How to Spend that Political Capital

PLP Chairman Glenis Hanna Martin is riding high these days. She is riding a wave of respect and new found political capital following the surprising success of the PLP Labor Day march where about 2,000 PLP supporters turned the parade into a PLP rally, and of course, she led the charge that resulted in Sidney Collie handing in his resignation.

 

So as far as the inner sanctum of the PLP is concerned, Glenis is riding high for her successes so far. But what to do with this new found political capital? Our guess is that Glenis has designs on moving up at least one spot on the PLP power totem pole and everyone knows that politically, she and Obie Wilchcombe are two peas in a pod and operate in tandem. If Obie succeeds in becoming deputy leader, and they can successfully maneuver Christie out of the way, Obie will seek to move up and make Hanna Martin his deputy.

 

Thats one heck of a plan if they can pull it off. The only thing they haven’t figured out how to overcome is the huge fact that with every single person who counts in the PLP, there is not a chance they will let anything go down that results in Christie being pushed out before 2012 at the earliest and they know the Council will not allow any treachery to remove the leader of the PLP.

 

This puts Glenis in a neat little position of power with both her faction of the PLP and also with Christie’s people who will not budge on having him as leader until he decides he’s ready to turn it over to new leadership. These are the same people who also hold Glenis up as a hero for toppling Sidney but they also respect the order of succession that Christie is in favor of. The other issue is the fact that Perry Christie remains an immensely popular figure within the PLP and the council in particular as his showing at the Convention on the final night proved. You will recall that while Obie was  mid speech, an image of Perry Christie came up on the big screen showing him entering the building and the assembled PLPs went apeshit and completely ignored Obie.

 

That little reminder of who’s the man put Obie’s leadership ambition on a different trajectory and forced him to focus on Deputy. Not a bad move but what has changed since then is the ascension of Hanna Martin now that she has proven in less than five months that she’s done more than Rigby did in five years. Okay, maybe thats not fair but, for the sake of the discussion, Hanna Martin may very well have a greater claim on the number two spot in the PLP than Obie with her new found success. Her confidence in this position may be the real hold back.

 

Now we get to the meat of the matter. How does Glenis spend that capital of hers? She won’t put herself in a position to go head to head against Christie because she knows that would be the end of her, AD Hanna or not. She won’t put her loyalty to Obie in jeopardy for her own ambition now because she owes him for delivering votes during her campaign and has a deal to help him out in his quest to be leader, so what’s a gal to do?

 

Our guess is Glenis, as she becomes more confident with her role and stature in the party, will start to exercise her own independence and think about the deputy leadership herself. Whether or not she waits to see how things go with Obie or not is another thing. The way things are going with her, the PLP Council may very well reward Glenis if she so chooses with the deputy leadership, leaving Obie out in the cold. We’ll just have to wait and see but thats our little bit of speculation.

A Shake Up’s A Coming: A Theory

The Cabinet of Hubert Ingraham’s government isn’t the only thing being shuffled we hear. Deputy Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade is expected to return to the Bahamas in a few weeks and the talk is that Reginald Ferguson will be put out to pasture to make way for Greenslade.

 

It is understood that the Prime Minister is looking to make two openings at the top of the force so that means that the rumors of Christopher McKoy going to another department to head it may be true. McKoy is set to replace Jack Thompson as head of Road Traffic and this will make space for Marvin Dames when he returns a few weeks after Greenslade.

 

Ingraham is now trying to bring some credible solutions to crime in the Bahamas because it will help him set up his next big move. In Ingraham’s scheme, crime has to come down or be seen to be coming down and this is essential to rehabilitating the reputation of Tommy Turnquest as Minister of National Security. All of this is a prelude to Hubert’s big move which will effectively be the stabbing in the back of the current DPM Brent Symonette in favor of Tommy Turnquest.

 

Did you get all of that? The prevailing view was that Hubert had made a deal with the Eastern Road for Brent to be leader or deputy and the fact is that the deal really was with the backers of Tommy Turnquest as a make up for the betrayal of 2005. Tommy Turnquest was promised a safe passage to the DPM seat by Ingraham and that included succeeded Symonette when the time was right. Of course, the big question is does this mean Ingraham is moving Brent out and bringing Tommy in or is he moving himself out, elevating Brent to PM and then bringing Tommy in as DPM?

 

Whatever it is, the key to anything to keep Tommy around lies in the removal of Reginald Ferguson, the promotion of a true crime fighter in Greenslade and bringing back Dames to be his number two. This will also go a long way to boosting Force morale as both Greenslade and Dames are much more respected than the grumpy killjoy Ferguson.

 

At least, thats what we heard.

How Dumb is Neko Grant?

There was widespread celebrating in the halls of Bolam House downtown when the news that the sourpuss dumb ass known as Neko Grant was gone from Tourism after a little over a year. 

 

Tourism staff, not used to Ministers meddling in their work with the most idiotic and stupid requests and opinions were only too happy to seem him shuffled right out of the ministry. Grant was offensive, intolerant and way way opinionated for someone who knows so little about anything. How he managed to even end up as Minister may be Hubert Ingraham’s biggest mistake in appointing anyone to anything so far. 

 

The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism operates like a well oiled machine and when they are properly funded and doing their jobs, they are a thing of precision. By putting Neko in there as minister was like pouring sand in your engine because he had nothing to offer but obstruction, stupid suggestions and was very abusive in his demeanor toward staff in his personal and professional dealings. We are not kidding when we tell you that there were literally tears of joy when he got shuffled out. 

 

So to the question of “how dumb is Neko Grant?” If you were thinking that he was dumb enough to go out and inspect a speed bump, managed to talk two even dumber cronies into going with him and then be incredibly, without parallel dumb by having it photographed by the media, we would say that was dumb but not as dumb as what we were told by our Ministry insiders who are now happy to dish the dirt. 

We hear that Grant had Eddie Lightbourne, the FNM stooge who is now the GM at ZNMess spending his time at MOT writing fake letters to the editors of the various newspapers hoping they would be published. All of the letters were to sing the praises of Neko, even though reality paints a different picture. So how dumb is Neko Grant? Dumb enough to think that he could do that, have it stay a secret and then expect the public to actually think he was doing a good job. Tourist numbers are down Grant, we noticed. It may seem like Kenneth “Killer Gorilla” Russell may not be the dumbest member of the Cabinet afterall, and may rank higher than Grant and that other big dumb ass Brensil Rolle on the intelligence pole.

 

Thats saying alot about how dumb Neko Grant is, so your answer is simply “VERY Dumb”.

 

We don’t know if this is true but this is what we heard. LOL.

When One Door Closes, Another Opens

Life is good for the former Chairman of the PLP. He’s been freed of the responsibility of speaking up for the PLP and running the day to day operations and is now able to concentrate on his practice, which has been jumping by leaps and bounds the last year.

 

His every now and then moments in the spotlight, offering his views on the PLP and other issues, however, may be causing a big headache for Rigby as he hopes to run for the PLP very soon. We hear that while Rigby and PLP chief Perry Christie have a bit of a strained relationship, it seems that the other factions in the PLP have no love for him either and he is an island unto himself. Case in point, current PLP Chairman Glenis Hanna Martin, AKA Wonder Woman, isn’t too keen on her predecessor either and there is no love lost between he and PLP front runner for Deputy Leader Obie Wilchcombe. But he will need all of the above if he has any realistic hope of getting a nomination.

 

So what’s a former chairman with aspirations of running to do, especially considering the fact that contenders have been lining up for the various open seats under the PLP like flies on doo doo. We hear Rigby is hopeful that he will land a PLP safe seat but it looks like he forgot the old saying, “last rat in the hole misses out on the cheese” because all of the logical (easy) places he could have run are now disappearing as other contenders step up.

 

He could have had St. Cecelia’s when Mother Pratt limps off into the sunset soon but he let that one go and it looks like that fight will be between Paulette Zonicle, Paul Moss and maybe even Dr. Anthony Ryan. Rigby worked St. Cecelia with Mother Pratt but when he became Chairman of the PLP, he allowed others to step into the mix and now it will be like taking meat from a hungry lion for him to try and unseat Paulette or Paul. He could have also made a serious case for either Kennedy or Elizabeth now that they are in the hands of Kenyatta “Big Lurch” Gibson and the deadbeat Malcolm Adderley respectively. But nu hah, Rigby hasn’t done anything there either and now he has to line up in Kennedy behind another of the Ryan brothers, Derrick, the former attorney for the Shiek, and one young fella in banking who we can’t really remember his name right now. In Elizabeth, its worse. We hear that not only is Malcolm under the delusion that he could run again and win, but that other contenders include Jerome Gomez, the dentists Kendall Major and Barry Russell, real estate guy Joe Curry and even the young liberal guy. 

 

So again, what’s Rigby to do? It seems all the squabbling over these so called PLP safe seats by otherwise good contenders has left Bamboo Town wide open for Rigby to waltz on in and get the nomination unchallenged. The PLP blundered by giving Branville McCartney an easy time by not contesting the seat. The only thing that will stop it from happening for Rigby in Bamboo is his perceived arrogance and inability to stop all the damn talking. If he can manage to say something, anything, to the media that doesn’t come across like an attack on the PLP, Perry Christie or the current Chairman and her faction, he may have a chance.

If not, at least he’ll have a very lucrative firm to continue with. What, with the new building and all the government business and government referrals that being the partner of FNM royalty brings.

 

Either way, he’s one happy guy right now.

The Well Run Dry

When Sidney Collie bit the bullet last week for being stupid enough to go with Hubert’s plan to fix the Local Government elections, him resigning resulted in a number of losers and we’re not even talking about the prissy Mrs. Mavis “HomeWrecker” Johnson-Collie.

 

We heard that the brother of a former PLP Cabinet Minister from the Pindling era was giving Sidney and Mavis the keys to the city as far as his business out east is concerned and they were carting off all kinds of goods on the hope that this scratching of Sidney’s back would pay off. The Brother was hoping that as Minister of Lands, Sidney would use his position to help a certain parcel of land out in the Gladstone Road area end up in the hands of The Brother at the expense of the land bank. 

 

Apparently, The Brother has been pushing to get this property for umpteen years from both the Pindling, Ingraham I and Christie administrations and was finally hopeful that Sidney would hook him up. Knowing full well that nothing happens in Hubert Ingraham’s Cabinet without his approval and blessing, at least at this level, Ingraham would not for one second consider giving this kind of deal to The Brother or any other old school PLPs no matter how much they were cussing the PLP now because of the fallout it would create, Sidney and Mavis took advantage of The Brother’s generosity and stocked up on whatever they could get their grubby hands on. 

 

Now that Sidney has been fired by Ingraham, our sources at the business out east reports that The Brother has been out of the office most of the time and has been so down and out and depressed because his hopes of getting that valuable land at no cost to him seems doomed. We hear he  has been scribbling into a yellow legal pad, no doubt trying to add up the cost of his freeloading friends Sidney and Mavis.

 

With friends like these, who needs enemies. Now we don’t know if this is actually true and we are not saying that it is, its just something we heard in passing.

Oh Wendall, Where Art Thou

Isn’t it sweet that on our very first day of elbowing our way into the quickly crowding Bahamian blog scene, none other than Wendall Jones would deliver a delicious bit of dirt for us. Thanks Wendall.

By now,  you must know that Wendall fired the lovely Paige Ferguson as news anchor and that subsequently led to the snap resignation of the also fine Candia Dames. What you may not know and what we can dish on is the reason why and how it all went down. 

 

You see, what had happened is just the other day, Paige went down to the basement studio to record the news update for JCN 14. When she got there, the technicians were not in place and as a result, there was no newscast. Already smarting from the fact that the Guardian has launched an all out campaign to lure everyone not named Jones working at Wendall’s enterprise, Wendall went ballistics because there was no update. So rather than cussing out the technicians, one of whom is the son of former PLP Cabinet Minister Shane Gibson, Wendall cussed Paige out in front of the rest of her colleagues and then said the words that now has him sitting in the newsroom twiddling his thumbs: “You’re not that good anyway.”

What he said that for? This upset Paige so much that she left in tears and was fired. Because the entire JCN news staff collaborate on the news broadcasts, Wendall’s swipe at Paige was a swipe at the entire staff and royally pissed everyone off, including Candia who is about to change her last name. Candia wrote her resignation and sent it into the ungrateful Jones over the weekend and the saga has since ended up on the front pages of the dailies and is a hot topic on a couple of popular websites. None of them have this dish though, ha ha ha.

To pour some more salt into Wendall’s wounds following the bombshell departure of the bombshell reporters, we can now confirm that not one of Wendall’s remaining news staff showed up for work this morning (Monday). His daughter in the newsroom, Kendia Jones, who is normally off on Mondays because of her Sunday chores, wound up having to come in to hold the fort down this morning. But other than that, everybody including top reporters Quincy Parker, Tosheena Robinson-Blair and the talky talky guy who does sports came in. We understand a number of the very same techs who caused the initial bust up didn’t come in either. Everyone called in sick, no doubt suffering from the “Wendall-Can-Kiss-My-Ass” bug thats going around.

Oh Jonesy, why you didn’t listen to the old man when he told you you need to take care of your people, stop trying to sleep with your female staff who ain’t your children and try paying for things on time. Now, “all ya business” is out on Bahamas Black Book and we got more. 

 

This ain’t too bad for a first post, eh?