Long Island MP Loretta Butler-Turner said yesterday she and six other Free National Movement (FNM) MPs wrote to Governor General Dame Marguerite Pindling expressing a vote of no confidence in Leader of the Official Opposition Dr. Hubert Minnis because the party has "failed" as an effective parliamentary opposition and the "country needs change".
In the Minority Room of the House of Assembly, Butler-Turner addressed the media alongside Central Grand Bahama MP Neko Grant; South and Central Abaco MP Edison Key; Montagu MP Richard Lightbourn; St. Anne's MP Hubert Chipman; Fort Charlotte MP Dr. Andre Rollins and North Eleuthera MP Theo Neilly. Butler-Turner said, "We have failed to convince Bahamians that we represent a change for them to vote for.
"Instead, we have taken the posture that the electorate will choose by default to vote against the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP). "Such a strategy fails to meet the challenges of our time and is not deserving of the confidence of our Bahamian people. "We need a change in our country, not an artificial change but an actual paradigm shift.
"The performance of the opposition in Parliament has failed to represent the change so desperately needed. "We have not been the type of strong opposition that the Bahamian people expect [and] deserve.
"The country is in shambles and the public has not been given sufficient reason to believe that the parliamentary opposition possesses the leadership needed to fix our national mess.
"Our actions here today are intended to change that and to be able to begin the process of offering real change." Earlier this year, six of the MPs threatened to write the governor general to oust Minnis, but this was prevented when the FNM agreed to a convention.
Minnis held on to the party leadership after Butler-Turner and her running mate FNM Senator Dr. Duane Sands dropped out of the leadership race hours before voting started, saying the process was corrupted.
On Saturday, Key advised The Nassau Guardian that he too had lost confidence in Minnis. Butler-Turner said the decision to write the governor general followed "intense discussions" and was in response to "widespread public discontent and voter apathy". "The majority of Bahamians believe that our country is spiraling out of control," she said.
"By any objective measure, our national failures far outweigh our successes. "Proof of our decline is found in the pervasive apathy among our people, a sense that we are incapable of doing any better.
"This apathy has conditioned us to accept the unacceptable and the false premise that we lack the power to change our circumstances. "The simple truth is this, wherever apathy prevails, there can be no meaningful change.
"The reality is those of us in opposition must also accept our share of the blame." The Long Island MP also said, "[We] have made the considered judgment that it is necessary to take this very bold and unprecedented action within our parliamentary caucus, which will result, God willing, in a more effective parliamentary opposition.
"Consequently, we have advised the governor general, in accordance with the constitution, that we have no confidence in Dr. Hubert A. Minnis as our parliamentary leader and have selected myself, Loretta Butler-Turner, to now serve as leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Assembly." Minnis will remain as leader of the FNM.
In the House of Assembly yesterday, he said that despite the fact that democracy has prevailed, some people within his party continue to refuse to accept that. He was referring to his re-election (unopposed) as leader of the FNM at the party's July convention. "I am hearing this for the first time," Minnis told the House.
"It saddens me that individuals are prepared because they did not get their way in a democratic process, they are determined to subvert democracy and still get their way, Mr. Speaker."
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