Hubert Ingraham

Hubert Alexander Ingraham, PC (born 4 August 1947) is a Bahamian politician who was Prime Minister of the Bahamas from August 1992 to May 2002, and again from May 2007 to May 2012.

He is a member of the Free National Movement Party (FNM).

Ingraham was born 4 August 1947 in Pine Ridge, Grand Bahama.

He is the son of Jerome Ingraham, a stevedore, and Isabella La-Roda (née Cornish).

He grew up in Coopers Town, Abaco and began his education at Coopers Town Public School, later attending the Southern Senior School and the Government High School Evening Institute in Nassau.

Ingraham studied law in Nassau.

He was called to the Bahamas Bar in December 1972 and eventually became senior partner in the law firm of Christie, Ingraham and Co. He entered front-line politics in 1975, when he was elected to the National General Council of the then ruling Progressive Liberal Party.

He previously served as a member of the Air Transport Licensing Authority and Chairman of the Real Property Tax Tribunal.

Following brief employment in the accounting departments of Owens-Illinois Sugar Mill Company in Abaco and The Bahamas Telecommunications Corporation and the Chase Manhattan Bank in Nassau, Ingraham became an articled law clerk in the Chambers of McKinney Bancroft and Hughes.

In 1976, Ingraham was elected National Chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) and a member of that party's National Executive Committee.

In 1977, still Chairman of the PLP, he was elected to the House of Assembly.

In Parliament, Ingraham served as a member of the Standing Committee on Privilege and Public Accounts, and as Chairman of an investigative Select Committee on Influence Peddling and Political Contributions.

He was re-elected to Parliament in the General Election of June 1982, and appointed Minister of Housing, National Insurance and Social Service.

In 1982, he also became Chairman of The Bahamas Mortgage Corporation, an institution established to secure and guarantee housing financing for Bahamians in need of that service.

Ingraham stood as an independent candidate in the 1987 general election and was one of only two Members of Parliament to have been expelled from the ruling PLP to have gone on to immediate re-election as an independent.

Ingraham joined the Official Opposition in April 1990, and was immediately appointed Parliamentary Leader.

When the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, died in May 1990, Ingraham was unanimously elected Leader of the Free National Movement and was appointed leader of the opposition on 18 May 1990, by Sir Henry Milton Taylor, the Governor-General.

In June 1990, as freshman Leader of the Free National Movement, he led his party to a Marco City, Grand Bahama, by-election victory over the governing party.

He administered a disengagement of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company in the mid-1990s, severing ties with hundreds of BTC employees, although handing out severance packages for those who opted for the exit packages.

The true value of the impact of the disengagement is debatable.

Through his first term, he guided the Bahamas through a tumultuous period in the financial services sector, which ushered in sweeping changes to be made and imposed upon the Bahamas by international organizations such as the OECD and the FATF.

Sweeping legislation was seen as necessary by the administration, but such drastic and immediate measures were up to debate by observers and economists of the time.

Subsequently, the market fears spread and resulted in massive job losses in the sector.

By the end of his first term, he was sitting on a Bahamian economy which was going into recession, brought on by a global downturn in productivity, sparked by the dot.com bubble bust and the attacks of 9–11, exacerbated by massive exits of foreign capital, due to new banking regulations set in place by his administration.

Another controversial issue proposed by his administration was a referendum on social policy.

In the historic election of August 1992, in which the FNM unseated the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), Ingraham succeeded Prime Minister Lynden Pindling, who had headed the PLP government since January 1967.

In the general election of 19 August 1992, Ingraham led the Free National Movement to a stunning 32–17 victory over the Progressive Liberal Party, and thus ended the 25-year hold on power of Prime Minister Sir Lynden Pindling.

The new prime minister had Cabinet responsibility for the Ministry of Finance from 1992 to 1995.

Later, in a streamlined Cabinet, he took on responsibility for trade and industry, and quickly established a one-stop Investment Authority that promoted fresh investment in The Bahamas.

In July 1993, Prime Minister Ingraham was made a Privy Counsellor, thus becoming a member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council.

Again on 14 March 1997, Ingraham led the FNM to an even greater election victory.

Ingraham pledged that he would serve no longer than two terms or 10 years as Head of Government.

In 2001, the FNM held special elections for Leader-Designate and Deputy Leader-Designate of the Party, with Tommy Turnquest emerging as the victor who would assume leadership of the FNM on the night of the next general elections.

He is credited for allowing the Atlantis Paradise Island project to develop.

In 2001, Ingraham announced his decision to step down as party leader and Tommy Turnquest, a member of his Cabinet, emerged from the resultant leadership contest as the party's new leader.

Many observers said that the failure of the referendum led to the resounding defeat at the polls for the FNM in 2002, with a 29–7 overwhelming margin of victory for the incoming Progressive Liberal Party.

He served as leader of the opposition in the House of Assembly of the Bahamas from 2005 to 2007.

Following his party's victory in the May 2007 election, he became prime minister again.

Prior to the 2012 election, he was the FNM's Party Leader and was the Member of Parliament for the North Abaco constituency.

After his government was defeated in the 2012 general election, on 7 May Ingraham announced his resignation as FNM leader and as an MP.