To anyone old enough to remember the first Bahamian Governor-General of the Bahamas, Sir Milo B. Butler, one thinks of a kind, gentle bear of a man, with a most pleasant disposition. In 1959, however, Milo Butler, PLP Senior Member for the West, was a lion in the House of Assembly. He wasn’t afraid to roar. Butler had no reservations to calling someone out, even if it meant using blue language, in the hallowed halls of the House of Assembly.
In a debate over the amount of budget for the Development Board, the tourism promotion department and the baby of Board Chairman Stafford Sands, Milo Butler responded to remarks made towards him by John Bethell, UBP Member for Abaco.
So what happened to set Milo Boughton Butler off?
John Bethell called him stupid.
‘You Are an Ass’ – Butler
“You are an ass with a tail,” Milo B. Butler, PLP Senior Member for the West, told John Bethel, UBP Member for Abaco, in the House of Assembly on Monday.
Bethell launched an attack against Butler after the latter had demanded that the huge vote for the Development Board be slashed by £44,000.
“The member for the West’s verbosity is excelled only by his ignorance,” Bethell declared after Butler had completed his speech.
Without rising to protest against Bethell’s unparliamentary attack, Butler shouted across the floor of the House: “And you are an ass with a tail.”
Bethell’s face reddened, bu the was unable to call upon the Chairman Robert Symonette, to that the member withdraw his remarks.
This is not the first time that Bethell has attacked the member for the West, in this manner, and it will not be the last time unless UBP members of the House who sit in the Chair, put some of their members in their places when they insist in getting out of order.
