Bahamas voters oust government, bring old PM back

NASSAU, May 3 (Reuters) Bahamian Prime Minister-elect Hubert Ingraham pledged to move his nation forward economically and socially and thanked voters in the Atlantic island chain who returned his party to power five years after ousting them.

Ingraham's Free National Movement, or FNM, won 23 of the 41 seats in the House of Assembly yesterday's election and will lead the Atlantic island chain for the next five years, according to unofficial results reported by the state-owned ZNS television station. Official results were not yet available early today.

Outgoing Prime Minister Perry Christie's Progressive Liberal Party, or PLP, campaigned mainly on its economic record in the affluent, tourism-dependent nation of 700 islands and 320,000 people.

But Ingraham's party successfully raised ethical questions, including allegations that immigration officials fast-tracked a residency permit for pinup model and billionaire's widow Anna Nicole Smith, who lived in the Bahamas until her accidental drug overdose death in Florida in February.

Ingraham, who was prime minister from 1992 to 2002, portrayed the election as ''a matter of trust.'' He also accused Christie's party of allowing foreign investors and foreign workers to profit at the expense of Bahamians.

Thousands of supporters, clad in the party's signature red shirts and caps, jammed the streets around the party's headquarters in the capital, Nassau, on yesterday night.

They broke into cheers and raised torches, their party's symbol, as Ingraham took the stage in the same red garb.

''We will devote all of our energies to the continued development of our nation in every respect -- economic, political, social and cultural,'' Ingraham told the crowd.

Christie phoned Ingraham to concede defeat. But his party reminded voters that the results were not yet official and hinted it might contest some results.

Ingraham and Christie are both lawyers and former partners in the same firm. Ingraham's FNM was associated with the predominantly white ''Bay Street Boys'' who ran the Bahamas prior to independence from Britain in 1973.

The party lost in a landslide when Christie's PLP, traditionally seen as the party of the black majority, swept to power in 2002.

Ingraham's party appeared to have won over young first-time voters and the ''float voters'' with no strong party ties in a race in which an estimated 90 percent of 150,000 registered voters participated.

But the PLP's former immigration minister, who resigned in February after a newspaper published pictures of him embracing Smith on her bed, weathered one of the scandals that helped bring down his party.

Shane Gibson won re-election in his parliamentary district with 70 percent of the ballots cast, a victory he attributed to a strong base among longtime constituents. He had denied wrongdoing in his office's handling of Smith's residency, and said he was the victim of a ''vicious and wicked lies.'' Reuters RS DB2147