THE TRASH TALKING MINISTERS AND FNM MPS
( Elsworth Johnson, Peter Turnquest, Ruben Rahming, Brensil Rolle, Darren Henfield)
The Chairman of the PLP Senator Fred Mitchell issued statements during the week to answer personal attacks by FNM Ministers on the Leader of the PLP Philip Davis. There is a concerted political attack on Mr. Davis as part of the FNM’s campaign to win the next general election.
Answering Elsworth Johnson
4 March 2021
The performance of the Immigration Minister in Parliament on Wednesday 3 March 2021 was remarkable. The Honourable House was reduced to a cheap comedy store where trash talking became the new fine art – replacing serious Parliamentary debate on important national issues.
What has our country come to?
When the Immigration Minister and other Ministers are expected to give an account to Parliament for their stewardship, we are instead treated to a steady diet of deflection and rubbish about the business of another party.
Bahamians would say: Minister, mind your own business and do the job for which you are being paid.
As the country’s fish and other marine resources are being stolen from our territorial waters by foreign fisherman, the Minister for Immigration is in the Parliament trash talking.
As we await word as to how the Department of Immigration will stop the barbarians at the gate, instead we have the Immigration Minister in the House trash talking.
When Brensil Rolle, the FNM Public Service Minister, was denied a nomination because of lack of confidence after faithful service to the Prime Minister, where was the call for an apology from Hubert Minnis? There was none.
As his former colleague, the Youth and Sports Minister, resigned under a heavy dark cloud of suspicion and an investigation, the Immigration Minister is trash talking.
As his colleague Peter Turnquest, the former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, resigned with 28 million dollars of other people’s money missing, the Immigration minister had nothing to say to this serious charge – instead he is in the House trash talking.
While the people of Yamacraw were waiting for a report of his stewardship, the Minister was instead in the House of Assembly trash talking.
As a former President of the Bar, we expect serious talk and solutions from him in the House, not trash talking. In case you forgot Minister, you are in Parliament, not on the basketball court or at the Jokers Wild.
Minister, please.
End
Answering Brensil Rolle
4 March 2021
Public Service Minister Brensil Rolle has some nerve. Here is a public figure whose political legacy is so uninspiring and performance as Minister so lacklustre that the Prime Minister dropped him from the FNM ticket because he sees Mr. Rolle as a drag on the ticket.
Mr. Rolle should be worrying about his job as Public Service Minister, trying to correct his do nothing legacy in politics and worrying about the shabby treatment he is enduring from the Prime Minister, but alas he is instead foolishly worrying about the PLP’s nomination process which cannot help save his ‘nothing burger’ dying political career.
Bahamians are cussing out Mr. Rolle in the streets because of his poor performance as minister of both the Public Service and National lnsurance.
Some unsolicited advice for the outgoing minister: do your job, account for your stewardship and mind your own damn business.
And stay out the affairs of the Progressive Liberal Party.
End
Answering Peter Turnquest
11 March 2021
So Peter Turnquest, the disgraced former Minister of Finance, who cannot find the missing 28 million dollars of the foreign investor’s money, now has enough time to fool with the PLP’s Leader Philip Brave Davis.
Nasty, dutty, unseemly, silly, stupid, low down dirty and good for nothing are all appropriate adjectives to apply to Peter Turnquest and his performance in the House of Assembly today. He went to the point of violating the norm that a man’s personal health care, life and death decisions are not matters for political fodder.
But you know how it is when you are desperate like Peter Turnquest. The 28 million is missing and can’t be found. Your partner says it ain’t me, it’s Peter. You lose your nomination and your post in Government all in four short years. You are going down in history as the worst Finance Minister in the country’s history, presiding over the largest deficit in history. We guess in these circumstances it is ok for Peter Turnquest to be singing for his supper.
Poor Peter. He is clueless and needs to crawl back under the rock where he has been hiding these last few months in disgrace.
End
Answering Darren Henfield And Ruben Rahming
11th March 2021
Darren Henfield, Minister Of Foreign Affairs and Pinewood MP Rueben Rahming are shocking examples of what Parliamentarians should not be.
While the dead and missing in Abaco still cry out for justice since Hurricane Dorian, Mr. Henfield was trash talking PLP business in the House. While people are drowning in water in Pinewood, Ruben Rahming was trash talking in PLP business in the House.
Gentlemen: mind your own business.
They are an exercise in mock outrage: the electorate saw this FNM repertoire in 2017 with abysmal effects on people’s lives.
Both Members of Parliament engaged in base and unsubstantiated attacks against the Leader of the Progressive Liberal Party in debate in the House of Assembly yesterday. Had Mr. Rahming repeated outside the House the defamatory lie he told in the House; he would have had his pants sued off in libel. He took the cowardly route instead and hid behind Parliamentary privilege. This is diabolical at all levels.
Where was the outrage by the Member for Pinewood and the Foreign Minister when the members of the PLP were abused in the malicious prosecutions of former PLP Member of Parliament Frank Smith and former Minister Shane Gibson? Both Messrs Henfield (an attorney) and Rahming were silent against revelations of prosecutorial misconduct and the conduct of their colleague ministers in the Frank Smith and Shane Gibson cases.
It is the conceit of Ministers of Government – now more confident than they should be with parliamentary microphones – who mock family islanders with the smile of thinking that they are more intelligent than the people they should have properly served over the past four years.
Further – as a large frame issue – the FNM operates in the market of debate, policy, and action on two false logics – the false logic of FNM success and the false logic of FNM integrity.
We remind people that the 2012 – 2017 Christie Administration exercised bi-partisan goodwill in relation to the National Development Plan amongst other policy initiatives; and yet as the Official Opposition then and as the Government, the FNM has done the opposite during its terms in office.
Just consider their actions in relation to the Commercial Enterprises Bill; and in consideration of the composition of the Competent Authority, among other things: no consultative function or spirit on matters of significant future consequences.
The Government as a whole and each of its members in Cabinet abandoned nonpartisan considerations of continuity of Government regarding the impact of its stewardship on human and economic sustainability; the national labour formula vis-à-vis foreign skill in the workforce; and our culture of democracy.
The FNM chose partisan self-aggrandizement instead of the consultative benefit which could have accrued to Bahamians and good governance. And yet they now seek to gimmick their constituents with mocking outrage.
We offer finally a caution to politicians careless with the temptations to distinguish themselves through spurious attacks in their ambitions for power; and some merely to save themselves: While Mr. Davis was grossly attacked yesterday in breach of his parliamentary privilege, we caution all to sojourn a while on the FNM’s internal history of corruption. We recall PLP leadership coming to office in 2002 and again in 2012 staying its hand against revealing for prosecution dealings assessed to show the corruption of FNM politicians.
It may well be that coming into office after this next general election, the PLP will need to show no mercy and allow justice to take its course.
End