From Tokyo   26th August 2003

            The arguments advanced by the FNM’s spokesman on CSME in response to my comments on the matter are both tiresome and tedious.  They betray a basic lack of understanding and ignorance of a position that is crystal clear. The FNM’s spokesman knows that there is no difference between the FNM’s position and the PLP on CSME matters.  It is a point that has been made with regard to previous comments by the former leader of his party in Freeport at a political rally.

            What is now clear is that the former leader of the FNM Hubert Ingraham  appears to be orchestrating a campaign of obfuscation and confusion on this issue in order to mislead the Bahamian people into thinking that the position has changed with regard to the Caribbean Single Market and Economy.  After failing to educate the Bahamian people on the issue, the FNM’s leaders now take the position that they are going to attack, guerilla-style the programme of public education by the present Government in the hope that confusion will spread.

            I am satisfied that Mr. Ingraham and Mr. Laing have both set out to confuse, in the expectation that the Bahamian people will be frightened by a phantom public policy that simply does not exist or exists only in the minds of those two gentlemen.

            Mr. Ingraham and Mr. Laing cannot deny that it is the FNM who committed The Bahamas to supporting financially the Caribbean Court of Justice, even though they agreed that The Bahamas would not join.  Yet in his statement on Tuesday 25th August Mr. Laing purports to say that the FNM does not support the Caribbean Court of Justice.  His party took the country to the point of financial support without any consultation with the Bahamian people.

            As to the issue of free movement of people,  the government of Sir Lynden Pindling, of Hubert Ingraham and now  Perry Christie have made it clear that The Bahamas does not and cannot support the free movement of people provisions of CSME. I wish, so that Mr. Laing,  can understand to repeat it: The Bahamas cannot and will not support free movement of people.  And the PLP has taken it further, it has received an undertaking from the  Prime Minister of Barbados that it will formulate a position and  support the position that The Bahamas is entitled to special and differential consideration on that issue in the community.  It is the present Government that has obtained that undertaking.

            Further,   nothing will be done without the fullest consultation with the Bahamian people.  And it has clearly been established with the Caribbean Secretariat  that  if The Bahamas decides to sign on to the Caribbean Single Market and Economy this will be done with all of the preconditions negotiated in advance  so that  there will be a full understanding of  the conditions under which The Bahamas will join.,

            It is a great shame that both Mr. Ingraham and Mr. Laing  are acting politically in concert  to confuse and divide the Bahamian people when they both know that in matters of Foreign Affairs there is no difference between the political parties on these issues.  And I urge Mr. Ingraham to come out from behind Mr. Laing’s shadow and face the music of a policy that was left in tatters and disarray on this issue when he left office.