The Tribune

IT LOOKS as though the two Freds — Smith and Mitchell — are on a collision course as they head towards 2017 and what promises to be a most interesting election.

The QC - Fred Smith – promises to challenge politician Mitchell in his own constituency, Fox Hill, where Mitchell is determined to have a “good reception” awaiting him.

Fred Smith, a fearless lawyer and human rights champion, so fed up with the corruption that has this country in a choke hold, is now thinking of throwing off his legal robes, putting on his boxing gloves and entering the political arena.

He intends to contest the Fox Hill constituency seat held by Mr Mitchell to protect, he says, the Bahamas from the MP’s long term agenda to become prime minister. He plans to enter the ring either as an FNM party member, or an Independent — or better yet – as the light of mischief clicks on in his brain – a full fledged member of the PLP.

“I am seriously considering my options,” Mr Smith said over the weekend. “I am considering joining the PLP because they are so corrupt and they have become a party of thugs and political abusers.

“It may very well be that I come in as the hatchet man and sweep it clean and keep it clean. I’m exploring my options. Both the FNM and PLP in recent decades have abandoned respect for the rule of law and it seems like getting power and holding on to power at all costs is the only motive.”

Mr Smith said he considers “Fred Mitchell a very dangerous politician …very clever, an intellectual gymnast, demagogue and capable of extraordinarily adept spin-mongering. Someone like Fred Mitchell has potential to become prime minister.”

Whenever we see a photo of Mr Mitchell with his poker face and furtive eyes, it always recalls the remark of Caesar in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”

So believes Mr Smith. Despite what he has done over the years for his FNM party, Mr Smith says he has been rejected so many times that he is considering going right to the core of the problem and destroying the cancer.

This takes us back many years to a once rebellious, but even then over ambitions Fred Mitchell, who recently declared that he would never again sit on the parliamentary back bench.

We have always known Mr Mitchell — from a very young man— as an extremely ambitious wannabe politician with his eyes firmly fix on the prime minister’s office. He started as a starry-eyed protégé of Sir Lynden Pindling, but over the years the rose-tinted glasses came off and he turned into an arch political enemy.

In 1989, then a lawyer, he told members of Freeport’s Pilot Club that “those who lead us are in a state of inertia. They are busy fighting political battles while the real business of the country goes unattended”.

“We saw the purchase of the Bank of the Bahamas as the latest of the ventures into the private sector. It is now also proposed that the Bahamas government gets into the area of health insurance which can be quite adequately handled by the private sector and a patient’s doctor. Each year, some new law or regulation comes on to the books which makes it more difficult for the individual to survive in society,” Mr Mitchell complained at that time.

By 1990, his People’s Democratic Force (PDF) had been formed. On Guy Fawkes Day that year he proposed burning the entire Cabinet in effigy on Fort Charlotte. He invited the public to attend, explaining that the PDF was holding the “public demonstration to express the utter contempt for which it holds this (Pindling) Cabinet of the Bahamas as it continues policies that oppress the Bahamian people.” In fact, he added, “the public treasury should not have to bear the unnecessary expense of 15 Ministers of Government.” Today – 26 years later – there are still 15 cabinet ministers, including Minister Mitchell, with five additional state ministers.

In December, 1989, Mr Mitchell had led his PDF in burning the Constitution under the fig tree in front of the Supreme Court building and sending its ashes to Prime Minister Pindling “as a reminder of how our country is being destroyed.” The burning was to protest a proposed disciplinary action to be taken against Mr Mitchell by the Bahamas Bar Council. The following year he was again in trouble with the Bar Council when its president had reason to brand as “deplorable” his attempt to hand Acting Chief Justice Gonsalves Sabola a petition at a church service calling on the judiciary to protect individual freedoms. The Bar Council president accused Mr Mitchell of “grand standing”. He urged him to consider good manners and decency “in his quest to become prime minister.”

In 1990, the PLP condemned Mr Mitchell as a “political trouble maker.” It said the PLP had given him “every opportunity to come to the political and social forefront in this country.” The party, it said, had “put the utmost confidence in Mr Mitchell in a number of tangible ways, including getting him to handle the Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas, Bahamas Information Services, and editing the party’s newspaper. No less a person than the Prime Minister himself took Mr Mitchell into his full confidence. But what was Mr Mitchell’s response? A complete right about face. Desertion in the face of the enemy.”

Although Mr Mitchell had been trying to get into parliament from 1975 when he first joined the PLP, it was Mr Ingraham who opened the door for him. Despite the fact that Mr Mitchell still headed his own political party, Mr Ingraham, now the prime minister, gave him an FNM Senate seat in 1992. By 1996,the FNM’s national executive committee and central council was in a state of agitation. They passed a resolution recommending that Prime Minister Ingraham fire Mr Mitchell from the FNM’s 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 an FNM nomination. He was turned down.

It was during that time that Mr Mitchell was a frequent visitor to The Tribune’s offices with his almost daily press releases. During one conversation, he asked what we thought of his idea of returning to the PLP. We told him that after all that he had said about Sir Lynden and the PLP he would lose his credibility with the public. But he persisted — and with the same reasoning just given by lawyer Fred Smith for considering joining the PLP — Mr Mitchell was adamant that to have any possibility of changing the PLP, reform had to come from within. He still had his eye on the prime minister’s office and this was the only way to achieve his life’s ambition. He rejoined the PLP and invited us to watch him. That was 14 years ago and we are still watching.

And now an angry lawyer, Fred Smith, who has spent his life fighting for the rights of the voiceless —in addition to saving the environment — thinks that maybe the only way to rip out the corruption in this country is to go to the root of the problem — the PLP.

Having known Mr Smith’s late father, we are certain that he must have warned his son at some stage of his development that “if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas”.

We advise Mr Smith to think again — but this time more deeply.