The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Brent Symonette said the Free National Movement should hold a convention before the next election. I don’t think we can wait that long – we urgently, desperately need a change in leadership, and we need it now!

Like most Long Islanders, I have been an FNM all my life. That is why it pains me to see what our party has become in the hapless, petty hands of Dr Hubert Minnis. Things get worse with every passing day and it simply cannot be allowed to continue.

Every FNM worth his or her salt knows we have the wrong person in charge. The sooner Minnis and his tricky band of yes-men accept this fact and step aside to make way for a real leader, the better. Instead, though, they continue to seek to divide us with their petty and underhanded tactics, in the process destroying the public image of a party that was built on honesty, fairness and transparency by far better men than they are.

Minnis is not the great unifier he claims to be. Actually, his proper title would be ‘Divider-in-Chief’ – an insecure and reactionary amateur who has no place among the political titans who came before him. In my opinion he is too petty, too small minded, too vindictive, to put the party before his own interests, or those of the Bahamian people.

Just the other night, my MP and unequivocal choice for leader, Loretta Butler-Turner, held a fundraiser to benefit the victims of Hurricane Joaquin.

Numerous high-ranking members of the FNM joined well-meaning members of the public in coming together to help those who have suffered so terribly. But not Minnis and his cronies. No, they had better things to do with their Friday night. An event to benefit struggling Bahamians, and not a single member of his toady chorus even bothered to show up!

What they did amounted to an intentional boycott of a charitable event, because it was organized by a fellow FNM who they happen to feel intimidated by. Shameful, cowardly, self-serving behaviour that has no place in the FNM.

Instead of attending, I am told, ‘Team Minnis’ decided to spend the evening wining and dining a tabloid publisher, probably planning their next round of poisonous spin against fellow members of my great party.

Bad enough that the FNM is embarrassed by its leader’s no-show to such a worthy event, the next day I turn on my TV to see Minnis at church with Prime Minister Perry Christie, the two of them laughing and cutting up like old friends!

Apparently, he can show up when summoned by Big Perry C. but not for the victims of the most destructive storm in recent Bahamian history.

Aside from the obvious lack of empathy for hurricane victims who lost everything, this move should be extremely worrying to every member of the FNM, as it is yet another example of the shocking lack of political astuteness regularly displayed by this depressing pretender.

Hurricane Joachim galvanised this country in a way that few events in recent history have. Obviously Loretta’s contribution to the relief efforts have resonated with the public. A smart, clearheaded political animal would do all that he could to ride the coattails of that success to his own benefit. Instead, he decides to snub an event aimed at providing further help, and is pictured the very same weekend creased up with the prime minister responsible for the worst official disaster response in modern history!

Minnis could not make himself look worse if he tried. This is yet further proof that he is absolutely, totally, completely unelectable and that the FNM will come out of Election 2017 with their noses in the dirt if we do not make a change now.

Nor is it the first time his extreme political immaturity has been on display. Remember the photos of Minnis last year, gatorade in hand, bewildered look upon his face, willingly participating in the government’s feckless, cynical PR stunt in the hurricane ravaged islands?

Just compare the two: Loretta on the ground immediately after the storm, helping in any way she could and collaborating with private sector groups that had raised funds and shipped donations. Minnis, the only FNM on a private jet stuffed to bursting with PLP Cabinet ministers, flying down days later to pose for meaningless, self-serving photo ops.

I hear that plane was so packed with greasy politicians that they couldn’t actually bring down any supplies, so they were photographed handing out other people’s donations while trying to pass them off as their own! And there is Minnis, right in the centre.

At the end of the day, both the plane stunt and the fundraiser boycott boil down to one thing: fear. Minnis and his cohorts are scared stiff of Loretta and intimidated whenever called upon to share a stage with her, hurricane victims be damned. They would rather consort with the enemy than be outshone by our lady in waiting.

It is the same reason why the refuse to call a convention. Minnis won the first time because his lackeys managed to wheel and deal the delegates with promises of this, that and the other. But this won’t happen again. Even those who owe him favours are abandoning Minnis and the old guard of the party have washed their hands of him completely.

That is why he recently tried to expel former candidates from the FNM Council. If Hubert Ingraham, Brent Symonette, etc. still had any time for Minnis, why would he feel the need to get rid of the men and women chosen by the former leadership to run in 2012?

He is all on his own and come convention, he will be eaten alive. That is why he is trying to duck this fight.

Minnis needs to remember, though, that this party does not belong to him. It belongs to all of us who are members, stalwarts, volunteers, officers. And further, it belongs to the Bahamian people, who desperately need a competent, transparent and accountable person in the driver’s seat of the “freedom party” if we have any hope in hell of taking our country back from the nightmare that is the second Christie administration.

DISGRUNTLED LONG ISLAND FNM

Nassau,

January 20, 2016.