice.

Over the years, I have developed a great respect for Mr Moncur, who has demonstrated that he is a man of his word, that he is a man of the people and that - regardless of the criticisms - he would fight tooth and nail for a cause that he believes in, even to his own detriment. I respect that. Mr Moncur is an encapsulation of the saying “if one doesn’t stand for something, they would fall for anything” and so he takes various stands to express his approval or discontent with matters that the average citizen might ordinarily shy away from. He has made his political advocacy and public affairs campaigns an intimidating brand where, when one hears that Rodney Moncur has mobilised and is coming, it engenders a deep fear of public embarrassment/exposure as he takes no prisoners and does not mind if, to attain justice and a meaningful end, one refers to him as “crazy” or a “loose cannon”.

Mr Moncur says what he thinks and takes the flak that comes with it. He would risk the ridicule of the masses to stand up for his beliefs.

You probably won’t agree with him but you will certainly listen to what he has to say and also find that he can articulate reasons for that which he believes. He is not an idiot. He is controversial but he is always prepared and researched. I have heard Mr Moncur make reasonable arguments on various legal issues, analysing the detail with admirable aplomb. He has even pleaded in the courts for people who could not afford legal representation.

Mr Moncur should not be underestimated. He is not the most refined or politically correct person, but he has political and sociological pedigree in the Bahamas. If anyone that you encounter in your day-to-day discourse is real, Mr Moncur is it.

His shortfalls can be his philosophy of certain matters. He reminds me of that Rudyard Kipling poem ‘If’:

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute,

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Mr Moncur’s view on gender is extraordinarily conservative and, for some, borders on misogynistic. If criticism can be levelled at him, it is that some of his views border on grounds of disqualification. However, he will advise and make public his views and so one does not have to guess, no one can accuse him of deception. With Rodney Moncur, you see what you get and that level of honesty is sorely lacking in Bahamian politics - and indeed within the FNM.

I am told that quite a number of FNMs may vote for him. He will likely outwork Mr Collie, even if he is unsuccessful. He will likely be supported heavily by the anti-Minnis bloc of the FNM.

And so it seems that the FNM is only capable of putting up two candidates for the chairmanship. Perhaps that is because of Dr Minnis’ purported policy that the chairman will not get a constituency nomination and that he would be appointed to the Senate and brought into the Cabinet if the FNM wins. I am only left to assume that Mr Collie then will not be re-nominated for the MICAL constituency.

Since the FNM’s choice is between Collie and Moncur ... the party’s best bet will likely be Moncur. The race will no doubt be competitive.

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