The Plan to Oust Christie pt. 2

The play on the leadership of the Progressive Liberal Party has taken a number of hairpin turns in recent weeks, no doubt sparked in part by our observations here, and the reporting on the piece by The Tribune that it demands a follow up. 

 

We understand that there is yet another faction within the PLP jockeying for the leadership but the prospects for this crew are as remote as Sarah Palin’s chance of winning a Nobel Prize for Science. This crew is supposedly composed of former chairman Raynard Rigby, Fred Mitchell, Neville Wisdom and Vincent Peet but we have our doubts as to how solid this union is and may in fact be more propaganda being put out by the “Freeport Faction”. Lets look at the players in this drama and see who pans out as real and unreal.

 

Fred Mitchell spends a lot of time traveling to and fro to Freeport, so much so that it makes one wonder if he’s a part of the crew up there looking for leadership. We know that Fred isn’t looking for a seat in Grand Bahama so there has to be some other reason for his frequent visits up north. Could Fred and Obie be working together in some unholy alliance that sees Fred as Obie’s number 2? This one is a hard one to call because many PLP insiders agree that while Fred Mitchell has always had his own agenda, he’s not one to bite the hand that feeds him. These days, that hand is Perry Christie. But what is Fred up to?

 

Neville Wisdom is being framed in this whole thing. Of the four, Wisdom is the one that poses the least threat to Christie and is likely to be less compelled to go against his old boss. Yes, Neville was upset following the loss in that he felt Christie could have helped him out against Hubert Minnis, but Wisdom is smart enough to know that if Christie was really against him, he would have sent a fresh face into Killarney to unseat Neville. That hasn’t happened and Neville recognizes this. Wisdom is tight with Vincent Peet and the two have met regularly about Peet’s aspirations to deputy but it is unlikely that Neville would dare make this kind of move without anything firm to back him up. He knows what side his bread is buttered on.

 

Vincent Peet’s relationship with Candia Dames of the Nassau Guardian was useful in the leaking of the confidential post election report commissioned by Perry Christie, but Peet wasn’t the one who leaked the report. That would be too obvious and too stupid of him as he is highly dependent on not rocking the boat with either side. Peet has been around long enough and was one of the youngest pupils of Sir Lynden Pindling when Ping appointed him to the Cabinet at a very tender age.

Loyal to Christie

Peet is old school and as such, his loyalty to the hierarchy trumps his own ambitions. He’s also extremely pragmatic and won’t jump on any bandwagons against Christie unless there is certain success.  This is not the case now and he’s being set up because of his ambitions to lead the PLP. Anyone hoping to unseat Christie has to know that having another aspirant to that post only poses another problem. 

 

 

Raynard Rigby, the former chairman who has just found his groove back since leaving the office has been from pillar to post talking about the party’s leadership and campaigning for Perry Christie to step down. Rigby seems to be feeling his oats now that people are paying attention but seems to have forgotten that this very same Perry Christie was the one who saved his tail when the party’s voting delegates were calling for his head in 2003, just one short year after he was elected chairman. The clarion call on the floor of the 2003 PLP Convention was for the removal of Raynard Rigby as Chairman, citing his high handedness with down the line supporters of the party and his embarrassing blunders and estrangement of the media as the cause. But, Christie stepped in and saved the young Chairman, perhaps now to his regret.

 

Senior advisors were already weary of Rigby’s intentions and are now saying “I told you so” now that Rigby is throwing darts at his former leader. The question is, why, and to what end? If Rigby hopes to achieve a PLP nomination, surely he must know that if Christie survives an attack on his position, and we have every reason to doubt that there will even be one, he’s toast. Could it be that Raynard bought into the idea of Obie succeeding? Not sure. Could Raynard’s relationship with Fred Mitchell (former partner), be a hint of some other plan? Not sure. What we are sure of is that Raynard has bitten the bullet and gone for it but his critical error may be in making a move too soon and too sure when he has no idea what Christie’s intentions are.

 

In PLP politics, thats a dangerous thing to do. 

 

Did we mention that Rigby is tight with Candia Dames?

Top Retailer Robbing us Blind

A certain retailer may have some explaining to do very soon over its business practices.  We heard that this company has a whole office set up in the Miami area for the sole purpose of re-invoicing invoices that accompanies their products being shipped into The Bahamas.

The products are purchased in bulk in China and elsewhere and are shipped to Miami where they carry another bogus invoice that marks the price way down before coming to Nassau. This company is an immensely successful company and the owners are from one of the top old boy UBP families from Bay Street. 

 

The re-invoicing scheme is designed to take advantage of the lax controls at Bahamas Customs. Because the retailer is so “reputable”, nobody thinks twice about what appears on their customs forms. They mark the items down on a bogus invoice, send it to The Bahamas with the lower price and then charge customers based on the original price and keep the difference. The retailer’s scam came to light when an invoice was mistakenly included on the manifest of a recent shipment and the retailer’s in house broker wasn’t fast enough to catch it before it was spotted by Customs. Unfortunately, Customs was unawares and the scammers got off scot free.

 

So much for “crime doesn’t pay.”

The Plan to Oust Christie [pt. 1]

Since everybody has a say in what is going on in the PLP, we thought we’d jump into the deep end with our own analysis of the leadership and the plot to have it changed. Our information comes from our extensive conversations with members of the party and our friends in the media who have their own suspicions. This is part one of our grand speculation.

 

It is no secret that there are elements within the Opposition Progressive Liberal Party that are hell bent on seeing the back of Perry Christie as leader. The reach and extent of this group is vast and multifaceted, incorporating their friendliness with the media, the free use of Bahamas Press as well as well placed operatives throughout the rank and file of the PLP at all levels.

Perry Christie, the embattled leader of the PLP

 

 

 

We have hinted at an alliance in this program between PLP Chairman Glenis Hanna Martin and Leader hopeful Obie Wilchcombe, but that is just the dressing on the salad. The plot centers on one very simple premise: Make Christie appear indifferent, indecisive, weak, ineffective and force his strongest supporters in the party’s council to revolt. 

 

The plotters know that Christie cannot be taken down by force and saw first hand during its convention that despite Christie’s own shortcomings, he has the support of the council and is still wildly popular throughout the country. So the new approach is to show him up repeatedly, counting on the fact that Christie often takes too much time to respond and sometimes chooses to deal with situations behind closed doors, and create the strong impression that Christie is not illustrating “leadership.” It seems to be working but if there is anything one has to take from watching the PLP for some time is that you never count Christie out.

 

There are so many wrinkles to this plot that it is almost impossible to cover it all in this one dispatch. But lets set out the players and line up who is for and who is against the current leader. First off, Obie is the puppeteer pulling all the strings. The first salvo against Christie was to put his people in position to tank the elections. Wilchcombe is alleged to have said during the campaign that he hoped the PLP lost and people blame Christie. This would make them look to him as a replacement. Simple reasoning but thats what they’re going with. This explains who Earlin Williams and Carvel Francis and others who are anti-Christie wound up running the campaign. Phil Galanis was courted in the process but seeing the holes in the plan, Galanis didn’t go all the way and recoiled. Self interest is often a very useful tool for politicians and Phil saw the cracks in the wall. By then, it was too late. The damage was done and the PLP lost the election. 

 

The second phase included riling up the opposition to Christie, hoping to make something happen at convention. When convention was scheduled for February 2008, it was a god send to the plotters. Starting in Grand Bahama and then moving to Bimini and Abaco, they began opening up discussions with a number of PLP groups, including the large numbers of Stalwart in Grand Bahama. On the agenda was leadership. They even went to the extent of scheduling a luncheon for the stalwarts as a means to gauge their acceptance of the plan. That backfired when Christie loyalists derailed that plan. Wilchcombe showed his hand a couple of times by bringing up the leadership question himself or entertaining the discussion in what he considered a friendly crowd.  Cleverly, Wilchcombe made sure that whenever he was in the presence of the leader, he would be the first to stand up for Christie and on a number of occasions, declared his loyalty. Right. Score that one for Obie.

Obie Wilchcombe: The future leader of the PLP?

 

 

 

We know that Wilchcombe is sitting on huge cash reserves from backers like Mr. Capo in Bimini and a couple others in Grand Bahama. That money is not going anywhere anytime soon as these deep pocketed backers are under Obie’s control and will remain so as long as they are in The Bahamas. It was this source of funding that the plotters used to ferry over three hundred delegates to the PLP convention. It may have been money spent in vain as these delegates were not given the chance to vote because the position of leader was off the table. Score that one for Christie.

 

The next step was intended to be the most shocking. The malleable Kenyatta Gibson became the foil in that he was tapped to throw the first blow at Christie and they chose the symbolic period of Majority Rule to try and derail the celebrations planned for the Sir Lynden Pindling Centre. There is no other reason why Kenyatta Gibson chose that date. Wilchcombe admitted to speaking with Gibson prior to him leaving but his account of the conversation is surely not what happened. His letter to the PLP, which was written by or with the assistance of Earlin Williams, was delivered to PLP HQ without fanfare but by then, the word was already out that Kenyatta was delivering the blow. 

 

The reaction of PLPs to this was not something the plotters had planned on and the reaction was intense fury toward Gibson and anyone perceived to be taking his side. When Wilchcombe chose to go on JCN 14 to discuss the matter, that was when many of the PLP faithful saw the fingerprints on the plot and began to circle the wagons around Christie. 

 

From there, the plotters went into phase 2 of their plan and began their program to install a slate of officers committed to removing Christie and advancing their agenda of elevating Obie to the leadership. The names placed in nomination at the PLP convention said it all and with the exception of one position, the plotters achieved their goal, starting with the plum positions of Chairman and Vice Chair. The table was set at Convention for phase three.

“Call Tyrone” if you Want a Scandal. Laing at it Again

The following is a letter to the editor written by Forrester Carroll of Freeport Grand Bahama. Once again, it shows that its not what you know but who you know as Juiceman Laing and his brother of all trades, Tyrone, are once again mixed up in controversy. This time, its the creaky leaky roof of the Rand Hospital in Freeport.

Dear Editor,

 

$400,000.00 contract to repair Rand Memorial Hospital’s roof but it still leaks like a sieve.

 

Reports emanating from the Rand memorial hospital, here in Freeport, are that a $400,000.00 government contract was given to Zhivago Laing’s brother to repair the Rand Memorial hospital’s roof but, after repairs were affected, the roof still leaks like a sieve. Did it go out to bid, I ask? No I am told, the job was just given to him; and they say that nepotism was a thing of the past. My hope is that Kenneth Russell will hold Laing’s brother to the same rules as he is now holding those small contractors who are being engaged to build government’s low cost houses; that they build the houses with their own money and when ministry officials are satisfied with the work done, then they would be refunded their money; have you ever heard of such non-sense? This is a dumb idea conjured up by dummies. Kenneth Russell, who told me after the FNM lost in 2002, that he worked with his father in his little construction company, knows first hand that little Bahamian contractors, like his father, are not in a position to finance construction of these houses. Without exception, all of them depend heavily on the initial deposit and the intermediate stage payments and even then many of them get into financial trouble; besides why should they resort to that methodology when that is not the normal, accepted practice in the industry? It would be interesting to know who, besides Zhivargo’s brother, submitted quotes on that $400,000.00 hospital job.

 

Reports continue that the Morgue was broken down for days, medicine is in critically short supply and generally the hospital is in a serious state of disarray. I was told recently about ambulance drivers who were renting the ambulances out to do private jobs and they were pocketing the money, now if that isn’t the essence of total control tell me what is.

 

Bahamians are literally suffering for lack of food, health care, and all the other basic necessities, like utilities in the home( if they have one) etc, while the FNM government is using the country’s mega resources to prop up and enhance their political fortunes. Corned beef or bully beef, as it was affectionately called, which was termed the poor man’s steak is now a luxury food item. A friend told me just today of a family who operates a little mom and pop store in one of the outlying settlements in Grand Bahama who told him that they do not carry corned beef nor evaporated milk any more because they wouldn’t get them sold; that corned beef is too expensive and so is evaporated milk. People, they say, are now buying chicken hot dogs and bologna which they would smoother down with onions, peppers and tomatoes and then they would cook a little grits with that and call it a night. For thousands of Bahamians, a belly full is a belly full while Ingraham and Laing are having a field day and raining havoc on the public treasury for their own political benefit. They have no concern for what the wider population is going through; they care nothing for anybody except their FNM friends and families.

 

Their agenda, in the elections was about “A matter of trust,” remember? So what has happened to all the talk about “trust”? cronyism and nepotism are their “watch words” now. I hope the Bahamian people are learning a good lesson. We could have been enjoying, since January 2008, good national health care, had the PLP won the elections but we didn’t want that, so many thousands of us are suffering because we cannot afford what good health care cost. The same people who opposed the PLP’s plan to implement  national health insurance, are the same ones who are now killing us with their high prices; the doctors, the insurance companies and the Free National Movement government. I was told today of a mother whose daughter is in a coma and needs to be flown out to Nassau for treatment but they told her that there were no rooms at the princess Margaret hospital. She called doctors hospital who told her that she needed to pay $10,000.00 up front or produce proof of private health insurance, well she has neither so her daughter stays where she is untreated. National health insurance would have come to her rescue, no questions asked but we didn’t want national health insurance so we voted the PLP out of office and voted the uncaring FNM into office so we will have to suffer for our stupidity. Those are my views.

 

Forrester J Carroll J.P

Freeport Grand Bahama

2^nd Sept. 2008

City Market’s Woes Continue

The country’s largest supermarket chain may be headed for tougher times sooner than expected. For months now, City Markets has been on the ropes financially, following the sale of its shares by Winn Dixie to Bahamian investors Franklyn Butler and Craig Symonette.

 

On taking over the company, the new ownership engaged the services of a Barbados/Miami based management firm for supermarkets called BS&T. Immediately, holes in the City Market operation were exposed. The first thing that was obvious was the fact that City Market stores were way behind the times as far as inventory control and product loss because they were not using modern scanning cash registers or other up to date equipment to control inventory. Simply put, profits were walking out of the door because of unscrupulous staff. Just recently, with the newly installed scanners, the company has brought charges against as many as ten employees for theft in excess of $90.000.

 

The company also was smart to get rid of a number or expats who were holdovers from the Winn Dixie days. Bruce Souder, the long time GM was fired and so was Michael Clayton, one of their head buyers.

 

The other issue that came with the change over was the fact that City Market lost it’s purchasing power when Winn Dixie moved on. Before, City Market was able to buy on Winn Dixie’s credit and benefited from WD’s bulk buying arrangements with major manufacturers. This arrangement is no more and City Market has had to pay up front. This has caused a cash crisis in the company that has spilled over to it’s local suppliers.

 

We can confirm that for the past several weeks, D’albena’s Agency, Asa H. Pritchard, Thompson Trading and a number of other suppliers have had City Market on hold as far as sending them products. One report has City Market in arrears almost $1 Million to one supplier in particular and has only since resolved matters by agreeing to pay for goods on a weekly basis COD. To add to its woes, City Market has been having a difficult time getting the backing of local banks as far as extending credit is concerned. The banks are troubled by the fact that City Market holds no assets to speak of and aside from it’s headquarters and main warehouse on the East West Highway, City Market rents space for all of its stores.

 

The silver lining is that while all of this is happening, City Market still seems to be holding its own against rival Super Value and Solomon’s and upstarts Robin Hood and Saveco. The question is, for how long?

Archer Shooting Not all it Seems

We have been following the reports of Omar Archer’s shooting the other day and from all the chatter both in the media and online and the backroom gossip, there seems to be two parallel stories emerging and a completely preposterous side story. Lets get to the theories first. 

 

Archer was shot in the abdomen. According to him, the bumbling hit man tried to finish the job twice and missed and then got in his car and sped off. Those are the facts as Omar has given them and backed up by witnesses. No issue there. There is however, issue as to the motives behind the shooting. According to Carvel Francis and his cohorts at Bahamas Press, in two really bizarre postings, they are claiming that Omar Archer was the target of a hit because of his comments on their blog.

Omar Archer file photo

 

 

 

It is also being alleged by Carvel Francis & Co that the administrator of the PLP website, Andrew Burrows, is somehow responsible for the shooting because of the email posted on the site by Bahamas Press where Carvel, Earlin Williams, Gorman Bannister and “Fred” are named or implied as the owners/operators of the site. In this section, we clarified the true ownership of the site and now it seems Francis is content to claim that the PLP Admin somehow placed Archer in danger.

 

Is anyone following this? Carvel is right about people being put in danger but he was the first one to do that by adding Burrows’ name to the email and then going further by publishing photos supposedly of Burrows. In a tit for tat, we were supplied with the outline of the whole Bahamas Press operation as well as photos of Francis. But in no way does any of this have anything to do with Omar Archer being shot.

 

Here is what we heard might be one reason. Archer’s investigation into the Stephen’s Close matter brought him in contact with a particular police sergeant at CDU who was reluctant to investigate the matter. Archer was able to uncover evidence of this officer’s dirty dealings with another matter and threatened to make it public if the officer didn’t do his job and open a file on the matter. People are saying that while this officer had no beef with Omar, others who were afraid of Omar catching up to them were and they sought to silence him. We doubt that this is even close to being true, but its one story we heard. 

 

Another story we heard was that the matter was over a woman. Omar, while married and estranged from his wife, had interest in a young gal who had a crazy boyfriend. When the boyfriend found out who was roaching his bread, he decided to deal with the matter, street style and stalked Omar. We hear that because Archer is attempting a reconciliation with his wife, he was reluctant to give that version of events to the police.  In any case, it is sad that Carvel Francis and his cronies are trying to tie the PLP into what may very well be a random incident that had nothing to do with nothing. What’s even more pathetic is the fact that Bahamas Press would claim that threats were made on them. 

 

They must be on crack to expect anyone to believe that much less care about them to threaten them. Carvel wastes no opportunity to brag of how “super secret” his operation is yet almost on a weekly basis, he contradicts this by sending out stories where he claims this person or that person “told Bahamas Press” something or other. How can a mother of student know who Bahamas Press is and everybody else doesn’t? Better yet, how can Carvel continue to claim innocence when we were shown and showed you an email from him to Burrows where he says Bahamas Press is his site?

Carvel Brags about owning Bahamas Press in this Email. Read Admin

 

 

 

Carvel should remember the story of the boy who cried wolf. When the wolf actually came for his tail, nobody came to his rescue because he had lied for his own amusement too many times before.