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Speaker ‘Ill-advised’ in Handling Ingraham Farewell

Keod Smith
Keod Smith

Former Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) MP for Mount Moriah Keod Smith said yesterday that Speaker of the House Dr. Kendal Major was “ill advised“ when he determined that retiring MP and former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham’s farewell speech would not be the first order of business of the House on Wednesday.

“I consider the speaker a truly honorable, fair-minded person, but…it is unfortunate that the people who the speaker looked to for advice on what to do and how to perform this particular task, that he is relatively new in, ill advised him to take the posture which has been taken,” Smith said.

Smith, who was a guest on ‘Darold Miller Live’ on Guardian Radio 96.9 FM, said the position that Major took prevented Ingraham from going through the proper process of the House.

The retiring North Abaco MP left the House abruptly on Wednesday after Major advised that he would not be allowed to speak at the top of the agenda but later down at ‘Item J’ .

That item deals with motions for leave of absence, leave to resign seats and new writs.

Ingraham said at the time that Major had gone back on an agreement regarding when he would be allowed to speak. But the speaker has said he never made any such agreement.

The whole event has created widespread public debate over whether the government treated Ingraham unfairly.  But many pundits opine that Ingraham should have sat and waited his turn to speak, but instead created unnecessary drama surrounding his departure.

Smith said yesterday that Ingraham would have announced his resignation to the speaker in the House during his farewell speech, which would have been recorded in the House minutes.

He said if he were in Prime Minister Perry Christie’s position, he would have ensured that his relevant members made every effort to extend the courtesies that should be afforded to a former prime minister.

Christie, who spoke to reporters outside Parliament following the incident, said that a member who has resigned is given priority to make a statement only when it is agreed upon.

However, Smith said yesterday that he hoped Christie could “rise above the fray” to fix the problem that has been created.

He said that if Ingraham comes back to Parliament and talks poorly of the incident or the governing party, history would reflect that, but it’s not for the government to speculate that, that would happen.

“I do not want the FNM to be in government but Mr. Ingraham was all of our prime minister when he served in that post and whatever it was that he had to say, I don’t want to read it, I want to hear him say it.

“I want my children to be able to hear him say it. They will say ‘boy that was a great man’ and I will say ‘he may have been great, but he was on the opposite side of your daddy’.”

Smith said Bahamians owe it to themselves to allow the people who played a significant role in their collective lives to have a platform to be recorded in the country’s history.

“The Hansard of The Bahamas unfortunately — if this is not fixed — will never be able to say there is a farewell speech of a former prime minister who resigned. He wasn’t defeated.”

By: Royston Jones Jr.
Source:  The Nassau Guardian

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