MINNIS IS TAKING AWAY OUR FREEDOMS
Navigating through the Lynden Pindling International Airport to travel to another island in The Bahamas is a nightmare. Can you imagine in this year of our lord 2020, the common era as some say, we have to now fill out elaborate paper work; you now have to get a visa to travel from one island to the next within the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.
It gets worse than that. They also now require that you, a Bahamian citizen, must get a negative test for Covid before they will allow you to get back into the country. Imagine that. Bahamian citizenship does not mean what it used to and certainly it now seems to not mean the right to return.
This is not acceptable. We support the comedian Wellington Roberts who was arrested last week for inciting a riot, the authorities say. Mr. Roberts’ “crime” was leading a group of noisy protestors to the Parliament and shouting over a bull horn” Minnis gotta go”. Isn’t that something and for saying that he was charged with inciting a riot. Then it took them three days to grant the man bail.
Of course they know that the charges will go nowhere. We have seen some magistrates and judges do some cray things in this country but we doubt that the charge can be sustained. The point was simply to use state power to suppress public opinion and get those people off the streets. Fortunately in this day and time everyone has a video camera and the chants can now be heard far and wide: “Minnis gatta go”. He must go.
So using the Covid 19 epidemic, the FNM has now taken away the freedom of the Bahamian people, fought for and won by the PLP and its leaders thru the march to majority rule to independence and by our ancestors who fought against slavery. We are now back to a situation where we cannot move from one island to the next without permission and without someone tracking our movements. We are locked down in our homes for 24 hours on the pretext that this is going to stop the virus from spreading.
We are back where we were in the 19th century. It is not acceptable. This generation must stop partying in the streets and revolt against Mr. Minnis and the tyranny which these Covid rules have now imposed upon us. Mr. Minnis is taking away our rights and we cannot stand there with our eyes wide open and accept it.