Tommy Turnquest should take stock of where he is in the FNM and determine whether it’s in the best interest of the country to lead the party into the next election, former deputy prime minister Frank Watson said yesterday.
“If I were him, I would have to think that you can’t continue to be defeated by motions which you carry or have the council make a decision contrary to your wishes. That’s demoralising and I think it erodes your moral authority to lead these people, and so 1 think he has to make a choice,” said Mr Watson.
At the FNM’s council meeting last Thursday, Alvin Smith, leader of the opposition in the House, moved a motion to have former prime minister Hubert Ingraham replace him as leader of the FNM’s team in the House of Assembly.
Council members voted 88 in favour and 40 against Mr Ingraham taking the leadership post in parliament.
The MPs, said Mr Watson, were obviously responding to the “cries of their own constituents and hearing the louder cry in the country”, and thought that something had to be done for the FNM to step up its pace and to appear to be doing the job of representing the opposition in the Bahamas.
“They did not think that was coming from the leadership presently. They went to the Right Honorable Hubert Ingraham and asked him if he would accept the job of leader in the House. He told them that if they gave him the job he would have no choice but to take it but that he would wish that they would first speak with the leader of the party, Tommy Turnquest, and get the consent of council,” said the former deputy prime minister.
Mr Watson, who was the guest on Love 97’s Jones and Co yesterday, said that from what he understood, Mr Turnquest did not feel that it would be a good idea for Mr Ingraham to take over the leadership in the House.
“But the council felt otherwise. I think it is fair to say that if one wants to browse around the country, any part, any time, our present leader is having a difficult time selling himself to the populace and indeed even energising his own base has become a very difficult thing for him to do,” he said.
Mr Watson admitted that the backing of Mr Turnquest as leader heading into the 2002 general election “did not turn out the way we thought it would”.
“The first suggestion of that was that Mr Tumquest, with the support of the Cabinet, hardly got 50 plus 1 per cent of the vote in the party’s 2001 leadership election,” said Mr Watson. “After that, we were on the campaign trail and we continued to hear people say, ‘Between Perry and Tommy, I prefer Perry’. These were FNMs.”
By RUPERT MISSICK Jr and PAUL G TURNQUEST, The Tribune
