Even though we did not have the benefit of the type of scientific polling that made Sunday’s election results in France anticlimactic, the triumph of Hon. Perry Christie (left) and his Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) over Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham and his Free National Movement (FNM) in parliamentary elections yesterday came as no surprise. Preliminary results have the PLP winning 29 seats, the PLP only 9: a bona fide ass whopping!
No doubt a confluence of kitchen-table/pocket-book issues doomed the ruling FNM in The Bahamas just as it doomed the ruling party in France. But it’s interesting to note that Bahamian voters seemed just as motivated to get rid of the bombastic and arrogant Ingraham as French voters were to get rid of the bombastic and arrogant Sarkozy.
Ingraham wasted no time in announcing his ignominious retirement:
I shall return to the private life from whence I came.
(Nassau Guardian, May 7, 2012)
All the same, there’s no denying that the pandemic wrath of angry, dissatisfied and impatient voters played a decisive role. Which means that the PLP would do well to take heed lest it ends up after the next general election where the FNM is today.
For personal reasons I refrained from commenting on the campaigns that led up to Election Day and shall refrain now from commenting any further on the results.
Except that I feel constrained to lament the way Bahamian politicians are aping the behavior of their American counterparts. Because not so long ago electioneering in The Bahamas was a relatively genteel affair that seemed more like a series of festive (even if sometimes rowdy) family picnics than the polarizing, us-against-them spectacle it became this year.
For example, I don’t think any Bahamian could ever have imagined a day when FNM voters would become seized with such contempt and disrespect for the PLP that they would attack PLP leader Perry Christie and his wife by calling him a “sissy” to his face and spitting on her.
By the same token, I don’t think any Bahamian could ever have imagined a day when the preternaturally serene Lady Marguerite Pindling would instigate a public spat with PM Ingraham by insinuating that his mistreatment of Sir Lynden Pindling, her late husband and the father of our nation, was the proximate cause of Sir Lynden’s death. Hell, even in the United States former first ladies consider it beneath their dignity to wade into the rough-and-tumble of dirty politics.
Not surprisingly, Ingraham responded just as you’d expect a political snake who thrives in the gutter would: he dismissed her insinuation as coming from a disgruntled old woman who is upset over “losing the life of privilege she believes she’s entitled to live at the expense of the Bahamian people.” Ouch!
I suspect though that Lady Pindling might attempt to get the last laugh by prevailing upon Christie (whom she treats like an adopted son) to do to Ingraham now what she claims Ingraham did to Sir Lynden upon his retirement. But I am reliably informed that Christie is not only too classy to do that but also smart enough to realize that if he does it to Ingraham, the next FNM prime minister would be politically motivated to do it to him – and so on, and so on….
I appreciate that we won independence almost 40 years ago. But we would do well to retain the polite legacy the British left us when it comes to political campaigns instead of adopting the mean-spirited spectacle that characterizes political campaigns in the United States.
Anyway, congratulations to the PM-Elect Perry Christie and the PLP.
NOTE: Members of the new Democratic National Alliance (DNA) party can be forgiven for wanting to pack it in after failing to win a single seat … not even that of its leader, Branville McCartney. But after licking their wounds, I hope they regroup and continue the yeoman work of building their party. Not least because the same fickle electorate that threw out the FNM could well decide at the next election that it’s time to end the two-party monopoly the FNM and PLP have enjoyed throughout our history.