THE FNM CANT DEFEND THE COUNTRY ON CORRUPTION
It is always interesting to find out what your friends really think of you. The United States has this system of reports on countries: a drugs report, a human rights report, a human trafficking report, what else, oh yes there is a report on investment. The Bahamian press loves this stuff particularly when the PLP is in power because it helps to feed the narrative of the FNM/UBP and press confluence that the black people who run the PLP are crooked and corrupt.
The PLP tried to tell the FNM that there are no exceptional negroes when it comes to that. We are all lumped in the same boat together as “ crooked black people”. It doesn’t matter whether the FNM or the PLP is in power.
We tried to tell the silly billy Prime Minister Hubert Minnis that when he went round the world including to his first Caricom conference telling the world how corrupt his country was.
Then he had those high profile arrests: Dion Smith ( false arrest and imprisonment), Shane Gibson ( not guilty) Frank Smith ( Not guilty) . And they so shame they cannot bring the Ken Dorsett case up because everyone now knows how they fixed up the last cases and the case against Ken Dorsett is a tissue of lies.
The Bahamas is not a corrupt country. We say that without fear or favour.
The United States really has a nerve after four years of Donald Trump to lecture anyone about corruption in high places They were simply powerless to do anything about a corrupt President. Yet every year, the US bureaucrats trot out these reports describing in sanitized detail how corrupt other countries are.
So now: 2021 Investment Climate Statements: The Bahamas by the U S Statement Department says this: “The government has laws to combat corruption among public officials, but they have been inconsistently applied. The law provides criminal penalties for corruption by public officials, and the government generally implemented the law effectively. However, there was limited enforcement of conflicts of interest related to government contracts and isolated reports of officials engaged in corrupt practices, including by accepting small-scale “bribes of convenience”. The political system is plagued by reports of corruption, including allegations of widespread patronage, the routine directing of contracts to political supporters, and favourable treatment for wealthy or politically connected individuals. In The Bahamas, bribery of a government official is a criminal act carrying a fine of up to $10,000, a prison term of up to four years, or both.
“In May 2017, the current government won the election on a platform to end corruption. Early in the administration, the government charged a number of former officials with various crimes including extortion and bribery, theft by reason of employment, and defrauding the government. These cases were either dismissed, ended in acquittals, or are ongoing. The government reported no new cases of corruption in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches during 2020. Nevertheless, three Cabinet Ministers resigned in the first three years of the current administration under allegations of corruption, including the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Financial Services, and the Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture.”
Number of hits for the week ending Saturday, 7th August, 2021 up to midnight: 322,508;
Number of hits for the month of August up to Saturday, 7th August, 2021 up to midnight: 322,508;
Number of hits for the year 2020 up to Saturday, 7th August, 2021 up to midnight: 9,359,430.