National Chairman of the Free National Movement (FNM), Dr. Duane Sands defended the absence of members of the Party from a heads of agreement signing ceremony held last Thursday for the redevelopment of the Grand Lucayan Hotel in Grand Bahama.
Prime Minister, the Hon. Philip Davis highlighted the absence of the Leader of the FNM and Member of Parliament for Marco City, the Hon. Michael Pintard during a speech he gave over the weekend at a Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) branch meeting.
Sands said, “this is now the third time that they’re selling the Grand Lucayan, spending tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of the Bahamian people’s money and not giving us a whole lot of information.”
Minister of Foreign Affairs and PLP National Chairman, the Hon. Fred Mitchell responded to Sands’ comments questioning Pintard’s fitness to run the country. He said, “the Bahamian public, when they make a decision about who is going to be running the country looks at whether the person it fit and proper to be a leader of the country. And that is the question is he fit and proper. Given the experience of his work in politics and public life in The Bahamas it adds up to a big fat no.”
Pintard was invited to the event while Sands says that he was not. Mitchell emphasized that while in opposition he attended all public events. “I could not assume that everybody who was at the function was PLP or everybody at the function was FNM. I had to go because Bahamians were there and I wanted to mix with them and be sure that I understood what they were feeling about what was happening. It’s a public event, a huge public event, for Grand Bahama and they were missing in action. So they didn’t get a chance. I would have been mingling with the investors. I would have been making appointments to go see them and sit down at the table and say what do you have in mind for Grand Bahama,” he said.
Mitchell expressed that he thinks the government has the support of the public.
