The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham’s return to frontline politics “isn’t in the realm” of possibility, according to former Deputy Prime Minister Frank Watson.

Mr Watson, who served in the first Ingraham administration, said the former prime minister had “given everything he could give” to nation building over the course of his lengthy political career and had now decided to enjoy the comforts of retirement.

Mr Watson was responding to questions centred on whether the FNM’s decision to hold an early convention in July had anything to do with a possible return by Mr Ingraham.

“I don’t know who all will be involved in the upcoming convention . . . but I am fairly certain that the former prime minister has made up his mind that it is over for him,” he said when asked of potential front-runners heading into the three-day conclave.

“But you can’t blame him, he has done three terms as (prime minister) with the FNM and he has been involved at various levels of politics for a long time. He is a person you can look and say, ‘he has given all he could give to The Bahamas’ and be absolutely fair in saying that.”

During a special meeting called last Thursday, the party’s council announced that it will hold a “full convention” from July 27 - 29 at the Melià resort.

The decision was made after six of the FNM’s ten MPs gave Dr Minnis an ultimatum: call an early convention or they would write to Governor General Dame Marguerite Pindling to have him constitutionally removed as leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament.

Mr Watson said he, like many of the FNM supporters across the country, dreaded the direction of the party in recent months.

According to the former Adelaide MP, the party had descended into a state of chaos in which policies of law and order took a back seat to personalities and factions. He said while the move away from the former prime minister was necessary, the inability to grow and develop the organisation illustrated that something was “obviously missing.”

He insisted that while the decision to move the party’s convention from November to July was “the best move possible,” those persons vying for leadership positions should spend the coming weeks resolving the internal woes of the party and forming connections across the “unnecessary divide.”

“I am looking forward to this,” he said of the convention. “This will end all the talk and turmoil within the party. Everyone will have their say and then we can move forward as a united party. All of the deception, the disagreements and so on, all will be done and concluded after July.”

“That is what everyone should look forward to, a united party, a formidable unit ready to contest the general election. I think that a convention will determine it all, and that is good.”