Today � four years later- the Rt. Hon. Hubert Alexander Ingraham is back. This time around he is deputized by the Hon. Brent T. Symonette.
Many politicians who are now estranged from Mr Ingraham and the Free National Movement say the Leader of the F.N.M is no longer viewed as a figure who unites, but as one who epitomizes division and strife.
They also believe that he will, this time around, lead his party to defeat. Some others are convinced that the Free National Movement will be guided to its oblivion.
One of Mr. Ingraham’s former Ministers, Sir Arlington Butler says the FNM is not together and believes the Party made a mistake in returning Mr Ingraham to the leadership. However, there are many Bahamians who are praising Mr Ingraham for introducing new blood in the FNM.
Only time will tell.
We have heard it said that there is a view and an argument that suggest that the next elections have been conceded. Those who hold to this view surmise that the current FNM leader is today doing yeoman�s duty as he lays the ground works for the 2012 contest.
In the meantime, we remind all and sundry that since there is a time for everything under heaven, they should not be dismayed when they wake to the reality that there is a time for winning and a time for losing; a time for joy and a time for sorrow.
Some political observers suggest that this number amounts to some eighty per cent of the electorate, with each major party being in a position to depend on about half of that number falling under �true believer� rubric.
This would leave a decisive minority of some twenty per cent of the electorate in the enviable position of being quite literally a decisive minority. That is the fraction of the total vote that today means so very much to those who would lead.
Of necessity this directs our attention to what is happening or not happening in the hierarchy of both major parties as they gear up their electioneering machinery.
From what we have been able to glean from any number of sources, there seems to be a generalized sense in which the FNM leader, Mr. Ingraham has come to be seen as that party�s savior and destroyer.
Those who support the leader say that he is �at long last- bringing in new blood. This they say is today being reflected in the names and faces of any number of young Free National Movement supporters who are slated to carry the party banner into the next General Elections.
Only time will tell whether this move will help or hurt that party.
At this juncture there are others who are today livid at what the leader of the FNM is doing. They are saying that he is gutting the party of some of its time-tested stalwarts. And for sure, some of these old timers are hopping mad.
Sadly, the problem with most of them is that they are powerless.
It was not so in times past. Even now, we remember the time when today�s critics were ardent supporters of the man who they made their leader in 1990. That they did so and then by way of acclamation only serves to compound their stress and distress today.
Despite a barrage of brave words, the current opposition is but a shadow of its old self, whether the reference is to the years 1990-1992, when it was an insurgent force, or to that time -1992-2002- when it was large and in charge.
Today�s Free National Movement is a far cry from that Free National Movement which �by acclamation- chose Hubert Alexander Ingraham to become its leader in 1990.
As we recall, this erstwhile prince of the Progressive Liberal Party and prot�g� of its leader, the Rt. Hon. Sir Lynden O. Pindling was somersaulted to the pinnacle of power in an opposition party that was in deep grief and mourning for its fallen maximum leader, Sir Cecil Vincent Wallace-Whitfield.
The rest of that decade long story is now history. The Free National Movement ruled for almost a decade. The Torch was passed to a new leader and on May 2nd. 2002, the FNM was routed.
Only time will tell what fate awaits the Free National Movement in its new guise. Only time will tell whether this time around will be Ingraham�s last hurrah.
Time will tell. History does matter.
Editorial from The Bahama Journal
