COMMENTARY: BY OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 29, 2021 – These are interesting times politically in The Bahamas. Convincing evidence continues to surface in Social Media daily that the stranglehold held by the two major political parties in The Bahamas – the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) and the Free National Movement (FNM), hybrid entities with historically similar political philosophies – will for the first time in decades face a serious challenge from a coterie of independent candidates, who can decide which party forms the next government of The Bahamas, if a sufficient number of them are elected.
Clearly, the current FNM government is in serious trouble politically. Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis is an excellent gynecologist by profession and he is in many respects politically astute, but throughout his almost three-year stewardship at the helm of the Ship of State as Prime Minister, Dr. Minnis has had to navigate through some treacherous waters, made all the more turbulent by ambitious colleagues trying to replace him as leader of the FNM.
Consequently, in his “fight for political survival,” he has made some bad decisions in appointing Ministers to assist him in governing the country. A case in point is the recent scandal surrounding the resignation Peter Turnquest as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. Of course, Mr. Turnquest vehemently denied that his Sky Bahamas business partner, Captain Randy Butler, “dishonestly caused” Alpha Aviation and Advanced Aviation to “pay away” $20.68m and $5.917m respectively to the airline via “some kind of bogus loans,” as The Tribune reported on November 25, 2020.
At the risk of being accused of waging a personal vendetta against Mr. Turnquest, I am for the first time publicly revealing information that I included in letters sent out to friends in The Bahamas seeking assistance as I struggle to put my “financial house in order” while faced with the likelihood of eviction if I do not make a substantial payment on the back rent that I owe once the moratorium on evictions put in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic is lifted.
I was reliably informed that in his capacity as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Peter Turnquest was responsible for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not officially implementing a proposal that I submitted in October of 2017 to continue doing what I did at the Embassy of The Bahamas on a contractual basis that I was told by Ambassador Sidney Collie more than two years ago had been approved and sent to the Attorney General’s Office for review.
Subsequently, Attorney General Carl Bethel confirmed that my proposal was approved and sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for implementation. When I contacted Peter Turnquest — who is a past-president of the Rotary Club of Lucaya, the club in which I was a member when I was Editor of the Freeport News – to look into the matter for me, his caustic response was, “We can’t afford it. You should look for a cheaper place to stay.”
It was at this point that I realized that Peter was vindictively getting revenge against me for something I wrote about him in a column when he was seeking the nomination in 2012 to run for the East End constituency in Grand Bahama.
Here’s an excerpt from that column: “Then there are the two FNM candidates that many in Grand Bahama have compared to gunslingers in the Wild, Wild West who sold their services to the highest bidder. Knowledgeable sources say that both Peter Turnquest, FNM candidate for East Grand Bahama, and Norris Bain, FNM standard-bearer for Marco City, initially sought nominations from the PLP, with certain financial conditions attached, and it is now being speculated that the FNM’s offer was more attractive. If this is true, then both of these candidates have a credibility problem as a result of their mercenary proclivity.”
I can well recall that rumours were rife in Grand Bahama at the time that Peter had requested assistance with the payment of his mortgage from the political parties to which he had submitted letters seeking to be a candidate. Apparently he never forgot my reference to the specter of corruption that influenced his political ambition from the start and eventually led to the alleged fraud allegations that forced him to resign as a Minister of the Government.
Meanwhile, the jury is still out on how well Mr. Turnquest performed his responsibilities as Minister of Finance, but there is a consensus that he did a fairly good job. Since his resignation, however, at a time when The Bahamas needs someone with an accomplished economic background to guide the country through the perilous period of economic uncertainty imposed by COVID-19, Prime Minister Minnis has been unable to find someone of that stature to govern The Bahamas’ economic destiny.
With an election due by law in slightly more than a year, clearly this failure is fodder for the well-oiled campaign machine of the Opposition PLP and its very capable leader Philip “Brave” Davis, not to mention the collection of independent candidates who are already demonstrating on Facebook that they intend to wage effective campaigns.
Indeed, one group of independent candidates seem to have engaged the services of Stone McEwan — better known as a popular entertainer, who had a highly successful musical career when he was based in Abaco, with such classic hit songs as “Say What You Like”, “Hangin’ Out in Abaco”, and “The Thing So Sweet” – to handle their public relations.
Stone has always been very politically savvy, and when I was Editor of the Freeport News (2003 – 2009), I got to know him very well after we started publishing an Abaco edition of the Freeport News that required me to make frequent trips to Abaco at least once a week.
An indication of Stone’s effectiveness in promoting the candidates he supports is a video of Reece Chipman’s presentation in the House of Assembly on January 27, 2021. Mr. Chipman was elected for the Centerville constituency as a member of the FNM in the May 2017 general election, ending eight consecutive terms of former PLP Prime Minister Perry Christie’s representation of that constituency, but he resigned from the FNM after a dispute with Prime Minister Minnis and became an independent member of the House.
Here’s a link to Mr. Chipman’s presentation in the House: https://www.facebook.com/StoneMcEwan/videos/10158221950003752
