Former Cabinet Minister and FNM candidate for the Carmichael Constituency Desmond Bannister chalked up all of theatrics of this year’s FNM convention as a simple part of the democratic process.
In an interview with the Bahama Journal, Mr. Bannister described why he was not overly concerned with the infighting, while taking slight jabs at the PLP and DNA.
“Whenever there is a challenge in an organization, you have people taking sides and having very strong opinions. People have loyalties. Sometimes you have differing views but it’s an internal party fight. Ask yourself if the DNA has ever had an election for their leadership; ask yourself when last the PLP has had election for leadership,” he said.
“You could not see the challenges that are happening now in the PLP, they would quickly be crushed. This all a part of politics, you have people that are opinionated but this is a natural election process.
“You’re seeing it play out publicly because the FNM is the most democratic political organization in the country,” Mr. Bannister said.
Mr. Bannister also used the comparison of the relationship between the former and present prime minister as reason to not become enamored with “wars of words” during election season.
“We always talk about Christie and Ingraham calling each other names and saying all kinds of things during election season.
“When in actuality they are good friends but for the purpose of elections they go all out to win, and that’s what happens in politics.
“Don’t make too much of it,” Mr. Bannister said.
Bannister also drew the ire of Minister of Education Jerome Fitzgerald for comments he made during his remarks last week Thursday.
He listed the educational accomplishments of the FNM, while suggesting that the PLP government had done nothing to neither improve nor advance education while in government which has amounted to “a betrayal of our children.”
Mr. Fitzgerald said that since there are 172 government schools throughout The Bahamas, the PLP government built 155 or 91 per cent of those schools.
Fitzgerald also chastised the FNM on the 50 per cent drop out rate they left behind after 15 years of governance.
The education minister then went on to list at least eight accomplishments of his ministry in the last four years as he again defended the government’s promise to “double the investment in education and training”.
A few of those accomplishments the doubling of scholarship dollars from $7.75 million in 2011 to $16.2 million in 2016, investing more than $6 million in technology in all junior and senior high schools in The Bahamas and over $5 million dollars in investments for a comprehensive education management information system to facilitate the tracking of the academic performance of each public school student from pre-school to graduation.
