EDITOR, The Tribune.

Dear Mr Prime Minister:

I am not often one to get into public political commentary or debate but my heart is heavy. As someone who has watched your political career over the past 40 years, and witnessing where we are today I could not resist re-reading George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm”. 

In fact as I watch your actions and those of your most ardent supporters the words of Mr Orwell in another forum seems to ring true, “Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

Your reaction and those of your goons and cronies to Mr Alfred Sears and his offering for the leadership of the PLP is very off-putting and smacks of a serious abuse of power. To think, sir, that in 1985 you too stood against the PLP having lost its way.  You stood up, with Hubert Ingraham and let it be known that it was time for a change in the PLP. You pushed for a change in leadership stating it was time for a new direction and new leadership. Back then you fought for democracy to be real in the PLP!

Were you wrong to stand up and challenge the status quo? No, sir- you were not! Was Ingraham wrong when you stood with him as he declared that more than one woman could born a Prime Minister? Were you ungrateful to Prime Minister Pindling for standing up for what you believed? Definitely not, sir! 

You stood on character and conviction! You were fired from your ministerial post and not nominated as a result and the PLP ran a candidate against you in the 1987 General Election.

Were you anti-PLP when you reached an accommodation with the FNM and ran against the party? I am sure you would argue otherwise.

You were targeted by your own party and some even went as far as to suggest that you should be charged for treason for the stance you took. You were so maligned by the PLP that you vowed that you would swim in your own vomit rather than ever return to the same party that you are privileged to lead today. History, however, will record that you did what was right and that the PLP and the country are the better for you taking a stand.

It was because of the fact that Sir Lynden beneath the surface respected you for standing up to him and exposing the fact that the PLP of the mid-to-late eighties had gone astray that he later endorsed you as the next leader of the PLP. Sweet irony!

Considering your own history as a maverick and a man of conviction and principle, many of us who supported you wholeheartedly as The Right Man for the Job cannot understand who Perry Christie has become.

Look in the mirror, sir! You have become all that you once stood against and opposed.

The talks of your pettiness and growing spitefulness abound, firstly in response to the rumoured leadership interest of your deputy, Philip “Brave” Davis and now in response to the expected challenge by Alfred Sears.

People are talking, sir! 

The whispers of padding votes by appointing hundreds of stalwart councillors over the past few months, the brute intimidation of stalwarts and delegates, the victimisation of any and everyone believed to be associated with Alfred Sears and the veiled threats and all out witch hunt towards anyone who is believed to be a financier of Alfred Sears’ leadership campaign are getting louder. Many have heard of and are repeating your threat to deny deserved Cabinet appointments and to engage in blatant gerrymandering to target those offering for leadership.  This is predicated on IF the PLP wins which seems like a long shot these days. 

Your experience in 2007 and that of Hubert Ingraham in 2012 ought to educate you that boundary cuts fuelled by personal vendettas usually ends in defeat and there are often many unintended casualties as a result.

Having been a victim of PLP nastiness yourself, who would have thought that you would become a perpetrator? 

In my opinion, you are a hypocrite. Your history is there for all who wish to be truthful and remember the positions you took in the 80s.

People are watching, Mr Christie! Yes, you are likely to be re-elected as Leader of the PLP, but at what price? You have become the type of leader that you opposed. Although the PLP and those on the Christie gravy train may love you, The Bahamas does not!

I would expect that when you look in the mirror that you see everything that was ugly and nasty and wrong about the PLP that you stood up to and against. It is not a pretty sight!

MEREDITH ROLLE

Nassau,

January 15, 2017.