The silly season of election politics is upon us. Nothing is sillier than seeing the two major political parties courting a plethora of fringe politicians that nobody ever gave much attention.
Suddenly, we’ve got the FNM and the PLP jumping into a bowl of alphabet soup trying to woo politcians, who in the last election were all but ignored by the electorate.
Cassius Stuart, head of the Bahamas Democratic Movement, once had to handcuff himself to the parliamentary mace to get his name in the paper. Now, he is being treated like a celebrity as the FNM courts him like a schoolboy chases his first crush.
Just yesterday, Stuart disbanded the BDM and joined the Free National Movement. A press release from the FNM says, “former BDM Leader Cassius Stuart and colleagues were warmly welcomed into the membership of the FNM.”
What a joke!
Running up to the last election, it was Mr Stuart who, “declared war on both the Progressive Liberal Party and the Free National Movement, at the same time dismissing the Coalition for Democratic Reform as ‘defunct’ and its members as ‘political prostitutes-who seek to serve (only) themselves.'”
Who is the political prostitute now, Cassius?
“To make matters worse, the remaining leaders of the CDR joined the FNM. What a disgrace,” Mr. Stuart said in 2006.
“What is puzzling is (that) the leader of the CDR went into one party and the deputy leader went into another and both are claiming that their new parties are the best thing since sliced bread,” the hypocrite added.
Most of these fringe politicians don’t have any integrity, or any solutions to offer the Bahamian public. They are only looking out for themselves and will join any party, and say anything, to get themselves into a position where they can milk the public purse as career politcians.
Meanwhile, National Development Party leader Renward Wells, whose letters to the editor used to only get published when there was no news to print, is now being lavished with attention from the FNM, the PLP and Bran McCartney, who has launched yet another new political entity.
Silly season indeed!
Mr Wells has only been leader of the NDP for a little over a month. He took the helm when the founder and leader, Andre Rollins, abandoned the party and joined the PLP in February.
Political hacks make good political whores.
Despite his calling Hubert Ingraham, “a very gifted individual,” Mr Wells has allegedly spurned offers from the FNM and is now in “discussions” with the PLP and Branville McCartney’s new DNA party, as to who he will be jumping into bed with for the 2012 general election. The FNM denies that they ever offered an olive leaf to the NDP.
Wells, who is obviously deluded by his newfound self-importance, told the Tribune newspaper that both the PLP and the FNM are “desirous of the type of credibility the NDP has been able to establish over the past two and a half years – as evidenced by their approaches to them to join with their respective parties.”
Credibility?! Who does Mr Wells think he is kidding? In reality, the NDP is irrelevant to Bahamian politics. In fact, the party’s website was recently shut down for lack of payment. Mr Wells is more desperate than either Perry Christie or Hubert Inraham and, despite all the media attention he is garnering right now, his inclusion in either major party will have absolutely no bearing on the outcome of the 2012 election.
It appears that the next general election will offer Bahamians nothing new. Just the same old tired cast in new seats after a silly game of musical chairs.
