A MEAN COUNTRY (CHRISTIANITY OUT THE WINDOW)

This has become in many senses of the word a mean and uncivil country.  As former Minister of Labour Shane Gibson was being frog marched up to the courts without his crutches and in obvious pain, the police allowed people who were FNM partisans to get within arm shot of him and shout obscenities at him and to shout “lock them all up”.   In the bank lines and across various business places in The Bahamas as the pictures went viral across the internet, FNMs were gleeful.  They said that one PLP politician should be locked up every week. One man working at the Hilton in Bimini said that they should all be in handcuffs.  These are people who are serving the public and lack the decorum, which is expected of people who are to be providing a service neutrally in the country.  When the pictures of Shane Gibson appeared with complaints from PLPs including the Leader of The Opposition that Mr. Gibson had been physically abused while in custody, FNMs responded that there must no crocodile tears for Mr. Gibson.  That if he had been physically abused that was good for him because he had fired people who were FNMs or suspected FNMs when he was the public service minister.  The two are of course quite different things. There is also no basis in fact for those assertions.  What we know is that if your liberty is being denied by the state, you are to be treated with the utmost of care for your physical safety and security and your well-being.  The Police failed on all of these counts.  The Minister of National Security who is directing these operations, and the silent Commissioner of Police have plenty to answer for.  The Church leaders for all their supposed Christianity are all silent as lambs. Of course, they are all fixed up with appointments by the FNM on Government boards, so their silence is well grounded we suppose.