Monday 16th July 2007

I want to thank Melanie and the fine people of the Yamacraw Branch and constituency for inviting me here this evening, along with Members of our Branch.  This is the way it used to be and we are back to the old ways, the tried and tested way.

Once again, we find ourselves in reduced circumstances.  You remember the defeat by the forces of evil in the FNM in 1997.  That was the election in which the now Prime Minister on the day before the police went to the polls announced that he was giving them a salary increase the day of the poll and asked them on the day of the poll to remember the money.  That man cannot lecture the PLP on corruption.  He could instead write a textbook on it.  They said that we would never rise from the ashes, but we did.

I remember tonight, our late friend and brother, our former Deputy Leader Peter Bethel who when he would join me on the loneliest of platforms following that defeat in 1997, and he would always remind an audience that the role of a political party is in part to shape public opinion.  It cannot simply stay silent in the face of ignorance and propaganda and expect people to see.  This process tonight is part of the process of trying to shape public opinion.

I have no choice.  I have no doubt that if it were possible for the FNM to have killed me in the last election, they would have done it.  They did everything but that.  I will never forget them for it. Fortunately goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life.  I thank all PLP supporters everywhere.

Tonight, I want to congratulate Hubert Ingraham and his FNM government.  Well you have finally done it.  The number of murders became 45 over the weekend.  Remember it was they who said when the FNM came to power, the murders would stop.  There is no Mother Pratt to kick around any more; no Perry Christie to blame.  But the murders are continuing.  Congratulations Mr. Ingraham you have done a good job in messing up the works.

I have never seen a more destructive and despicable group of people, raised in a Christian country, trained in the same schools with us who have been so vicious, vindictive, vengeful and spiteful in the space of three months.

Remember we elected the PLP and Perry Christie in 2002 to change that way and bring principled behavior.

The country seems to have rejected that and in three months, the Ingraham administration has fired the poorest civil servants, hired their cronies to take over government jobs, brought public works contracts to a screeching halt, undermined the economic growth on which the country was headed, refused to meet investors that have signed agreements with the government, told the shipping interests like Norwegian Caribbean Cruise lines to take a hike, and for us in Fox Hill are refusing to provide the necessary support for the Fox Hill Festival.

They cannot even collect the garbage on time.   They have cancelled the contracts for those who cut the grass in our neighborhoods.  The whole place has become a mess and nightmare.  That is The Bahamas under the FNM today.

Forty years after the men and women of courage like Lynden Pindling, Milo Butler, and Doris Johnson ushered in Majority Rule, we are now right back here we started.

The UBP is poised to assume what to them is their rightful place in the country, with the son of the last UBP Premier now the number 2 in the Government.  The last UBP chairman now serving as the Chairman of a Government Board.

But Oh! I’m sorry I’m not supposed to speak about that.  What is that they always say: why do you want to bring that up?  That has nothing to do with us today.  There is no racial discrimination in The Bahamas today.  Our young people don’t know anything about that.  But you know me; I can’t forget my history because I don’t want to repeat it.  And I have been disinvited from so many platforms because I speak inconvenient truths, if you don’t hear from me again, I will understand.  But the truth is truth.
 
A nation has elected a group of people who do not care for the poor.  Yesterday at our parliamentary meeting we were told of a young couple whose child was born with heart defect, who needed 500,000 dollars to get treatment for the child, who have private insurance but neither insurance would accept the risk for the new child.  The child died.

You have people today walking up to you, some of them hiding their red T shirts asking you to help them with a donation because they are trying to raise money to help  a sick relative.   They have voted for the Government that wanted a government that did not want national health insurance.  Yes, I suppose the people get the kind of government they deserve.

Looked at objectively, there was no reason for the PLP to lose this election.  We are here and they are there.  It turns out that our own self assuredness may have been our undoing, against a vicious, insidious and wicked enemy.
But we were here in 1962 when we thought we were going to win and we lost.  In fact we got like this time, the majority of votes in 1962 but we lost the Government.  Our fortunes looked bleak after Black Tuesday in 1965 when the party split in two and only four members that were PLP were left.  But the saying is weeping endureth for a night but joy cometh in the morning.  Many remember the joy of 10th January 1967.   This then is not a time for crying but a time for working.

We beat them before, we can beat them again.

But we will need younger shoulders at the wheel.  Not just young men and women who want to theorize in boardrooms with charts and graphs.  People who want to get down in the pit, in the real gritty work of politics, the door to door.

Your party needs your sons and daughters to realize that if the UBP can stick around for forty years after we thought we had vanquished them and come back with an Uncle Tom as their defender, then certainly the PLP that has the might of rectitude and right on its side can overcome again.

PLP areas like Fox Hill, Yamacraw, and Malcolm Creek will be punished because they dared to vote PLP.  We have to work as best we can to help defend our people and our territory.  This is no time to go wobbly.  We got here from seeking to compromise on our values much too often.  In exchange, people took this for weakness and helped us out the door.

Your party needs your manpower and your money.  I hope that those who can give will give.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank all of our candidates in the last general election.  I don’t care what anyone says, you were brave to do what you did in the face of insuperable odds.  Those who won and those who lost.  We are with you and can ever forget you.

The same goes for all who led the party during the election.  You were the team who led us.  I having run under your leadership cannot be heard now to publicly complain.  We did the best we could to inculcate a new culture in politics; we kept our economy going; Bahamians became richer and more educated under our government; the society became a kinder gentler place under our watch.  We had made real stab at cutting poverty in half (remember how the IDB said that during the time of the FNM poverty had increased in The Bahamas).
 
During our time our international image was highly respected at home and abroad.  With more food in the refrigerators, two cars in each garage, our sons and daughters working or in school, prison reform was underway, the RBDF reformed, the Police Force getting the largest promotions in their history, Urban Renewal gave the police a new sense of mission and crime was reduced, pray tell what adverse decision did the PLP or its leader make that caused this country any harm.

We live and learn.  We must move on and a new era will inevitably come but this is not a time for cannibalism even as changes will inevitably come.

I hope I can remain part of the solution to the PLP returning to Government.

Thank you Melanie for inviting me and good night to you all.