LORETTA’S BALL OF CONFUSION

Try as she might to put a brave face on it, Loretta Butler Turner, the now Leader of the Opposition, has nothing.  She made this treacherous move, while sitting right next to the hapless Dr. Hubert Minnis to move him and become leader.  She and the six other MPs who wrote that letter to the Governor General to have him removed thought in their dreams and in reality that when they removed him by the artificial constitutional device that Dr Minnis would simply fold up and go away.

From the start of his tenure as Leader, we have warned the FNM that this man Dr. Minnis was no Tommy Turnquest.  You remember the background to his appointment.  Hubert Ingraham, the defeated Prime Minister, resigned in a huff from the leadership and from Parliament.  He left the party adrift and leaderless.  Dr. Minnis was thought by him and the rest to be a safe choice.  He was not the brightest bulb in the room and he looked like someone you could put in place and then when Mr. Ingraham had finished sulking, Mr. Minnis would simply step aside like Tommy Turnquest before him and let Mr. Ingraham back in.

As time went on though, it became clear that Dr. Minnis was no pushover.  He intended to stay and he worked to make sure that would happen.  He survived one assault after the next and ultimately three tests for this leadership, two of them this year.  He survived all of them.  But the upper crust, Bay Street element of the party, did not like him and were not satisfied.  They had one more arrow in their quiver and that was to write the Governor General and have him removed.  They got their wish when Dr. Minnis angered Edison Key, the MP for South Abaco, and that was that.

Having done that though they have no plan.  They have no idea what to do next.  They really thought that the FNM would become theirs but they are learning the lessons of 1977 when the FNM split into BDP and FNM and faced Pindling in the 1977 general elction.  The blacks who are really breakaway PLPs cannot win a government without the white money and support, and vice versa.  Pierre Dupuch says that the split organization done by the deed of Loretta and her cohorts has handed the general elction to the PLP.

Number of hits for the week ending Saturday 17 December 2016 up to midnight: 279,245;
Number of hits for the month of December up to 17 December 2016 up to midnight: 528,274;
Number of hits for the year 2016 up to 17 December 2016 up to midnight: 12,494,472.