Mac shapes up West Bay team

| 26/02/2021
(L-R) Ebanks, Anglin and Bush

(CNS): McKeeva Bush urged West Bayers to “vote straight” when he appeared on Rolston Anglin’s campaign launch platform in West Bay North Thursday evening. Bush’s recent conviction for a violent assault against the female manager at Coral Beach Bar has been cited by Premier Alden McLaughlin as the reason for early elections. But it has not damaged the current speaker’s plans to lead a district team to give him leverage in the next coalition.

While Bush and Anglin appear to have abandoned the party labels, he still introduced the former education minister and UDP colleague and urged voters in WBN to vote for him and for those in West Bay Central to vote for Capt. Eugene Ebanks.

Bush and Anglin fell out and campaigned separately in 2013 but Anglin lost his seat after being a West Bay representative under the UDP ticket for two terms. The fallout came in the wake of the charges against Bush in the credit-card fraud case, in which he was later acquitted. But by then the damage had already been done to the UDP, which split into two parties, the CDP and the short-lived People’s National Alliance.

Since losing in 2013, Anglin has distanced himself from politics but rumours that he was returning to the political fray have been building over the last year. It was no surprise when he formally declared earlier this month and did so in alliance with Bush, given the latter’s political clout in West Bay.

Bush also told those in attendance at Anglin’s meeting that on Monday he would tell them who to vote for in West Bay South.

Raul Nicholson-Coe is the only candidate so far to have formally declared for WBS and is presently running as an independent. Andre Ebanks is also expected to run in the district, but given his past connections to the Progressives, he will likely be campaigning in alliance with McLaughlin’s as yet undefined ‘coalition ticket’, even if he does not join the party.

McLaughlin is not completely distancing himself from Bush’s team in West Bay but he is not embracing it either. However, it is clear that Bush intends to carry all four West Bay seats to Parliament, giving him cards to play if he wants to reclaim his speaker’s seat in the next administration.

Meanwhile, Anglin made his pitch to voters based on his own previous experience in government as well as what he said was the poor representation the constituency has received from the incumbent, Bernie Bush. But he also signalled a potential fifth man in the Bush camp when he embraced the appearance of Kenneth Bryan, the independent opposition incumbent for George Town Central.

Currently, all of the West Bay races appear to be head to heads, with Ebanks facing off against Katherine Ebanks-Wilks in WBC, Anglin against B. Bush in WBN, M. Bush against Mario Ebanks in WBW, and Nicholson-Coe against A. Ebanks in WBS. However, there is still time for third candidates to emerge in each race before Nomination Day on Monday.

Having gained more than 70% of the vote in 2017, McKeeva Bush will be hard to unseat in WBW, and it remains to be seen if he will lose much, if any, support over his violent assault on a woman.

When he was heckled on Wednesday evening by local activist and WBN constituent Eden Hurlston, who challenged the thirty-year political veteran over the assault conviction, Bush continued to deny culpability.

As Bush was telling the audience who he might support in the upcoming campaign and that he would not support Ezzard Miller (NS) and Arden McLean (EE), Hurlston asked him, “But do you support ending violence against women , sir?”

At that point Bush said he did not support violence and had not carried out any violence against any women. He suggested he was happy to tell everyone what had happened.

Despite pleading guilty, agreeing to the crown’s case against him in a written basis of the plea and telling a magistrate he was remorseful about the assault, Bush nevertheless denied being violent towards Livia Kwong.

Kwong was injured by Bush when she had tried to help him after he had fallen down, in a state of extreme intoxication, in the bar that she managed.

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Category: Election News

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