REMINDING THE PLP OF SOME REALITIES
This is a warning of sorts to PLPs, a reminder of what it means to lose power and be without power. In February 2007, with a General Election expected within months and despite an order from the Prime Minister, then Perry Christie that all ministers should use their official cars, Fred Mitchell abandoned his official car and began using his private car, which is a 1994 Camry, which, by the way, he still has.
There was a train wreck coming. Mr. Mitchell could see it.
He predicted it but organizations in political power are like a deer in the headlights at night. With the headlights in their eyes and of course, Mr. Mitchell often says he must have been speaking Greek. As it turned out, Mr. Mitchell’s majority in 2002 of about 1200 votes was reduced in 2007 to 64. His opponent, parachuted into the constituency 6 months before the election and almost took him out.
Mr. Mitchell had to spend an entire next day defending a seat in the recount with the FNM in control of the country. This was humiliating, and they made sure to rub it in.
On that night, as the results became clear, the FNM crowd around the polling station at St Augustine’s yard, rushed Mr. Mitchell in his private car, assaulted the driver. They told Mr. Mitchell to get his a** out of the government car.
A police officer came and intervened and said this man was a former minister of the government, and you must show respect. He sped away.
Mr. Mitchell recalls in 1992 when the assistant commissioner of police as he then was Ellison Greenslade, instructed by then commissioner of police Paul Farquharson, appeared in the FNM headquarters on Mackey Street to tell Hubert Ingraham that he was the new Prime Minister.
Mr. Mitchell later heard Hubert Ingraham say over the radio to Lyndon Pindling. “the car gone the maid gone.” Indeed, they were, and one report is that when the Pindlings returned home to their house in Nassau, their private home, they met a police officer washing his car in the yard, and he informed them that they no longer had the right to live in their private home.
Sir Franklin Wilson provided Sir Lynden Pindling with a car until he could afford to get one.
You may recall how the 52 week programme people were summarily dismissed in 2017 when the FNM took over. Compare that to Perry Christie in 2002, protecting all the jobs that he met and again in 2012 of general service workers. Remember the broadcasters at ZNS, led by Obie Wilchcombe, who were fired at ZNS in 1992. Those are the consequences of regime change.
Fred Mitchell remembers as an attorney representing police officers who were called in by the national security minister of the FNM under Hubert Ingraham, senior officers who were supposed to have protected jobs and told to go home. The present commissioner of police and deputy commissioner of police suffered the same fate with others in 2017.
But what is the importance of these stories? Never mind all this sweet talk from the leader of the opposition, the FNM are cruel masters. Be warned people. And act in your best interests, We believe in all sincerity to the best of our knowledge, information and belief, that in the general election, whenever it comes next, it is important to return the PLP to power.
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