ABAGAIL CARTWRIGHT DEAN’S BLUE HOLE

The Search Party Needs Flashlights Last week, I wrote that you cannot win without a bench. Apparently, some within the FNM read my article—or perhaps they had already reached the same conclusion.

I don’t like getting involved in FNM business, but rumour has it that some of the party’s former leaders and powerbrokers gathered last week to discuss the future leadership of the FNM. If the reports are accurate, Mr. Michael Pintard, as the Chairman of the PLP, Minister Fred Mitchell, said last week, is “a dead man walking.”

But the more interesting question is this: how does a major political party reach the point where its elders must go looking for somebody to lead it?

That was precisely my argument last week.

Rebuilding is not removing one leader and installing another. It means reassessing your philosophy, recruiting talent, developing people, creating depth and presenting a vision capable of attracting bright minds.

Therein lies the FNM’s deeper problem. For too long, advancement within the party has appeared limited to a narrow political circle. If talented young Bahamians, professionals, entrepreneurs and thinkers do not believe there is a genuine pathway upward, why would they come? You cannot spend years keeping the gate narrow and then suddenly wonder why the yard is empty.

So now the FNM reportedly has former leaders discussing where the next leader might come from. Perhaps the search party should bring flashlights.

But there is something more serious here. The Bahamas has one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the Western Hemisphere, with a parliamentary tradition dating back to 1729. It is therefore disheartening to watch one of the country’s two major political parties become functionally defunct. A mature democracy needs more than elections; it needs a credible opposition capable of challenging ideas, presenting alternatives and preparing itself to govern.

The FNM’s predicament should therefore concern even those of us who do not support it.

Leadership should not have to be found. It should be a seamless transition. It should have been developed.After all, if you have to assemble the elders, organize a search party and bring flashlights just to find your next leader, perhaps your problem was never Michael Pintard.

Perhaps the lights went out in the organization a long time ago.

-Abigail Cartwright