Amid growing turmoil in the Free National Movement (FNM), former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham broke his long-held silence yesterday, expressing disappointment over the state of affairs in the opposition party, and suggested it was because of pettiness that certain decisions were being made. Ingraham also confirmed to us that he has no plans to return to frontline politics. He said he is happy in retirement.
We asked him whether he is pleased with the leadership of Dr. Hubert Minnis, to whom he gave his blessing in 2012 after he resigned.
"It is not me who needs to be pleased. It's the people of The Bahamas," said Ingraham in an exclusive interview with National Review.
Following the 2012 Abaco by-election, Minnis declared, "The Ingraham era is over." We asked Ingraham yesterday whether he advises Minnis. He said, "No. He has not been seeking my advice, and I have not been offering my advice to him in recent times."
We also asked him whether he supports Minnis. Ingraham said as the constitutionally elected leader of the FNM, Minnis has his support. But he intimated he is not entirely pleased with the direction Minnis is taking the party. Ingraham expressed extreme regret that Monique Gomez, who ran for the party in South Beach in the last election, did not secure the nomination for South Beach for the next general election.
National Review recently revealed that Howard Johnson, the candidate for South and Central Eleuthera in 2012, received the South Beach nomination for 2017 after he gave Minnis an ultimatum. In his letter to Minnis last September, Johnson acknowledged that Gomez was getting the South Beach nomination and told Minnis that he would not run in any constituency if he could not get the nod for South Beach.
Ingraham said, "I was very disappointed that Monique Gomez, a very qualified lady who operates her own business, who comes from a PLP family, who was an outstanding member of the family who is not a PLP, who is president of the Women's Association, assistant treasurer of the party or deputy treasurer of the party, who is very articulate, who is a person of good character, who works hard, who had been promised the nomination for South Beach, was summarily denied the nomination. That disappoints me greatly."
We asked Ingraham directly whether he is pleased with the direction Minnis is taking the party.
Ingraham responded, "Well, I just commented on couple things that have happened that I disagree with strongly. And the case of Monique Gomez, he knows my position on that clearly. I spoke to him about it several times. So this is nothing new."
Ingraham also expressed disappointment that infighting within the party continues to spill out into the public domain.
"It certainly is my hope that the FNM would learn to keep its business out of the streets and that the leadership of the FNM would recognize that the FNM is a party with a movement comprising large numbers of people who moved into the party, some of whom get annoyed very quickly and they move out or they refuse to vote in an election or they vote for other people to spite other people, etc. So one has to manage the FNM very gingerly to ensure you have a cohesive political force.
"Unlike the PLP, the FNM didn't come into being as a result of the oppression of Bay Street and all that stuff, etc. It came into being after there was a dispute between the leadership of the PLP and some of the leaders who made up the FNM.
"So it took a lot to keep the FNM together and the 19 years that I was leader of the party, I did my best to keep it together. And so, I hope those who are now in office in the FNM would recognize that, people like (former FNM senator and meritorious council member) Edwin "Vikey" Brown, who is getting buried later in the week, they spent a great deal of their time trying to make sure that all the factions in the FNM were taken care of or responded to, and that the leaders of the party knew where there were problems boiling and had taken steps to try to minimize the effects of them etc. But you cannot be a divisive force in the party because the party requires hands on."
While Ingraham said he will not be returning to frontline politics, he said he is willing to help the party in any way he can as it seeks to win back the government.
"It is my hope that the FNM can get itself together and win the next election, and it is my hope that I would be in a position to give them whatever support I can in that regard," he said. "But certainly, I expect that the party will not have a selective process that seeks to remove certain people from consideration for whatever petty reasons there may be."
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