History
Prior to the introduction of universal suffrage in 1967, elections in the Bahamas were dominated by the white oligarchy known as the Bay Street Boys. They were represented by the United Bahamian Party, which by gerrymandering the constituency boundaries, won the 1962 elections despite receiving fewer votes than the black Progressive Liberal Party. In the next elections in 1967 the UBP received more votes than the PLP, but they won the same number of seats. With the support of the sole Labour Party MP the PLP was able to form the country's first black-led government.
The PLP dominated national politics until the 1990s, winning every election until 1992 when they were defeated by the Free National Movement (which the UBP had formed by a merger in 1971). The FNM won the next elections in 1997 in which voter turnout hit a record 98.5%, but power was ceded back to the PLP in 2002. The FNM returned to power again in 2007.
Read more about this topic: Elections In The Bahamas
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)