By DANA SMITH

Tribune Staff Reporter

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

FOLLOWING their election loss two months ago, deputy leader Loretta Butler-Turner is calling on FNM members to “look beyond the now” and follow in the wake of the party’s founders by demonstrating they are the party of competence and compassion.

She was speaking at the FNM’s retreat Saturday afternoon at Breezes Resort, where she also dubbed former prime minister and party leader Hubert Ingraham the “greatest prime minister in the history of an independent Bahamas”.

“During our discussions today we will debate why we lost the recent election, and what must be done to regain office. We will utilise the SWOT Analysis to discuss our strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats with which we are confronted,” Mrs Butler-Turner said.

“Yet amidst debate and discussion, we must also dream big dreams. While we must be honest about and acknowledge where we may have gone wrong or fallen short, our sights, our vision, our focus, must be much broader.”

She declared to the gathered party members: “This is a time for soul-searching; not self-pity. This is a time for unity; not multiplying problems through division. This is a time for positive action; not self-defeating negativity. This is a time for joining hands; not finger-pointing.”

Noting that the purpose of a retreat was to give FNMs space and time to see and hear things they might otherwise have missed, she said: “Our purpose today then, is to look beyond the now; to look to the horizons of our founding history, our accomplishments and the promising future that is calling us.”

Fortified by the vision of the party’s founders and the FNM’s “extraordinary legacy” in office, the future horizons the FNM must chart are greater than just winning the next election, she said.

“We must win hearts and minds. We must win the battle of ideas and imagination. We must build a more sustainable and broad-based majority party of generations present and future.

“Even as we aggressively oppose the empty promises and incompetence of a backward-looking and selfish PLP, our greater task is to demonstrate to the Bahamian people who we are, what we believe in and for what we intend to fight,” Mrs Butler-Turner said.

She called on party members to “dream the dream” of the party’s founders and “freedom fighters”, naming Sir Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, Sir Arthur Foulkes, Maurice Moore, Warren Levarity, Jimmy Shepherd, Dr Curtis MacMillan, George Thompson, Sir Kendall Isaacs, Sir Orville Turnquest, and Janet Bostwick as examples.

“And, let us never, never, never cease in securing and advancing the legacy of a man whose accomplishments are as profound as they are far-reaching,” she said.

“Sir Lynden Pindling will have his place in our history. But to my mind, Hubert Alexander Ingraham is the greatest prime minister in the history of an independent Bahamas. History will be more than kind to him. History will celebrate him as the great reformer and moderniser.”

The party’s dream is “compelling” and one that must be carried in the hearts of its members, Mrs Butler-Turner said.

“It is a dream of freedom and opportunity; justice and equality; human dignity and the common good; economic advancement and human development.

“In pursuing these ideals, we must demonstrate that we are the party of competence and compassion.  We must demonstrate that we are the best party to secure the promise and aspirations of the nation’s youth.”