Prime Minister Ingraham Reveals New Plans for Grand Bahama

Mon, Feb 20th 2012, 04:58 PM

Remarks Opening of Marco City Constituency Office Rt. Hon. Hubert A. Ingraham Party Leader 18 February 2012

Grand Bahama;

Marco City; FNMs:

Colour Red is going to be in Effect very soon!

Ringa Ringa Ling The Bell soon Ring. Grand Bahama set to give us all five of its tings!

Grand Bahama I am back! And unlike what Perry Christie told you last night, no - I didn’t come here to ask for forgiveness. I gave you the best of my service. I gave you sincere, honest and trustworthy service. I gave you honourable service. You don’t apologise and ask for forgiveness when you do something right you know. But every time I speak between now and election day if I remember, I am going to ask Christie to apologise for something.

And I am going to start off tonight asking him to please apologise to the owners and workers of City Markets. Please Mr. Christie, tell them you did them wrong!

Grand Bahama,

When I was last here you lit our torch so bright, you started a fire all across the country. Now The Bahamas feeling hot hot hot! How you feeling in Grand Bahama!? So hot was the flame of the FNM torch that Perry and the PLP start running scared and tried to copy us step by step. You know they say - Monkey see! Monkey do! Whatever we did, they had to copy. Leaders they are not. Followers they are.

Roses are red Violets are blue Keep your eye on Papa Papa is going to come through for you.

You know they ask me in Nassau, how come my first Valentine was for Grand Bahama. I tell them and I tell the PLP - don’t get between me and Grand Bahama. I’m born here. My navel string buried here. I love Grand Bahama!

Marco City:

You are special to the FNM and you have been good to the FNM. You were faithful to Cecil Wallace Whitfield, our Party’s Founding Father. In the 1990 by-election you reaffirmed your faith in us and gave me my first victory as your Leader. You gave me my start as the Leader of this Party. You caused me to be there to become Prime Minister of The Bahamas. I will never let you down! I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Now I have come to ask you to give us Coach Norris Bain as your MP. Norris Bain is the man for Marco City. He is not going to pimp to no foreigner on you. His hand is not in any foreigner’s pocket. And he is not beholden to any foreign man.

He is out of Eight Mile Rock. He is a good man. Vote for him. He is a family man and an educator.

GRAND BAHAMA,

Five years in office, what did the PLP do to you? And what did they leave behind? These are some very dry eye people you know. They left you worse off in 2007 than they found you in 2002. After five years you had gone backward, not forward.

They are always reaping without sowing, you know. They came down and they opened they Royal Oasis hotel shortly after they won the election. And when they left office, they left it closed.

They came down and broke ground for a new development on Midshipman Road and Seahorse Drive but left nuttin’ in its place but a pile of dirt! Those promisers were in your town last night. They promised you many things. They even promised you the same things that they promised you in 2002. They didn’t deliver it, but they are calling it by a different name. They really think you are fool.

Grand Bahama, let me talk to you straight. Papa knows that you have been catching hell for almost ten years now. The PLP left you catching hell - they didn’t meet you catching hell. But when they left, they left you catching hell. And they spent their five years in office promising but doing nothing for you in Grand Bahama. When the Royal Oasis closed down 1,500 Bahamians lost their jobs. And now they come here with this fancy talk about they are going to put in place “Project Grand Bahama”? Project my foot!

What happened to “Project Royal Oasis”? How come they were not smart enough to keep that hotel open, but they are now smart enough to turn around your island’s economy? Christie was 60 years of age back in 2002. He’s nearly 70 now. If he couldn’t do it then, what you think ‘bout now? You know those award shows they have like the Grammy’s and the Golden Globe Awards? I think we should have an award especially made up for them. It should be called the Great Pretenders Award.

First, there should be an overall award given to them as a whole for pretending to care about Grand Bahama and pretending to put Bahamians first.

Anyway, I have the envelope here. And the award goes to Perry Gladstone Christie for pretending that he will be different next time than he was the last time. He is the same man.

Grand Bahama:



You know, without the support of the Government in 2010 after the Great Recession took hold, Grand Bahama’s tourism would have collapsed. Many of you used to go to Florida on Discovery Cruise Line. That cost us nearly $8 million. We supported Norwegian Sky Cruise Ship which had 48 calls with 120,000 passengers that cost the Government half a million dollars. Similar support for Carnival Cruise Line, Delta Airline, US Air, West Jet out of Canada and more recently, Vision Airline. More than $4 million for direct marketing support for the Grand Lucaya hotel and by the end of this Summer, the Government of The Bahamas would have spent more than $17 million to keep the Isle of Capri and Treasure Bay casino open.

AND THEY SAY WE’VE DONE NOTHING FOR GRAND BAHAMA! THIS SUPPORT HAS SAVED THOUSANDS OF JOBS IN GRAND BAHAMA AND GAVE HUNDREDS OF BUSINESSES THE ABILITY TO SURVIVE.

Strong economic and financial headwinds worked against us for almost all of our term. Like the rest of the world, our economy faltered. The Great Global Economic Recession, the worse in more than 80 years made the bad state the PLP left you in worse. They think that you do not know that all over the world countries are faced with very high unemployment, just like us here in The Bahamas and you here in Grand Bahama.

Even in these difficult economic times, we searched out investors for you in Grand Bahama. We achieved some results, not as much as we wanted to. I’m not happy about our results, but I did the best I could. And anybody who thinks somebody else can do better - vote for them. But I assure you, if you think THIS is the frying pan, THAT is the fire!

We got some things done. We got Ross University here and they are making a contribution and renting from many of you. We facilitated First Reserve and then Buckeye in the purchase of BORCO, which now is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in refurbishment work. We attracted Stat Oil which also spending tens of millions of dollars in work going on. We saw the expansion of the Grand Bahama Shipyard which came into being on our previous terms in office and has taken on new employees and is training young cadets. We had to legalize the benefits the PLP gave to Ginn so that that stumbling project could have a chance. We have had to prop up the Isle of Capri as I told you, to keep hundreds of Bahamians employed. We have gotten new cruise ships and airlifts to Grand Bahama. We have overseen the entry of Emera and the new $80 million power plant investment.

These things are private sector initiatives that your government encouraged and promoted. But Government itself could do some things and we did do some things:

• Construction of a $16 million Government Office Complex, creating jobs on Grand Bahama

• Construction of new A&E and new operating theatres at the Rand Memorial Hospital In another two to three weeks, we will buy for the price of $1.9 million for the old Freeport Inn, now the Island Palms to accommodate the expansion and upgrade of the Rand Memorial Hospital.

• We constructed and opened the Sister Mary Patricia Russell Junior High School. Let the PLP name the things they did down here. Go around and see if you can find it, touch it.

In these tough times we are creating jobs for about 1,000 people. We have made an Unemployment Benefit available to you, we’ve put in place a Prescription Drug Programme, we have provided millions of dollars in increased assistance here in Grand Bahama and gave scholarships to multiplied dozens.

Grand Bahama has come through the worst. Things will begin to get better for you. As the global economy continues to recover and our economy continues to recover, so too will yours here in Grand Bahama.

Working with a functional more focused Port Authority absent Hannes Babak, the Chamber of Commerce of Grand Bahama and businesses, we will aggressively promote throughout the world, especially in Asia, Latin America and North America, seeking out offshore medical education and research facilities as well as manufacturing facilities specially suited for Grand Bahama.

We will work with tourism stakeholders to develop new and attractive facilities in the tourism sector, in the East, West and Freeport;

We will place renewed focused on the second home market of Grand Bahama, maximizing Bahamian construction contractors in the development of high end homes.

We will promote the development of a marine institute here in Grand Bahama for the training of both Bahamian mariners as well as persons in the region;

We will promote the creation of a Diesel Mechanic Institute in Grand Bahama to train Bahamian and regional students; and

We will work to cause Grand Bahama to become the attractive alternative energy capital of The Bahamas to reduce energy cost and encourage the development of additional industrial developments on this island.

We will make Grand Bahama the manufacturing and industrial giant it was meant to be. And we will bring focused attention to the expiring provisions of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement to ensure that all of Grand Bahama benefits from the exercise. We are not going to negotiate with the Port Authority in public. We will negotiate with them after the next election

I also want to advise that Bahamasair will acquire another jet and take over the service now being provided by Vision Airlines to Grand Bahama. This will mean that a 160-seat Boeing 737-400 Jet aircraft will have the capacity to deliver 6,600 seats monthly to Grand Bahama and when combined with the seats Bahamasair now has coming out of Fort Lauderdale, it will be 8,800 seats per month delivered to Grand Bahama - nearly 100,000 seats a year coming to Grand Bahama.

This service will reduce travel time from cities like Baltimore- Maryland, Raleigh/Durham-North Carolina, Richmond-Virginia and Louisville- Kentucky. Ticket cost will be reduced from $600 round trip to $300 round trip, a reduction of more than 50%. We expect that the Grand Lucaya and Grand Bahama Airport Company will view this initiative as a life saver for both the airport and the hotel.

We also expect that this effort could result in the opening of the Reef Resort by next winter, resulting in the creation of hundreds of jobs directly and spinoff jobs indirectly for you here in Grand Bahama. We are taking steps to take advantage of the continued turn around in the world economy.

I tell you, we revived Grand Bahama’s economy before. We did so after 1992. The best time that Grand Bahama had economically since the 1960s, was between 1997 and 2002. Things were good in Grand Bahama in those days. That’s when you got the Container Port, Grand Bahama Shipyard, Polymers International, Pelican Bay, Our Lucaya, Bradford Marine, a Supreme Court and Magistrates Court Complex; new high schools and even more amenities here in Grand Bahama.

The first challenge we have for Grand Bahama is to get you back to where we left you in 2002, before you dabbled with and touched Perry Christie and the PLP and got your hands burnt.

We did it before. We are going to do it again. Once bitten, twice shy. You had them - once with them is more than enough. We know exactly who they are. We know what they represent. We know what they will do.

You know, they talk alot nowadays about crime. Now while Grand Bahama doesn’t have a crime issue like Nassau does, Grand Bahama has a much lower crime rate than your economic circumstances might suggest to those who try to link economic activity or lack thereof, and crime. For that, I commend Grand Bahamians.

You are showing in many respects that your economic circumstances do not determine your character or your behaviour.

Now, much of the crime in The Bahamas results from drugs and drug trafficking. Many families have lost their sons and their daughters to drug trafficking.

Do you think the PLP knows this, when some of them represented nearly every big time drug trafficker, one of whom was listed by the President of the United States as one of the 10 most dangerous drug traffickers in the world? Do you think the PLP knows this, when they engage their services to keep them out of jail? You think they knew that?

Don’t you think they now know that The Bahamas is reaping what was sowed by some of those offending clients of theirs? If they don’t know, I just told them.

And so when you want to talk about crime and the causes of crime - look in that mirror! Have a good look and say how I’ve got that money I’ve got!

Grand Bahama,

If you want us to keep delivering for you, we need you to deliver for us. When you vote here in Marco City, vote for Norris Bain. Vote FNM.

Vote for honest and clean government. Vote for your children’s future. Vote for strong and competent and compassionate leadership.

Remember - you have not had to hold your head down in shame since the FNM has been in. No Anna Nicole Smith. No scandal with a big time star down in West End Grand Bahama. No Minister found with all kinds of U.S dollars in his closet. Nobody has to back out of politics because their hands were sticky.

FNMs, let us keep holding The Bahamas’ head high wherever we go in the world. We know what the PLP represents nowadays - shame and scandal.

We owe it to our children to keep such people out.

FNMs! Thank you and goodnight.

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