Sir Arthur Foulkes, Governor-General of Bahamas (sworn in on April 14, 2010)
Arthur Alexander Foulkes was born at Mathew Town, Inagua, 11 May 1928, son of the late Dr. William A. Foulkes and Mrs. Julie Foulkes nee Maisonneuve.
He was educated at public schools in Mathew Town and in Nassau and first worked at The Nassau Guardian as a linotype operator and proof-reader. He joined The Tribune as a linotype operator in 1948 and took up journalism under the tutelage of Editor and Publisher Sir Etienne Dupuch who made him a reporter and later appointed him News Editor of The Tribune.
Sir Arthur was founding editor of Bahamian Times, official organ of the Progressive Liberal Party from 1962 to 1967. This newspaper played a pivotal role in the campaign for majority rule which was achieved in the general elections of 10 January 1967. He selected as its motto a quote from American emancipation crusader Frederick Douglass: “Without struggle there is no progress.”
Later, he was a columnist for The Guardian and The Tribune and from 2002 to 2007 resumed his popular column, To The Point, in The Tribune.
Sir Arthur was one of the founders of the National Committee for Positive Action, a think tank and activist group within the PLP which supported the leadership of Sir Lynden Pindling and contributed significantly to the achievement of Majority Rule.
He drafted the PLP’s petition to the United Nations Committee of Twentyfour (on decolonization) and was a member of the delegation which presented the petition in 1965. Sir Arthur wrote many political documents over the years and contributed to the manifestos of both major political parties. He drafted the first platform of the Free National Movement in 1971.
Noted for his fiery oratory in the Sixties, Sir Arthur was elected to parliament in 1967 and served in various political offices over the years including Minister of Communications and Minister of Tourism in the PLP Government.
Under his leadership the Ministry of Tourism chalked up impressive gains in 1969. He also presided over the complete Bahamianization of the management of Batelco, the national public telephone corporation.
Sir Arthur got black Bahamian stewardesses on international flights not only to America but Europe as well. It was on his ministerial watch in 1968 that a Bahamas-based airline, International Air Bahama, flew to Europe for the first time.
Sir Arthur was one of the Dissident Eight who rejected the leadership of Sir Lynden in 1970 and was a founder of the Free National Movement in 1971. He was appointed to the Senate in 1972 and 1977 and was re-elected to the House of Assembly in 1982.
He attended many international conferences over the years and in 1972 was one of four Opposition delegates to The Bahamas Independence Constitution Conference in London. He drafted the Opposition Memorandum for the conference.
In the Seventies when Opposition forces in the country seemed hopelessly splintered, Sir Arthur, together with Frank Watson, the late Bazel Nicholls and others, initiated arduous negotiations which finally resulted in a united Opposition under the leadership of Sir Kendal Isaacs in time for the 1982 elections.
In 1992 Sir Arthur entered the diplomatic service of The Bahamas as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom (resident in London) and Ambassador to France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the European Union.
He represented The Bahamas to the Commonwealth in London, and the African Caribbean Pacific Group in Brussels, was Permanent Representative to the International Maritime Organization and also Doyen of the Caribbean diplomatic corps in the United Kingdom. He founded Friends of The Bahamas, a London-based association.
In 1999 he was appointed the first Bahamas Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China and Ambassador to the Republic of Cuba. Both these posts were nonresident. He is a founding member of the China Bahamas Friendship Association.
He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by Queen Elizabeth in the 2001 New Year’s honours list.
After the FNM was returned to office in May 2007, he was appointed Director General of Bahamas Information Services, the Government’s news agency, and designated to act as Deputy to the Governor General.
Sir Arthur is fond of the arts and likes classical and jazz music. He has always taken a special interest in ecology and was an early commentator on environmental issues in The Bahamas.
His wife, Lady Foulkes, is the former Joan Eleanor Bullard of Nassau.
Source: http://www.eleutheranews.com/national/873.html
ADDRESS:
The Office of The Government House
Government Hill
P.O. Box N-8301
Nassau, N.P., The Bahamas
Ph: (242)-322-1875-7
(242)-356-0254
Fax: (242)-322-4659
Hubert Alexander Ingraham, M.P., Prime Minister of the Bahamas
The Right Honourable Hubert Alexander Ingraham was sworn in as the fourth Prime Minister of The Bahamas by His Excellency the Hon. Arthur D. Hanna Governor-General on May 4, 2007, following the May 02 general election in which the Free National Movement (FNM) party triumphed over the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP). Prime Minister Ingraham is also Minister of Finance.
He retained his North Abaco constituency seat in the House of Assembly in the balloting.
Prime Minister Ingraham previously served as Prime Minister when the FNM ousted a PLP administration in August 1992. That election victory ended 25 years of governance by the PLP which was led by the late Rt. Hon. Sir Lynden Pindling.
In the May 02, 2007 election, the FNM won 23 of 41 seats in the House of Assembly defeating the PLP under the under the leadership of former Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Perry Gladstone Christie.
Hubert Ingraham was born in Pine Ridge, Grand Bahama, on August 4, 1947. He grew up in Abaco and attended Cooper’s Town Public School Cooper’ Town. He later attended the Southern Senior School and the Government High School Evening Institute in Nassau. Following brief periods of employment in the accounting departments of Owens-Illinois Sugar Mill Company in Abaco, The Bahamas Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) and the Chase Manhattan Bank in Nassau, Prime Minister Ingraham became an articled law clerk and was called to The Bahamas Bar in December, 1972.
He entered private practice and became the senior partner in the firm of Christie, Ingraham & Co.
An active member and officer in the Nassau and Bahamas Jaycees, he entered front-line politics in 1975 when he was elected to the National General Council of the PLP. He became party chairman in 1976.
Prime Minister Ingraham was first elected to the House of Assembly in 1977 as the representative for his hometown constituency of Cooper’s Town, North Abaco. He has been re-elected on six consecutive occasions as the representative for that constituency.
He has served as a member of the House Standing Committee on Privilege and Public Accounts, as chairman of a Select Committee on Influence Peddling and Political Contributions and as chairman of The Bahamas Mortgage Corporation. He has also served as a member of the Air Transport Licensing Authority and chairman of the Real Property Tax Tribunal.
In 1982, Prime Minister the he was appointed Minister responsible for Housing and National Insurance. He held the post for only two years. His public criticism of the then government’s inaction in the face of damaging revelations of corruption in high places by the 1984 Commission of Inquiry resulted in his dismissal from the Cabinet and in 1986, his expulsion from the PLP.
His strong personal political support in his constituency permitted him to continue to speak out against corruption in the government and to call for radical changes in the political culture of patronage and nepotism. His re-election to Parliament as an Independent in 1987 made him a political force to be reckoned with.
Prime Minister the Rt. Hon Hubert Ingraham, joined the then Official Opposition Party, the Free National Movement, in 1990. In May of the same year he was elected leader of the party and appointed Leader of the Official Opposition.
He imprinted his style on the FNM. He made his belief in and calls for honest, open transparent and accountable government, a fundamental tenet of his new party and energized its various factions to pull off a stunning victory over the ruling party in a by-election in the Marco City constituency in Grand Bahama in June, 1990.
A child of working-class parents, Prime Minister Ingraham has a strong social conscience, which influenced the policies of his party and government. However, he is a pragmatic politician and notwithstanding his strong identification with and ties to the grassroots of society, he has cultivated important relationships with the business community of The Bahamas.
His first term in government was marked by a deliberate reduction in the size of government, reducing government’s direct intervention in the economy and promoting fresh private investment, both domestic and international. He and his government have been credited with the revitalization of The Bahamas economy since 1992, most particularly of its tourism sector, which has enjoyed massive international capital infusions over the past seven years and its financial services sector, which restored confidence in The Bahamas as a clean financial jurisdiction spurred increased international banking and trust businesses in recent years.
In 1993, he was made a member of Her Majesty’s most honourable Privy Council.
On March 03, 2000, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Buckingham, England.
He is married to the former Delores Miller of Long Island, a public high school principal. The couple had five children.
Source: www.bahamas.gov.bs
Arthur Dion Hanna, Former Governor-General of Bahamas
Arthur Dion “A.D.” Hanna (born March 7, 1928) is the seventh current Governor-General of the Bahamas.
Hanna has been active in Bahamian politics since the 1950s. As a member of the Progressive Liberal Party, Hanna represented the Ann’s Town, Nassau constituency as a MP in the Bahamas’ House of Assembly from 1960 to 1992.
During this time, Hanna assumed a number of important cabinet posts, including Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas from 1967 to 1984.
In 1984, Hanna resigned his post as Deputy to then- Prime Minister Lynden Pindling in protest at the retention by Mr. Pindling of cabinet colleague who were heavily criticised by a Royal Commission of Enquiry of that same year. The Commission was established to investigate claims of high-level corruption allegedly linked to the flourishing drugs trade of the 1980s.
His resignation came within a week of the firing from the Cabinet of Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie, who also were said to have taken a strong stand against the presence in the cabinet of ministers tarnished by the commission and who both later served successive terms as Prime Minister.
On February 1, 2006, Hanna was appointed Governor General of the Bahamas by Elizabeth II, Queen of the Bahamas, on the advice of then Prime Minister Perry Christie. It has been announced that he will retire on April 14, 2010. A successor has not yet been named.
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