Politics in the Bahamas has evolved to a point where politicians are not nominated based on how many babies they kissed but instead on whose baby they kiss, Independent MP Pierre Dupuch told The Tribune yesterday.
Mr Dupuch said that the party system in the Bahamas has disappointed him tremendously.
“That is no reflection on the present government because I don’t know how their people came forward. In the old days when my father ran as an independent, you were nominated based on how many babies you kissed. Our political system has evolved to now where it depends on whose baby you kiss.
“That does not say much: for getting imaginative people to the forefront. I am not saying that the people there are not imaginative, but it certainly leads to that,” the independent MP said.
However, while Mr Dupuch said that the present FNM is not like the party he knew before, he has no gripes with either of the major parties.
“When Sir Lynden went to hospital the first flowers he found in his room were mine. In the last 10 years of opposition Sir Cecil (Wallace Whitfield) and I were probably the most vocal people in the House of Assembly against Sir Lynden, and again, you were talking about policies and not people. Because I don’t have an argument with people, I have an argument with policies and the FNM is completely different from where people like Sir Cecil or Sir Kendal (Isaacs) envisaged it to be.
“It is the Hubert Ingraham party and whether people like to admit it or not, the sooner he leaves the political scene the better it will be. I am not trying to be nasty to Mr Ingraham – that’s just the way it is,” he said.
Mr Dupuch announced publicly that he would not be offering himself as a candidate in the next election.
While he said that he sometimes regrets having made the statement, Mr Dupuch said he is “not one of those people” who breaks his word.
“I gave my word to the people I would not run again and that is the way it is, I have a complete 25 years in frontline politics and 40 years in politics altogether and I was just feeling tired and I just feel burnt out.
“Politics is not what I envisaged it would be, and more recently, it has not been as pleasing as it used to be, and I just thought I could leave room for other people. It does not mean that I will dry up and blow away, but I just won’t go to the House of Assembly,” Mr Dupuch said.
In December of 1999, Mr Dupuch was fired by former prime minister Hubert Ingraham as minister of Consumer Affairs and Welfare. The relationship between the two men, at least publicly, has appeared to be less than friendly.
Mr Dupuch said he does not know when the disconnect between him and Mr Ingraham occurred.
“Maybe it happened when he decided that he could not control me. What people do not understand is that I tried to do my best with him. He was always looking in the shadows for someone with a dagger but I don’t carry knives and I don’t hit people in the back, but he was a person who did not like opinions and I am a person who is very opinionated.
“I am very prepared to change my opinion but I am not prepared to change my opinion just because you say so, you must prove to me, convince me that your point of view is right,” said Mr Dupuch.
However, the MP asserted that he was not the only one in the former cabinet who had an issue with Mr Ingraham.
“I would say out of his entire cabinet there were three people that I never heard criticise him but there were only several of us who had the courage to say so publicly and to his face,” Mr Dupuch said.
Mr Dupuch dismissed assertions that his feelings towards Mr Ingraham is just a case of “sour grapes”.
“People are always saying sour grapes instead of saying this happened – these are the facts.
“I can tell you there are no sour grapes. But say there is sour grapes – what has that got to do with it?
“It is a fact that Hubert Ingraham is basically a dictator? Is he a man who breaks his word? Don’t worry about Dupuch’s sour grapes, is that someone you want? Those are the questions that we as a nation have to start asking ourselves.”
“You can call it sour grapes all you want, but a person who calls it sour grapes does not want to think,” Mr Dupuch said.
By: Rupert Missick Jr., Chief Reporter at The Tribune
