The Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) last week ratified its first two candidates for the next general election. Melanie Griffin will run again in Yamacraw, the seat she has held since 2002, and Alfred Sears will contest the Fort Charlotte seat. He was the area representative from 2002 to 2012.
Sears, 63, left politics to go back to private practice in 2012. He has been the attorney for Craig Flowers, one of the leading players in the local gaming industry. Since the PLP's win this term he has served as chairman of the Council of The College of The Bahamas. In the first Christie administration Sears was minister of education and attorney general.
"I think it's a privilege to serve the community of Fort Charlotte," he told The Nassau Guardian last week. "I think that on the national level the existing challenges represent an opportunity for the PLP to complete the quiet revolution, especially in the area of economic reconstruction to refocus from the almost reliance that we have on foreign direct investment and to do more to incentivize Bahamian entrepreneurship and ownership of the economy and to inspire a new generation of Bahamians to be engaged in the national development project."
Sears re-enters politics at an interesting stage. Prime Minister Perry Christie, the PLP's leader, is about to lead the party into the next general election in difficult times. There are few jobs. The crime rate is high. Scandal engulfs the ruling party.
Christie is very unpopular. Next year will mark year 20 of his rule of the country's oldest party. He has been in frontline politics for more than 40 years. As it stands, though, despite how poorly this term has gone for Christie, he is the frontrunner to be prime minister again, as Dr. Hubert Minnis, leader of the Free National Movement (FNM), has been a disappointment. The FNM's coalition is crumbling.
If the PLP wins again immediately after the discussion will turn to leadership. Five years from 2017 and Christie would be almost 80. While he would then like to run one more time, PLP's know that would be a silly idea.
Sears will be in that group of discussed successors to Christie. He's smart; there has been no scandal attached to his name; and, importantly, he seems to have a financial backer with deep pockets in Flowers. Others in that mix to succeed Christie will be Obie Wilchcombe, Jerome Fitzgerald and Philip Brave Davis.
New coalitions are beginning to form in the PLP because the party knows the end is near for the old leader. The majority in the party think it is time for him to go but he will not be removed this close to an election.
If Christie were wise and he were to win again he'd set the date for his departure rather than clinging to power and causing his internal opponents to tear him down in his latter years. Old lions should realize at some point that they cannot fend off younger lions forever. It would be more pleasant for Christie to leave to flowers and waves as opposed to being savaged by his own in the worst ways in his final years.
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