The hubris, narcissism and self-indulgence of Peter Nygard in The Bahamas ...have earned him the disgust of many Bahamians...

Perry Christie and the PLP’s Nygard Problem

By Simon
frontporchguardian@gmail.com

It wouldn’t be a PLP term in office without the party’s entanglement with highly controversial, eccentric and flamboyant foreigners seeking to use the country as an outpost for their curious interests, pressing for privileges to which they may not ordinarily be entitled.

Why do so many more of these characters flock to the PLP, like moths to a flame? It has to do with the party’s history, with Sir Lynden Pindling and his coterie of the compromised having fuelled and encouraged such a party culture.

It has also to do with the history of a number of the leaders and political parties which helped to usher in majority rule and independence in various former colonies.

Flushed with adulation and hero worship, and having gained political power and access to enormous economic wealth, many freedom fighters were lured into corruptions of power and money arising from their new circumstances and fortunes.

This happened most recently in South Africa under the African National Congress, now heavily criticized for corruption within its ranks, betraying the example set by Nelson Mandela.

Even the great Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah gave in to corruption, as did Sir Lynden and his court, with an excessive lifestyle which demanded considerably more cash than a prime minister’s salary might afford.

Like the days of piracy and wrecking, the PLP have a particular talent for fleecing foreigners. Buyers beware. It is not only Bahamians who are at the mercy of the party’s broken promises. Many foreigners are also left waiting for promises which never materialize despite their generosity to certain coffers.

Casino license

Back when, there was Mike McLaney beseeching a casino license, which was faithfully promised to him by Sir Lynden were the PLP to win office. Having given the party electoral support which, according to a New York Times story included “cash, aircraft, boats, and a campaign headquarters on Bay Street” McLaney eagerly anticipated a license.

Though having described the PLP as being in his “ass pocket”, relations soured between Sir Lynden and McLaney as the latter’s reputation became better known. Sir Lynden eventually refused to meet with McLaney, who was subsequently labelled as an undesirable by a Commission of Inquiry.

Milked and bilked, McLaney left town broke, without a license. At the inquiry there was a discrepancy in the competing testimonies of the amount McLaney said he donated to the PLP, and the amount Sir Lynden said he received. Sounds familiar? Perhaps the old and the new PLP aren’t so different.

Then there was the fugitive U.S. financier Robert Vesco. Vesco fled the U.S. in 1973 to escape a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation concerning an alleged massive fraud by the financier estimated today at more than $1 billion.

He crisscrossed the region, finding governments that would give him protection from U.S. authorities, even allegedly attempting to purchase Barbuda from Antigua in order to make the former an autonomous country. A 2008 obituary of Vesco in the U.K.’s Guardian observed: “Vesco had cozied up to Nixon’s [U.S. President Richard Nixon] two brothers and employed his nephew Donald. ... As well, he found ways to reach Bahamas Prime Minister Lynden Pindling and Costa Rican president José Figueres via strategic loans, donations or investments.”

The PLP is particularly disposed to strategic loans, donations and purported investments from certain parties, domestic and foreign.

Among the worst were foreign drug lords, who seemingly had near carte blanche from the Pindling-led PLP government during the 1970s and 80s, making The Bahamas a “Nation for Sale”, a ruinous period from which we have still not recovered.

Bank license

On Prime Minister Perry Christie’s watch there was the likes of Iranian businessman Mohammed Harajchi, who desperately wanted the restoration of a bank license from the PLP, but which was never granted. Harajchi claimed that he gave a substantial sum to the PLP for the 2002 general election.

In response to Harajchi’s claims, Christie made one of those solemn, passionate and supposedly high-principled declarations for which he is famous: “My party is presently conducting an accounting of monies received from Mr. Harajchi but I can state with complete confidence that Mr. Harajchi’s claim that it was $10 million is an absolute lie. It was nowhere near this amount. It was but a fraction of this amount. Details of our accounting will be made public once completed.

“Ordinarily we would not disclose the source of campaign contributions but as Mr. Harajchi has made this a public issue we are obliged to present the detailed facts concerning his contributions as indeed we will do as soon as possible.”

This promise was made by Christie on August 12, 2004, almost exactly nine years ago. It follows a pattern: A heated denial, a promise of full accountability, followed by absolutely nothing, all of which calls into question the prime minister’s credibility on these issues. We still do not know how much money Mohammed Harajchi gave to the PLP.

And then there was the late Anna Nicole Smith, a B-rated celebrity and Playboy’s 1993 Playmate of the Year, to whom then Immigration Minister Shane Gibson gave special attention, personally handling and expediting her immigration request, going so far as to making a home delivery of a certain document.

Gibson resigned due to the controversy with Christie sitting next to him on television almost holding his hand in one of the more bizarre Cabinet resignation events in the Commonwealth Caribbean.

Despite its longstanding deeply entrenched culture of chronic incompetence under Christie, the PLP knows politics. Still, when it comes to certain zany foreigners and money flowing into PLP coffers, the party seems to lose perspective, a mixture of hubris and a bunker mentality.

Late-again, Christie could not or refused to see how rolling scandals like the Anna Nicole affair were to make his the first one-term government in an independent Bahamas.

Propriety

Fast forward to today. What Christie and the PLP seem to fail to understand is that the Peter Nygard matter is not a singular or stand-alone event in the minds of voters. Instead it is representative of a concern, like the Anna Nicole affair, of a PLP little concerned about questions of propriety and the kinds of perception it is creating.

Even worse is the suspicion by voters of ‘Corruption 2.0’ in the PLP, the sort of rolling scandals and unseemly dalliances with all manner of characters which led to the party’s loss in 2007. The Nygard matter capsulizes and crystallizes a widely held perception about the PLP.

Moreover, the Nygard matter has many more chapters. It is like a volcano that will spew all manner of material. Christie may well come to regret his effusive and gushing accolades to Nygard.

The now infamous YouTube sensation of the controversial businessman supposedly taking The Bahamas back is a watershed moment in Nygard’s relationship to the country.

The video speaks volumes about the hubris, narcissism and self-indulgence of a character who has now earned the disgust of many Bahamians, including many who formerly dismissed him as mostly clownish.

As more is disclosed on the lifestyle, employment practices and other controversies surrounding Peter Nygard, he will prove to be toxic to the PLP, including those who are so foolishly defending him now. The man who helped the party win office may now play a role in its defeat. Clearly, Nygard seems to have little sense of propriety and is unconcerned about certain perceptions. As a private resident that is his right. But those political figures still inclined to afford him a red carpet and a Junkanoo rush-out may be as short-sighted and as self-injected with hubris as is the foreign eccentric who is set to deeply embarrass the Christie administration.

July 25, 2013

thenassauguardian

Will Branville McCartney one day abandon the Democratic National Alliance (DNA) and return to the Free National Movement (FNM)?

Deconstructing DNA

By ADRIAN GIBSON

ajbahama@hotmail.com




THE upcoming election cycle is setting up to be a sulfurously partisan and venomous affair, a true soap opera featuring politically shrewd operators, mountains of dollars and, moreover, seems to be one that will leave grown men whimpering.  That said, unless I am grossly underestimating the so-called backlash against the major parties—and I doubt that I am—anyone who honestly thinks that the Democratic National Alliance (DNA) will win the next election within a year of its formation is a bonafide citizen of fantasy land!

Whilst the DNA could very well capture a few seats (this is also up for debate), unless they are using some kind of Jedi mind trick, it would be fairly neurotic to believe that they could win a majority of seats as a political upstart, particularly in our political culture—where voters are fickle and vacillate as regards their choices—and in the face of the evidence of what has already happened, locally and abroad, relative to new political entities.

From the ground up

The history of party politics in The Bahamas is illustrative of the challenges facing the DNA.  The PLP was founded in 1953 and did not win the government until 1967, which ended in a tie that was broken when Sir Randol Fawkes and Alvin Braynen joined the party, and after the party had arduously toiled in the political vineyard for more than a decade.

Likewise, the FNM was formed in 1971 and wandered the political wilderness for 21 years before becoming the government in 1992.  To be frank, this was the state of affairs involving both the PLP and the FNM, taking both parties years to amass a strong base.  Moreover, the FNM, at the time of its formation, was seeking to become the alternative to the governing PLP and, even as the second major party, it took the organization more than two decades before winning the general election.  The DNA is today the third alternative, fighting against two political powerhouses with built-in support bases.

A new era?

Having said that, will the 2012 electoral cycle be representative of a new political era?

As a young, educated Bahamian I’m still waiting to hear the DNA enunciate a lucid, forward-thinking national plan that goes beyond the generic rhetoric and populist grandstanding of its leader, Branville McCartney.

Moreover, whilst the DNA has nominated a few superb candidates—for example, McCartney, Randy Butler, Chris Mortimer, Wayne Munroe, Roscoe Thompson—the party has selected a few standard bearers that have left me, and countless others, scratching our heads and reacting with a collective smirk.

In this hyper-partisan environment, the ground is apparently being loosened under DNA leader Bran McCartney as the governing FNM has neither announced a slate of candidates nor an election date, presumably a strategic move to allow for all the flair concerning the DNA to fizzle-out by election day.  Indeed, the DNA’s summer momentum appears to have died down.

Quite honestly, although Mr McCartney is seeking to become the dragon-slayer who defeats two political titans—Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie—whilst effecting a new generation of leadership, he must remember that Prime Minister Ingraham is, admittedly, a legislative technician and a political virtuoso and also that both gentlemen are towering political figures and therefore will not be easily dispatched.

If there’s something that the DNA can be credited for, it’s for reinvigorating the masses, especially young people, and jumpstarting an election cycle where certain panicky, high-minded politicians have already climbed off of their pedestals with the hope of saving their own hides in their respective constituencies.  Indeed, Mr McCartney and the DNA are amassing a large following, however Mr McCartney must be careful not to be consumed by youthful egomania, become enclosed in a cocoon of self-adulation and hero worship or become another short term nuisance—that is, a self-seeking, bloviating vacuity.

Thus far, the DNA has effectively created an us (DNA) versus them (FNM/PLP) atmosphere amongst the electorate, taking on an anti-establishment posture that has been well received.

I’m informed that in this election cycle, the leaders of both major political parties intend to politically emasculate Bran McCartney and put him in a clown suit.

Frankly, whilst the general consensus is that Mr McCartney’s DNA will attract more FNM voters as opposed to PLPs, it is my belief that political tacticians must not take comfort in that as both traditional PLP and FNM voters have expressed an interest in the party but, even more, the youth vote is where the DNA has built its strongest base.  No one should dare ignore the strength and likely turnout of young voters this election cycle!

Mr McCartney was once on the fast track to becoming the face of the FNM.  There are many persons who would argue that he “severed” his ties with the FNM because he wanted to be the alpha male in a Hubert Ingraham-led FNM and, when he couldn’t, he left in a huff.

Political titanic

Will McCartney one day abandon the DNA and return to the FNM?  Is his tarrying with the DNA a strategic move just to prove his leadership and organizational skills to the internal machinery and hierarchy of the FNM, with hopes of being invited to lead the party—an Ingraham-esque type of invitation (circa 1990)—in a post Ingraham era?

Is Bran another Icarus?  Will he be yet another man, another forlorn third party leader who had a dream and flew too close to the political sun only to have his wings burnt/melt away as he falls to his political death?  Is the DNA a political titanic?

Many voters are seeing a vote for the DNA as a protest, as a way of expressing their discontent with both major parties, a dissatisfaction that is, admittedly, being voluminously echoed in some quarters of the archipelago.  That said, this general election, what will the size of the electorate’s swing toward to the DNA be?  And, could there be sufficient migration of independents and party supporters from both of the major parties to propel the DNA into the seat of government or, at the very least, win a few seats?

If the DNA wins a handful of seats, it would change the political calculus of Bahamian politics.  Will the world of local politics be reset?  And, if the DNA loses all seats in the next election, will the party promptly disband and become yet another doomed political experiment?

Sooner or later, the political gates will be unlocked and the electoral machinery of the parties will come charging through.  Although it’s highly unlikely that the election will have a miraculous ending in favour of the DNA, it would be a colossal misjudgment to underestimate the potential impact of the DNA in the upcoming general elections.

Time will tell…

Published: October 8^th, 2011 in column Young Man’s View in The Tribune’s ‘The Big T’