The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

In any freshman class of new parliamentarians there is sure to be a few who thought they were cabinet timber who had to go sulking to the back bench, taking a deferment on their dreams.

It is standard protocol that you show the public your happy face and ride the bench until the Prime Minister calls you up to the cabinet table. It is always bad form to take a grudge with you to the minor league.

It is important to remember that Sir Winston Churchill rode the backbench before being called to the front bench and ultimately to stand at the Prime Minister’s despatch box in the UK Parliament. At home former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham rode the backbench when he first entered Parliament.

It took just over 100 days for the first signs of umbrage to surface on the new FNM government’s back bench. And it probably came as a surprise to no one that the animus emanated from a nitpicking greenhorn who thought he should have made the starting line-up.

In what can best be described as a rookie’s blunder, Frederick McAlpine bucked his party on the issue of extending charity to a fellow Caribbean nation down on its luck after being hit by a hurricane.

In his political bio, this parson promotes himself as a “global clergyman” who at 17 became the youngest ordained preacher in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. A stunning feat, especially when you consider that most seminaries won’t even accept you for formation until you are at least 18.

His bio proudly claims that he has produced “thought-provoking” sermons on a national and international level.

Perhaps he should stick to “preach-a-fying” and leave the politics to the professionals. His palaver in the House during the communication on extending aid to Dominica did indeed provoke thought. We thought his kind of xenophobia and bigotry had departed the honourable House of Assembly with some of its more bombastic flamethrowers like Fred Mitchell.

The national conscience was indeed provoked by his callous comments and the consensus opinion was that his maiden speech in the House will go down in history as akin to the braying of a neddy.

He objected to the Bahamas extending aid and comfort to the children of Dominica, foolishly pulling the chords of populism as our brothers and sisters in Dominica suffered. For this Reverend, charity begins at Walker’s Cay, Abaco, and ends at Mathew Town, Inagua.

McAlpine represents the good, hard-working people of Pineridge in Grand Bahama, a seat highly revered in FNM folklore because it was once represented by one of the party’s founding fathers and first leader, Sir Cecil Wallace-Whitfield.

Pineridge is a cosmopolitan constituency forged from bits of the old boundary morphed into sections of Eight Mile Rock, Lucaya and Marco City. You cannot swing a cat in the constituency without hitting someone whose ancestors are from somewhere else other than the Family Islands.

Some have family still in Turks and Caicos. Descendants of Americans, Europeans and other West Indians also live in the constituency and presumably some may have supported McAlpine. Freeport owes its very existence to foreigners – albeit white ones who could do no wrong in the eyes of the UBP government 60 years ago.

These diversity-minded citizens stood for him in May this year and when the time came for him to stand up for them in the House of Assembly he neglected that duty and instead unleashed a volley of friendly fire on his own Prime Minister – a man with considerable influence in the selection of FNM candidates.

The old people in MacLeans Town on eastern Grand Bahama will tell you there is more than one way to crack a conch shell. There are closed door venues, there is the smoking room of the House of Assembly and even the “accidental” bounce-up in the street for McAlpine to express his views privately to the Prime Minister.

He could have cornered the head of the Grand Bahama parliamentary delegation, Deputy Prime Minister Peter Turnquest and given him an earful to take to the boss.

Presumably he tried none-of-the-above and, if true, then keen observers of politics would be left with the conclusion that his aim was to inflict the most harm on his leader at time when he thought Minnis was most vulnerable.

But when Minnis teared-up on the floor of the House in his moving defence of helping Dominica, he did so from a position of strength. Minnis occupied the moral high-ground while McAlpine remained in the valley of virulence. He acted like a lover scorned. A partner jilted. An impudent, shameless modern-day Jezebel.

“Time longer than rope” and Minnis showed during five years in the wilderness of opposition that impetuousness is not his calling card.

But he is not likely to ignore this kind of disrespect from the backbench even though the chances of its being a contagious strain are close to zero.

McAlpine’s political motivations and the meditations of his heart must not become fodder for speculation.

Having climbed so high up the greasy pole we need to see if he is man enough to ask for help to get down or if his career takes the express elevator to the ground.

It is possible that when the pubescent 16-year-old McAlpine was contemplating his religious vocation he may have learned about the debt paid by a man who was left to die on a cross. Christians believe that it is from the height of the cross that their sins are redeemed.

This tenet of faith is something for McAlpine to ponder now that he has hoisted himself on his own petard.

Perhaps he can see the suffering people in Dominica from up there.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

October 15, 2017.