The Nassau Guardian
Butler-Turner suggests PM has dislike for women
During a heated row in the House of Assembly last night, Long Island MP Loretta Butler-Turner suggested that Prime Minister Perry Christie has a dislike for women after he said he will not be intimated by her “might or size”.
“Maybe the member feels that she could intimidate me by might or by size,” said Christie while contributing to debate on a bill to amend the Airport Authority Act.
In response, a seemingly irate Butler-Turner said, “We come here in different colors, different sizes and different genders.
“To have the prime minister of this country talk about might or size, let me tell you, it is no question that you are a big man, and I’m a big woman and there are other big people in this place.
“I take exception to that because I can find all kind of faults with people on that side, whether they are ugly or whether they aren’t ugly.
“So they are here talking about my size; that should be off the table; that should not even be up for debate.
“I am not ashamed of who I am. When (my grandfather the late former governor general) Milo Butler was leading the charge for the PLP, nobody had a problem with his size.
“But because I am on this side, you have a problem with it? Well you face it. This is my size, I am a woman and I am proud of who I am.
“As for my being offended by the prime minister, I don’t need an apology from him. He clearly demonstrates that he has a dislike for me, my size and maybe women.”
Christie shot back, saying, his family would be amused “at the question of my sexuality” suggested by Butler-Turner.
“But she knows when I say it that in given situations when you test a gladiator, the gladiator says let us go the center where we are able to put this to the test,” he said.
“To those gladiators who sit along with her... they would know the tragic error of her ways in applying an imputation, the suggestion to me, they would know better. And they would know better because we have met in the forum of activities before.
“My wife knows, she knows what I was when she met me, a man of distinguished reputation in the field of valor.”
Butler-Turner and MICAL MP V. Alfred Gray were arguing over amendments the Ingraham administration made to the Mayaguana deal between the government of The Bahamas and the I-Group.
The Ingraham administration had referred to the original deal entered into by the first Christie administration as the “great land give-away”.
While Christie was responding to Butler-Turner, she continued firing remarks at him, prompting him to say: “She has come as near as she possibly can to questioning my manhood.
“I wish in the old gladiatorial fashion that I could challenge her, but I wouldn’t do that.
“I have no intention of defaming you, of insulting you. I am in a debate, in a discussion, if I misstate, I would withdraw any misstatement.”
He added: “The member has every opportunity in the world to do anything that she would wish with respect to me.
“The only thing I can assure her of, make sure it is complete, for then I would have to carry out that maxim that seven times down and eight times up.”
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