Leader of the Official Opposition Alvin Smith said on Monday he plans to meet with former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham as early as today before submitting his resignation to the governor general.
Mr. Smith intends to step down as leader of the Opposition to clear the way for Mr. Ingraham to become the new leader, but Mr. Ingraham said he had no comment on the matter when contacted by the Bahama Journal yesterday.
Many people are waiting to see if he indeed becomes the new leader of the Official Opposition when the House of Assembly reconvenes tomorrow following a summer break.
Mr. Smith and the other Free National Movement members of parliament received the backing of the Central Council of the party on Thursday night in their bid to have the former prime minister lead them in the House of Assembly.
FNM Chairman Carl Bethel said it is now left for Mr. Ingraham to decide whether he wants to go a step further.
“He will be the leader in parliament. How far that goes and where that takes him is really for him to decide,” Mr. Bethel said.
“What is plain is that the party is seeking to marshal its hardest hitters, its heaviest hitters, bring our big guns to the forefront because we are entering into a very crucial election period.”
When he appeared on the Love 97 programme “Jones and Company” on Sunday, former Deputy Prime Minister Frank Watson – who strongly intimated that he wanted Mr. Ingraham to return as party leader – said the party was about to enter a war and needed its best ammunition.
In an interview with The Bahama Journal, Independent Member of Parliament Tennyson Wells, a former Minister in the Ingraham Cabinet, insisted, however, that Mr. Ingraham would be bad for the future of the party.
He also said that Mr. Ingraham ought to give the Bahamian people an idea of whether he plans to run for the leader of the FNM.
“He should be a man and take a principle position and say, ‘Listen, I want to run as the leader.’ I told him this months ago. [Look what the] FNM did for him. He never had to fight for anything, no fight. People just handed it to him on a silver platter.
“But the people now have reached a stage [where] they’re not going to put up with his nonsense anymore.”
Mr. Wells said he spoke with FNM Leader Senator Tommy Turnquest via telephone recently and told him Mr. Ingraham “is going to jam him.”
“[I told him] when Ingraham had a meeting with him and told him that he was not running – and this was only couple weeks ago – [to ask him to say so publicly]. But all the time he’s got [his former ministers] out there garnering support. But Tommy doesn’t listen to me.”
Mr. Wells predicts that at least 30 percent of the base support of the FNM would not support Mr. Ingraham if he seeks to regain the leadership of the party.
He believes that the fact that 40 council members voted last Thursday against him becoming the Official Opposition leader – compared to 88 who voted in favour of the move – is a telling sign of the bigger picture.
“I have no doubt in my mind about that and I have a good ear for the ground and what happens on the ground, particularly in [New Providence] and some of the Family Islands,” Mr. Wells said.
By: Candia Dames, The Bahama Journal
