Bahama Pundit

The Nature of Political Leadership

by Simon

Much of the press delight in pronouncing that the silly-season has begun as a general election approaches.  What they fail to advise is the role they play in hyping this alleged silliness through uncritical thinking and superficial coverage.  In news stories and editorials some in the press endlessly regurgitate intellectual fallacies rather than provide context and in-depth analysis.

Excusing or cheering on Bamboo Town MP Branville McCartney’s jeer of “Old man, sit down” directed at South Abaco MP Edison Key betrays a juvenile and ahistoric mindset.  It smacks of ageism and various unfounded prejudices about the nature of leadership, political and otherwise.

The requirement of leadership, whether national or in fields as diverse as journalism or business, is to find the best possible person who is available at the time.  It is not about giving someone “a chance” to fulfil their personal ambition or satisfy their narcissism and overweening ego.

DNA & Its Leader Prove Amateurish & Reckless

by Simon

Since the glitzy launch of his party, DNA Leader Branville McCartney has been relentlessly gaffe- and blunder-prone making a series of amateurish and ill-advised statements.  One of the more egregious is his intention that children born of illegal immigrants be constitutionally banned from applying for citizenship.

For this he has been criticized by a chorus of voices including a senior prelate who questioned whether a politician expressing such an extreme position should ever hold the office of Prime Minister.

Here we go again. In at least two recent press statements the DNA has doubled-down demonstrating yet again a stunning amateurism and now, recklessness.  The statements spotlight the party’s muddled thinking and the poor judgement of its leader who allowed such statements to be issued. 

Progressive Tradition in Bahamian Politics

by Simon

The progressive tradition in modern Bahamian politics includes giants like the polymath Dr. C. R. Walker and the great Sir Milo Butler.  During the struggle for majority rule the tradition was embodied and expanded by leaders such as the Hon. Arthur D. Hanna and Sir Arthur Foulkes. 

Others in the tradition number some not traditionally considered, like Sir Kendal Isaacs, one of the founders of the cooperative movement.  Today’s progressives include Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, who has significantly advanced the progressive agenda during three terms in government.

Other contemporary progressives are to be found in the ranks of the major parties. Among them are Glennys Hanna Martin and Dion Foulkes, scions of well-known political families who followed their fathers into politics in the progressive tradition.

Opposition Grandstanding on Problems it Failed to Tackle

by Simon

It takes a certain chutzpah to attempt to manipulate problems one failed to address when in office but of which one has now become conveniently expert out of office and promising to fix next time around.  Welcome to the Opposition’s failed summer plans seeking yet again to blame the Government for problems the latter is busy fixing and which the former failed to substantively tackle.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, who share a birthday this week, will both face their electorates in relatively short order.  The summer prelude to their re-election prospects offers some clues into the lead-up to the general elections in their respective countries.

Both incumbents face voter frustration over jobs and the pace of economic recovery following the global financial downturn. Despite his generally deft handling of the crisis, Mr. Ingraham understands how appreciably the Bahamian recovery depends on the outcomes of debt crises in Europe and an impasse on raising the debt limit and tackling debt and deficit in the United States.

There has been unusually hot weather during the first two-thirds of the summer of 2011.  With August quite young, we will see what the remainder of summer brings.   The rising temperatures concern daily life as well as political happenings.

The CDR and the DNA

by Larry Smith

I recently had a chance to talk with Phenton Neymour, a junior minister in the Ingraham Cabinet, who left the PLP to fight the 2002 general election as a young turk in the Coalition for Democratic Reform, which was led by Dr Bernard Nottage.

Neymour has an unusual political background. His father, Basil, was a close friend of Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield and helped to create the FNM in 1971. After offering as an FNM candidate in three general elections, the elder Neymour returned to the PLP following Whitfield's death in 1990.

At about the same time, Phenton returned from Syracuse University to join the Water & Sewerage Corporation as an engineer, where he became close to then Utilities Minister BJ Nottage.

"All of my ties were with the PLP in those days, and by 1995 I was being considered as a replacement for George Smith in Exuma, where my family is from," he recalled. "I was eventually selected as the PLP candidate for Salem, but that constituency was eliminated before the 1997 election."

Branville McCartney’s Messianic Complex & Makeover

by Simon

Branville McCartney’s supersized vanity and hunger for political power are glaring despite his feigned humility and rhetoric that he is merely a servant of the people and not really a politician.

Curiously, some are falling for this ploy by Mr. McCartney who seeks to exploit their antipathy towards politicians even as he is deeply engaged in the political arena in order to achieve his heated political ambition.  This is a classic political manoeuvre often pulled on the naive and the willfully naive.

Many of these same naive Bahamians support Barack Obama who, of course, is a career politician and who lauds the virtues of politics to achieve big and important things.  Mr. McCartney has on occasion compared himself with Mr. Obama.  We will leave that conceit for another time.  For now, he might consider borrowing some of Mr. Obama’s forthrightness in acknowledging his political nature.

What is needed are effective and good politicians, not those claiming to be non-politicians simply to exploit various frustrations and anxieties.  Mr. McCartney has also noted: "I am more of a businessman than I am a lawyer”, another part of his makeover, in this instance seemingly distancing himself from his lifelong legal career perhaps to deflect the often general antipathy towards that profession. 

Hubert Ingraham’s Remarkable Journey

by Simon

An extraordinary moment which dramatized Hubert Ingraham’s journey from whom some saw as a political upstart -- Sir Lynden Pindling famously called him the Rude Boy -- to Pappa came during  last year’s wrap-up of the annual budget debate.

After receiving her second Olympic gold medal in a ceremony at Government House for which she had to wait for 10 years, Pauline Davis-Thompson rushed to the House of Assembly to present the medal to the Prime Minister.  She was finally awarded the medal for the 200 metre race at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics after Marion Jones was stripped of her medals because of steroid use.

From the well of the House the then 44 year-old double-gold medallist recalled her own remarkable journey and the encouragement given to her by then newly-minted Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham who himself was then in his mid-40s. She credited him with saving her athletic career.

Third Party Merry-Go-Round—Again

by Simon

History offers perspective.  In 1963 Paul Adderley and a group of senior party members attempted to force Sir Lynden Pindling to resign as Leader of the Progressive Liberal Party.  What has been named the Christmas Coup, failed. 

Two years later Sir Lynden’s leadership and the direction of the PLP were again called into question.  That criticism came after Black Tuesday when Sir Lynden famously threw the Speaker’s mace out of the House of Assembly in protest against the UBP’s gerrymandering of constituency boundaries, among other voting reform issues.

That historic event 46 years ago this month was followed by a PLP boycott of the House.  The boycott was broken by PLP MPs Paul Adderley, Orville Turnquest, Cyril Stevenson, and Spurgeon Bethel who remained troubled by Sir Lynden’s leadership and the party’s political strategy.

Mr. Adderley, a British-trained attorney and scion of a prominent family said at the time that he broke the boycott to ensure that the people’s voice could still be heard in the House.  He also viewed himself as a better potential Prime Minister than Sir Lynden and did not believe that the PLP could win the government.

Following the mace incident and the boycott of the House in 1965, Mr. Adderley and his colleagues left the PLP and formed a third party with a familiar name:  the National Democratic Party or NDP.  Mr. Stevenson did not join the NDP but declared himself an independent.

Two years later the PLP won the government while Mr. Adderley and his colleagues all lost their seats.  Eventually, Mr. Adderley returned to the PLP and Sir Orville joined with a group of Free PLPs to help form the Free National Movement.  

The Obama and the Ingraham Haters

by Simon

In a recent article I included brief accounts on the formation of the country’s two major political parties.  Those accounts are well-sourced and researched, not an invention of self-aggrandizement.  They are based on reliable written and oral information, most of which has been in the public domain for many years.

That information is from sources that are infinitely more credible than those who are now peddling self-serving accounts in a futile attempt to write themselves into history in a manner unsupported by the broader historical record.

Attempts to rewrite history or draw false historical parallels are typically in the service of particular agendas or vanities.  But, it is not only the past that is skewed and mangled in the interest of such vanity of vanities and narrow agendas.  

The Generic & Genetic Make-Up of Bran’s DNA

by Simon

After the roll-out of the country’s latest third party, two things are clearer:  the generic nature of the Democratic National Alliance and the genetic make-up of the political character of its founder Branville McCartney.

Despite Mr. McCartney’s inability to resist the self-referential and narcissistic claim that it’s a Bran(d) new day, there is little original about the generic brand he is desperately peddling as new and exciting.  He will never have to worry himself with being considered an original thinker, nor for that matter, much of a thinker. 

Whether or not he purloined the lighthouse logo from an erstwhile ally, his green flavour, in only one sense of that word, was the party colour of the defunct Bahamian Democratic Party.  Green was the gloss Mr. McCartney used for much of his public relations even as an FNM, curiously painting his Bamboo Town headquarters green at one point.

Was it not always about Bran, with his mutable party colours, depending on whatever served his vaunting ambitions?  We have seen this before with those inveterate party hoppers cum political chameleons whose loyalty is to themselves, not to a party or cause larger than their personal ambitions.