NASSAU| Former president of the Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union Nicole Martin will replace House Speaker Halson Moultrie as the Free National Movement’s candidate for the Nassau Village constituency in the next general election.
Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis appointed Martin to the Public Hospitals Authority board in 2017 following the general election.
The party’s decision to ditch the incumbent candidate for the trade unionist prompted Moultrie to quit the FNM and become an independent member of parliament.
The House Speaker, who has taken the Minnis Administration to task over parliament’s lack of independence from the executive branch and the poor state of his office on Parliament Street, threatened that if the FNM did not give him another nomination for Nassau Village, the governing party would lose that seat.
“If they choose not to nominate me, then I most certainly could predict that the party I’m affiliated with, if they don’t nominate me in Nassau Village, they most certainly will not win that seat,” said Moultrie in October 2020.
However, Minnis called Moultrie’s bluff and made it very clear that he was no longer welcome on the party’s ticket following Moultrie’s many rants from the Speaker’s chair.
When the Nassau Village MP got wind of Martin’s impending ratification, he made the decision to cut ties.
Minnis, who has been accused by party insiders of “hijacking” the old FNM, is known for cutting off party members who cross him.
None of the six FNM members of parliament who labeled Minnis a failed leader and had him ousted as opposition leader in 2016 received a nomination from the party in the 2017 election.
