By TANEKA THOMPSON

Tribune News Editor

tmthompson@tribunemedia.net

THE failed gender equality referendum was “payback” from voters to the Christie administration, former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham told The Tribune.

During a wide-ranging interview at his law office earlier this week, Mr Ingraham said while history would show that Bahamians voted against giving men and women equal rights in the Constitution, the outcome really was a vote against the government.

“I think it was payback too, I think that the PLP told its supporters and others in 2002 it was a bad idea and many of them bought into that, that it was a bad idea,” he said, referring to the Progressive Liberal Party’s actions more than a decade ago ahead of the last constitutional referendum.

That vote, which included issues of gender equality among other things, was brought to the electorate during an earlier Ingraham administration.

“And then there were FNMs who voted for it the last time who decided not to vote for it this time because they are voting against the PLP,” Mr Ingraham added.

“Unfortunately referendums, many times people don’t answer the question asked. They instead respond to the people who ask them the question and so it is a vote against the government why they vote against those questions.”

“That’s unfortunate but that was brought upon them by themselves.”

The former Free National Movement leader, who has been in retirement for the past four years, also told The Tribune that he has no regrets about decisions he made during his lengthy career in public office.

“I have a number of things I didn’t accomplish, but it wasn’t because I didn’t try. That was one of them, equality, but I don’t have any regrets. I thought I did what I could, all I could, and I told the public before, many times in the House of Assembly, that whenever the time comes and the people decide they didn’t want me anymore they would not have me around angry, or disappointed or hurt. I would get my lil’ dinghy, do some fishing, come to my law office here, etc, they won’t have me trying to come back and ask them to change their mind.

“We had an angry election (in 2012). People were angry at the time, they were angry at us, angry at me I suppose and they voted the way they did and they got the result that they may or may not have intended. But that’s the result they got. I accept it.”

Perry Christie

Mr Ingraham also weighed in on the political future of his long-time friend and rival, Prime Minister Perry Christie. He was asked about Mr Christie’s recent suggestion that he is holding the PLP together and plans to stay on as leader because young members of his government have asked him to.

“There is a lot of chatter in society that ‘Perry ought to go, Perry ought to go.’ If the public wants Perry to go, they will vote against him,” Mr Ingraham said. “He didn’t put himself in this position. He got elected by people and if they think he should not be there, next time they should vote against him. I think he has every right to serve out his term until next year and he has every right if he chooses to seek re-election as the leader of the PLP. No, in my opinion the PLP will not fracture if Perry is not the leader.”

Mr Ingraham served in Sir Lynden Pindling’s Cabinet and was a member of the PLP until he was booted out of the party in 1985. He joined the Free National Movement (FNM) in 1990, later winning the 1992 general election as that party’s leader.

He said the PLP would not fall apart without Mr Christie at its helm because the party is structured, adding that whoever succeeds the prime minister will absorb the PLP’s core supporters.

“The PLP is a very established, organised and structured party. They would have a big fight and commotion about who should replace Perry, but when that is finished whoever ends up being the leader of the PLP and whoever is able to carry the name PLP, and (say) I am the leader of that, will carry the PLP supporters with him. Whoever that is. Unlike the FNM. FNMs will fracture and go here there and everywhere and some will be DNA and some will be hollering about something else, etc. But at the end of the day, the PLPs are going to vote PLP.”

He said the FNM is different because the party is a “movement.”

“The FNM is not a party in the sense that the PLP is a structured party. The FNM welcomes all manner of people in its ranks, they come in and they go out, they get vex with the PLP and they come to the FNM.”