Oswald Brown’s scathing commentaries are nauseating. Brown, who fancies himself as a journalist, used to be the editor of the Freeport News. For years, he used his column to justifiably berate Perry Christie and the PLP. Then, rather suddenly, he switched political alliances and now wastes his words attacking Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, whom he calls “Hubert the Dictator”, and the PM’s sidekick, Zhivargo Laing.
Why, the sudden change of heart? Mr Laing, who is the State Minister for Finance, thinks he knows why. Mr Laing published his own commentary on his Facebook page to explain why Oswald Brown hates him and writes such “vile things” about him.
First, Brown believes that I along with Prime Minister (Hubert) Ingraham was responsible for his getting fired from his job at the Freeport News. This is, of course, absolute nonsense but this is what his now-jaundiced mind believes.”
Mr Laing says he, nor Mr Ingraham, had anything to do with Brown’s firing at the paper. In fact, he claims that recent conversation with the owners of the paper reveal much about Mr Brown, but Laing refused to elaborate.
Laig did say however, that, “perhaps one day, Mr Brown might reveal how he got the job in the first place,” hinting that there may be more to that story.
Laing also said that Brown might consider what value he actually added to the paper while he was there, “besides using it to spew his venom on those who did not give him his wishes”.
Laing goes on to give the second reason behind Oswald Brown’s vitriol.
Apparently, at one point, Mr Brown approached Minister Laing saying that he (Brown) wanted to leave the Bahamas to “clear his head” and requested an appointment in either Washington, DC, or Canada as a diplomat.
Knowing what a hothead he was, Mr Ingraham refused to give Mr Brown the appointment he wanted.
“So, in Mr Brown’s now twisted logic, Mr Ingraham and myself, owed him something or denied him something he desperately needed. Now like a dog returning to vomit, he is wallowing in the PLP’s muck, trying venomously to disparage me, the FNM and the Prime Minister,” Laing wrote on his Facebook page.
“All I can say is PLP beware! Good riddance to Mr Brown. Any man who could act so vexatiously double-minded is trouble to have as a supporter to begin with,” Laing added, referring to Brown’s history of attacking the PLP, then his sudden swith to defending the PLP and attacking Mr Ingraham and the FNM.
“No matter how he tries to justify it, one thing was revealed by his recent letter to the editor about why he now supports Perry Christie, after brutalising him in writing so often over the years, Oswald Brown is for Oswald Brown. As one very astute young person said to me, ‘I notice in reading that very long letter that Brown’s reason for leaving the PLP first, then joining the FNM and now going back to the PLP was not about any principled situation; it was only about his selfish desires. In a sense it’s like a woman spurned’. I could not have said it better myself,” Mr Laing wrote.