The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I paraphrase the line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet in responding to a columnist who wrote last week about Loretta Butler Turner’s campaign roll-out on Long Island. Sir, me thinks thou dost protest too much.

The part-time columnist and one-time domestic pugilist listened by telephone presumably from Nassau to the proceedings taking place at an FNM event on the island. That, together with what one supposes was commentary from a highly trusted source holding the other phone led him to the conclusion that Butler Turner’s campaign was atop a slippery slope. But was he warning her or was he busy greasing the hillside?

The columnist joined a chorus that was led by the party Chairman Sidney Collie in lecturing one of the few party members to retain their seat in the 2012 election massacre, on what she must do to win next time around.

This was rich, coming from Collie who could not win the MICAL seat he lost to Alfred Grey in a constituency that while far flung, had only 1374 electors. Those he wasn’t related to he likely knew on a first name basis, but still lost.

Mind you, this is the same Collie who lost his Cabinet post because of his spectacular bungling of a local government election. The proverbial inability to organise a kidney evacuation fete in a brewery.

The irony was even thicker when the columnist piled on. He who has (so far) demurred on entering the arena set out to castigate the woman who fought valiantly to keep the party relevant in the past four years. Though they won’t admit it, the FNM owes a debt of gratitude to Butler Turner and the other MPs in the gang of six.

There can be no doubt that as it relates to Long Island, there is more in the mortar than the pestle. There are more agendas being played out there than would be at a Middle East peace conference.

Minnis is being the pragmatist and has wrapped his head around the premise that it is better to have Butler Turner in his tent shooting out, than to have her outside the tent shooting in. He put up a façade of support for her while writing a plot so loaded with treachery that even Shakespeare would blush. But as the old people say “you gatty do what you gatty do”.

Then there is the schemer-in-chief, oligarch Tennyson Wells, who probably wanders the halls of FNM headquarters muttering to himself why someone won’t relieve him of this wretched Butler Turner. The voices inside his head keep telling him that he is the final authority on anything to do with Long Island.

If he can’t get someone to do his bidding and run for the seat then he might just jolly well have to do it himself. We have seen this script from him many times before and each time with disastrous consequences for the FNM.

Then there is the Batman villain, the Joker, and one of his sidekicks (aka Dr Andre Rollins) who has trained his sights on his ancestral home. No doubt he can scare up enough people to sign his nomination papers, now that the people of mighty Fort Charlotte have kicked him and his hard mouth out of their garrison.

The most insidious person piling on this week was the columnist. He presupposes that an opposition MP, especially one who was consistently poking Perry Christie in the eye and kept the PLP’s feet to the fire would have been able to get on the phone to the PLP Minister of Works and get the trucks rolling to fix the roads on Long Island so that residents and rental car company owners alike will suffer less vehicular stress.

She would have been able to get the Minister of Health to ensure the clinic didn’t run out of medicine. And she would have cajoled the Minister of Tourism to push hotel investment and tourism to the island.

This is all laughable as even PLP MPs have had a hell of a time trying to get the government to do the most basic things in their constituency.

Politics, like sport, is about power. And revenge. And spite. In that regard, the PLP wins the gold medal and has relentlessly gone after Butler Turner.

Constituencies represented by ministers and even by the Prime Minister show signs of blight and neglect. But the columnist thinks it’s all Butler Turner’s fault that the PLP turned its back on the good people of Long Island.

I have no doubt that when racking his brain to come up with an alternative candidate for Long Island that the columnist stares at the man in the mirror and says: “You whistle, I’ll point”.

Some Long Island guinep bitter and sour.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

September 26, 2016.