Bahamas to hold general election
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| Published on Friday, April 6, 2007 |
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By John Marquis
NASSAU, Bahamas (Reuters): The Bahamas will hold a general election on May 2 in which the ruling Progressive Liberal Party will try to a second term amid the continuing furor over the death of former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith.
The Bahamian parliament was dissolved after Prime Minister Perry Christie's election announcement late on Wednesday and will reconvene on May 23.
"Bahamians cherish their hard-won political rights and freedoms. Among these there is none more precious than the right of the Bahamian people to choose their own government in free, fair and democratic elections," Christie said.
Christie's party is touting the 4 percent GDP growth in 2006, up from 1.6 percent annually when it took office.
The opposition Free National Movement says voters are fed up with what it calls Christie's indecisiveness, mismanagement and government incompetence.
At stake are 41 seats in the House of Assembly, with many political observers in the Atlantic island chain saying the ruling party could lose many of the seats it gained in a 2002 landslide victory.
Over the last year, the government has been enmeshed in scandals, including one over Smith and suspicions she was given preferential treatment in her residency application.
Former Immigration Minister Shane Gibson resigned in February after photographs of him posing in bed with the former pin-up were published in The Tribune, Nassau's morning newspaper.
Smith died in a Florida casino hotel on Feb. 8 of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, touching off a storm of media coverage as her companion, estranged mother and a former lover battled over her corpse and her 6-month-old daughter Dannielynn.
The baby might one day inherit a fortune if Smith's estate wins a decade-long battle to inherit from her former husband, the late oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. A Bahamian court may reveal the results of a DNA test next week showing who Dannielynn's real father is.
Smith was buried in the Bahamas on March 2.
The island chain of 300,000 people has become wealthy through tourism and offshore banking since gaining independence from Britain in 1973.
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