BahamasUncensored.Com Archive

THE PLP’S SECOND ANNIVERSARY
We want to congratulate the Progressive Liberal Party on the second anniversary of its election to office on 2nd May 2002. We think that all of the reasons why the people of The Bahamas chose the PLP in 2002 still apply, and we do not find at all disturbing or material the reports that Hubert Ingraham, the former Prime Minister is wanting to come back to lead the FNM. We think that the PLP’s Chairman Raynard Rigby dealt with it admirably in his press conference on Wednesday 28th April by simply saying that the PLP did not give a hoot about whether Hubert Ingraham was coming back or not. That is the FNM’s business, he said. The PLP knows who its leader is and is satisfied with its leader.

There is an advertising blitz that is on the airwaves at the moment throughout The Bahamas. There is a campaign in the newspapers to beef up the public relations of the PLP. Many people complain that the party is doing good work but you can’t actually hear about it because the media is hostile to the PLP. We take a different tack. Our view is that what is being done hasn’t yet made an impact because this is the mid term, and we are suffering from mid term blues. No amount of public relations can solve that, just the effluxion of time. Further, with the job problem being an issue, it is only when the job’s issue is solved and the money starts to get to the young men will you hear the praise. We expect that to happen as soon as the Kerzners begin to fulfil their promise to expend another 750 million dollars on expanding their product at Paradise Island.

The Prime Minister must be praised for eliminating the oppressive fear of so many people in this country that we had an uncouth bumpkin for a Prime Minister. With the former one anything that came to his mouth he said, and anything he wanted to do, or any person he wanted to do in, off he launched. The sins caught up with him and he lost office on 2nd Many 2002.

While the PLP basks in its successes this year, and it should do so in a modest and low key manner, it must also try to remember to stick to the basics. That means that Members of Parliament must get back into their constituencies if they are not there or must remain engaged with their constituents. The PLP when it ran for office in 2002 promised that it would stay in touch with its constituents. The party was to be people focused. While the FNM concentrated on the building of buildings and how much money the Treasury was raking in and they were busy spending, the PLP said that people must come first. That is best evidenced in our view by the continuation of an effort to be connected to constituents.

The atmosphere in the country has changed. There is more consultation with various groups before decisions are made. You also get the impression that your voice and opinion now count as a citizen in the society. As the PLP begins to face the electorate for the next term, it must get the infrastructure in place certainly. It must get the jobs in the right numbers certainly. But just as certainly it must give people hope that their future is brighter and that their country is stronger. We think that this has much more to do with self esteem and confidence building than with just a job or a government contract. Those latter things are mighty important. Don’t get us wrong. The PLP is being accused in some quarters of neglecting to understand the basic needs in that area, but no one can accuse the PLP of failing to be sensitive to people’s needs.

Congratulations, PLP, continue to stick to fundamentals, and all will be well.

BAHAMIAN DIES IN IRAQ

The Nassau Guardian has reported in its Saturday 1st May edition that Bahamian Norman Darling has been killed in Iraq. According to the Guardian story by Raymond Kongwa, Mr. Darling, 30, was a member of the United States Marine Corps serving in Iraq and presumably died during a suicide bombing attack outside the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The story says that Mr. Darling's parents Sidney and Madeline Darling were informed of the death of their son by a team of officials from the US Embassy in Nassau and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Darling was quoted as saying that his son fulfilled a childhood dream by serving in the US Marines: "This was something he really wanted... and he was happy. He loved it, he was so happy, man, and I was happy for him. We saw his future looking bright." Norman Darling is survived by his wife Kimberly and daughter Kamron, his parents and two sisters. He was among a number of Bahamians serving with the US armed forces in Iraq.

WHY HAVE TIES WITH SOUTH AFRICA?

South Africa is almost certainly Africa’s richest and most powerful state, south of the Sahara. Even if you count Egypt in for the military might, as more powerful, South Africa is more industrialized and more successful. Nigeria, while it has great oil wealth and a larger population, is generally thought to be corrupt and disorganized. Not so South Africa. The leader of the African world then is South Africa. That is the view that has been espoused by Prime Minister Perry Christie. There is great potential then in the relationship between The Bahamas and South Africa. It behooves Bahamians now to work to see how in practical ways the relationship can develop.
We cannot go to South Africa with missionary zeal, but we can go to South Africa asking how we can help, and certainly asking for their help. They are the only Black Country that is a part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) the organization that is trying to cripple The Bahamas’ financial system. We congratulate the Government on the signing of the important bilateral agreement between the two countries, and we look forward to great things coming out of the relationship.

THE DEFENCE FORCE AND CORRUPTION

    One often asks the value of these Commissions of Inquiry where it appears that it provides the stage for the most outlandish claims to be made by people who are often more interested in grabbing headlines than in getting at the relevant truth, and with a view to assisting the situation. Such is the view that one must come to when you read the words of Staff Intelligence Officer Edison Rolle, who testified week before last before the Commission of Inquiry looking into the incident of drug corruption on the Lorequin in 1992.
    Mr. Rolle, without laying the foundation for his outlandish statements said that the Royal Bahamas Defence Force should be reviewed for corruption as a whole and not just a specific incident. That is one hell of a statement to make as a serving officer and an intelligence officer and it is also a hell of an indictment against his commander Davey Rolle. A statement such as that left without a fuller explanation and without some refutation by the Commodore of the Defence Force leaves much to be answered.
    The Minister responsible for the Defence Force the Deputy Prime Minister Cynthia ‘Mother’ Pratt told the Bahama Journal on Wednesday 28th April “our job is to clean up the Defence force to make it the… respectable organization that it once was.” That to us means that the existing leadership of the Force will have to go. Bahama Journal photo of RBDF officer Edison Rolle at the Lorequin Commission by Omar Barr.

A NEW CHRISTIAN COUNCIL PRESIDENT

    Rev. Dr. William Thompson is the head of the Bahamas Baptist Missionary and Education Convention. That makes him the lead Baptist in the land. It was somewhat unusual then for the head of one of the sub groups of the Baptist Church to lead The Bahamas Christian Council. Bishop Sam Greene was an outspoken head but he was the Head of one of the sub groups the Zion Baptist Union. He had voice in all of the public controversies during his years as Head of The Bahamas Christian Council. Last year, he shocked the country by starting the debate on gay marriages in The Bahamas. He said that if the Government tried to pass an act to legalize same sex marriages, he would become a modern day Guy Fawkes. That was the plotter in 17th century England who was executed for trying to blow up Parliament while the king was visiting. Now Bishop Greene’s term is finished. He cannot succeed himself.
    Dr. William Thompson is now the head. Perhaps this is a sign for reform in the Christian Council that is criticized regularly by the more established denominations, viz. the Catholics, Anglicans and Methodists that the constitution is overly democratic in that each small Baptist church has a vote, a vote equal to the entire Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church barely participates. The Anglicans participate on selected issues. The Council’s work is left to the smaller individual church leaders.
    Dr. Thompson told The Bahama Journal on Thursday 29th April about his work: “I think politicians and religious leaders should be very involved because they are both segments of the community that are working to improve society for human kind. We are both in the business of service to our followers, one politically and one spiritually, but the two together achieve the best results for the people we serve.” We say it a different way. Politicians in this country can learn from the church that is in the business of selling the future. It is intangible but people buy into it and as a result shower their religious leaders with huge buildings and material wealth in the hope and expectation that they will be piling up plaudits in heaven. Bahama Journal photo of Rev. Dr. William Thompson.

RIGBY SPEAKS OUT ABOUT THE FNM

The PLP’s Chairman Raynard Rigby spoke at a press conference on Wednesday 29th April about the upcoming celebrations to mark the second anniversary of the PLP’s ascension to power. He was asked about reports that Hubert Ingraham was coming back to office. This was a fact that Zhivargo Laing, former Minister for the FNM and Mr. Ingraham’s promoter, seemed quite enthused about in his column of last week. He wrote that when Mr. Ingraham talks people listen, picking up from the quote we gave last week that Mr. Ingraham is considering making a comeback. Ho! Hum! Mr. Rigby said it best for us: “The FNM has already demonstrated a degree of nervousness from the former PM’s comments, and so it’s an issue for them, not for us. We don’t care one way or the other. We have a leader. We know who our leader is. He is Perry Gladstone Christie. We are satisfied with his performance. The party is solidly behind the leader.” Omar Barr's Bahama Journal photo of PLP Chairman Raynard Rigby addressing the press.

GIOVANNI STUART

The Sunflower concert was held Saturday 1st May at the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts. During the concert, artist Giovanni Stuart, pictured, who is a new father, shared verses from his poem entitled, ‘Fetal’ - his ode to new life. Mr. Stuart has been affiliated with the Sunflower Concert since its inception 5 years ago. Mr. Stuart is the award winning executive producer of Bahama Brilliance; the creative director of Literary Artistry; the author of an album of verse entitled, ‘PSALM BiRD’. Photo by Peter Ramsay.

BLACK TUESDAY PASSES QUIETLY
    The 39th anniversary of the throwing of the Speaker’s Mace out of the window of the House of Assembly on 27th April 1965 by the founding Prime Minister of the country Sir Lynden O. Pindling passed quietly this past Tuesday. On that same day last week, the South Africans were celebrating their first ten years as a democracy and inaugurating their new President.
    In a real way in 1965 Black Tuesday was an expression of Bahamian democracy at work. The Progressive Liberal Party mounted a demonstration against the plans of the then governing United Bahamian Party to establish constituency boundaries for the elections to be held in 1967. The PLP argued that the boundaries were unfairly drawn. To demonstrate their displeasure, they brought hundreds to Bay Street. With the curious onlookers, thousands came to the street. Sir Lynden grabbed the Mace of the Speaker and said that the Speaker’s mace is the symbol of the authority of the people and the people are outside. With that he tossed it out of a window that had been opened by Sir Milo Butler, the first Bahamian Governor General who had complained in a staged move that the House of Assembly was a tad warm.
    The PLP led the party out of the House and kept out for nine months. There was a mass rally at Southern Recreation ground after the riot act was read on Bay Street calling for people to disperse. Arthur Foulkes, then the Editor the Bahamian Times, the PLP's propaganda paper named it Black Tuesday, after the day the market crashed on Wall Street in the United States in 1929.
    No one publicly mentioned Black Tuesday during the week in Nassau, but in the schools, some teachers assigned the homework question, what was ‘Black Tuesday’? Next year will make 40 years since the event that saw the PLP come into power in 1967.

DEVARD DARLING GETS A CONTRACT

The Minister of Sports Neville Wisdom was positively over the moon last Wednesday when it was learned that Devard Darling, the survivor of a pair of the sons of Dennis Darling, late of the Treasury, had been chosen as the 82nd draft pick in the United States National Football League (NFL) draft. It was thought that he would have been a bit higher but some say lingering doubts about his health and long term prospects given the way is brother died and his having sickle cell trait put him lower down on the list. In any event he is now drafted by the Baltimore Ravens.
Devard Darling is clearly excited and so is the Minister and we think the country. He made the decision earlier to skip his last year in University. We hope he gets proper advice because many a young man gets fooled by the quick wealth, then he gets injured, his work life is over in football, he has no education to lean back on, and the contract that he negotiated does not protect him from the harm that came to him. So while the country is over the moon and planning a Devard Darling Day, and an appearance before the House of Assembly on Wednesday 5th May, we hope Mr. Darling in the midst of the excitement is able to make some sensible choices. If not him, his mama could probably help him save his money. Bahama Journal photo of Devard by Omar Barr.

TRAFFIC ACCIDENT CLAIMS OTHER LIVES
    The taxi drivers are claiming that they are going to lose income because of the seat belt law that is now to be enforced from 20th May. If that happens, this will be the only country in the world in which it happens. Seat belts have been shown time and time again to save lives. The life that may be saved may in fact be the life of a taxi driver.
    The complaints of the taxi drivers remind you of the fishermen who are against banning the hunting of grouper during the spawning season of the fish. They would rather reap all the fish today and have no fish at all to reap tomorrow. It is shortsighted. Minister of Transport Glenys Hanna Martin has delayed this matter long enough. Let us enforce the law. Let the chips fall where they may.
    This week, the country was reminded of how sad the traffic accident toll really is in this country. One Devaughn Coakley travelling with his wife is dead. He was 43 and had five children. The passenger in the back seat who was 18 is also dead. Mr. Coakley’s wife was slightly injured and discharged. Two young people dead. Now we have newspaper headlines on the front page, probably the only time in his history that he made the front page of a newspaper. His mother is in shock and mourning. His wife and children are left without a breadwinner, and no matter what laments and calling on the name of the Lord the people make, the fact is the man is dead by a means that was probably preventable.
    The fact is there is too much speeding in New Providence, too many cars and the seat belt law is just one small way to counteract all of that. Superintendent Hulan Hanna of the Royal Bahamas Police Force said that no one was wearing a seat belt in this accident.

MISS FOX HILL EMANCIPATION DAY

    This year is the 170th year since slavery was abolished in the British Empire. By contrast, slavery ended in the United States by proclamation in 1865, 31 years later. The people of the Fox Hill constituency of the Minister of Foreign Affairs have been continuously celebrating the event since that time. This year is a very special celebration, and for the first time in years there was a beauty pageant to lead off the celebrations. It was beauty as well as talent.
    The community turned out in force with their representative last Sunday to cheer the young women on. Jan Davis and her subcommittee who worked under the direction of Chair of the Committee Charles Johnson did an excellent job in putting the women through their paces and producing an excellent show.
    Special mention must go to Maltese Davis and her dance training of the young women. The winner and new Miss Emancipation Fox Hill is Dashanique Poitier (pictured). The runners up are: Yvrose Valcin, first runner up; Leshanda Mcphee, second runner-up and Shekeitra Lightbourne. Congratulations to all. Please click here for a full photo spread of the pageant events by Peter Ramsay.

BATELCO
The Free National Movement issued a statement in which it claimed that by opening up a cell phone store BaTelCo was unfairly competing with the small entrepreneur. You may click here for the remarks of Minister Bradley Roberts answering the FNM’s charge that the Bahamas Telecommunications Company is unfairly competing with small businessmen in the cellular phone business.

WATER AND SEWERAGE
Abraham Butler, the former banking executive and personnel manager of BaTelCo, is now the new Managing Director of the Water and Sewerage Corporation. This is a surprise choice given that he was the Chairman of the Corporation. That does not detract from his competence, however. The Minister of Works Bradley Roberts made the announcement last week.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Why Waste Time on Rodney Moncur?
A letter writer to this column was quite scathing of last week’s editorial on Rodney Moncur - Class Clown, Peripatetic Political Jack-in-The Box. Arthur Philips argued:
“I can’t understand why you people waste time on someone who clearly is not worthy of all the attention. He has been a ventriloquist’s dummy all his life. Someone is always putting words in his mouth. I doubt that Rodney Moncur knows which way is up, even if you pointed it out to him. He needs to have head examined but certainly does not need your column to waste time writing about his antics.”

Call for Official Commendations for Sgt. Meronard
Another correspondent wrote in praise of Royal Bahamas Police Force Sergeant #106 Mitchelet Meronard. Sgt. Meronard is credited with saving Mrs. Eugene Newry, wife of the Ambassador to Haiti from serious injury during a robbery. Steine Campbell writes:
“It would be most fitting for Sgt. Meronard to receive the highest award (similar to the purple heart) for his selfless and courageous act in saving the life of Mdme. Newry. Can you please make comments to this in your next editorial!!! Thank you!! Our purpose is to serve, and serve well!!"

What actually happened in (the House on) Haiti?
    One reader was apparently stunned and outraged over the report of happenings in the House of Assembly when the Foreign Minister rose to report on the robbery of Mrs. Newry. Dana Braynen writes:
    “Did a sitting member of the House, and none less than the Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs together with the official opposition actually try to derail the Minister from reporting on his portfolio and only relented when two Independents supported the measure and further, only because they were made aware that the Minister was leaving the island imminently? This must be the biggest story of the week that has not been told.
    "Imagine a shadow minister promoting the fact that he had been duly informed by the Minister about a situation of national importance and the fact that a press not known for its stringent adherence to the precepts of the Treaty of Chapultepec had carried the story, as indication that the matter had been sufficiently addressed for the electorate! If this is indeed how events unfolded then incredible would be the appropriate euphemism.”

THE FOUNDATIONS BILL - A NEW PRODUCT
The House of Assembly has now passed into law a Foundations Bill. This is a concept akin to a trust that comes from civil law jurisdictions like France. The Bahamas and the United Kingdom and the United States are common law jurisdictions. The trust evolved in the common law jurisdictions. It is a new product that will allow The Bahamas Financial Services Sector to further develop.
You may click here for the remarks of Minister Allyson Maynard Gibson on the introduction of the Foundations Bill in the House of Assembly.

THE AMERICANS CANCEL
After months of what diplomats say was patient, behind-the-scenes work and the expectation that the Caricom/US relationship was getting back on track, the United States has done another silly thing to insult the leaders of the Caribbean. Caricom has not yet made a decision on the recognition of Haiti’s interim Government. No decision is to be made until July 2004 at the meeting in Grenada. But the U.S. wants to force the countries of the Caribbean to recognize Haiti through the back door. They said that if Haiti were not invited to a meeting they requested in Nassau on 3rd May with Caricom leaders they would cancel the meeting. The Caricom leaders did not relent, the meeting was cancelled. My way or the highway! Silly! How long, O lord how long?!

THIS WEEK WITH THE PM

The press loved this photograph of Prime Minister Christie smiling with former Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Hanna, former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham and former PLP Deputy Leader B.J. Nottage taken in St. Matthews church during the installation of Rev'd. Father James Moultrie as Rector.

    Prime Minister Perry Christie is obviously in a jovial mood (above) as he announces the engagement of international consultants to prepare proposals for the redevelopment of downtown Nassau. Pictured with Mr. Christie are Dr. Baltron Bethel and one of the international consultants. The two twenty architectural students in the world, including two Bahamians are to be used in the initial phases of the project.
    Among the other photo-opps of the Prime Minister's week was the opening of the Nazareth Centre, a collaboration between the Government, the Roman Catholic Church and philanthropist Phillipe Bonnefoy to house at risk children. Mr. Christie officially opened the Centre, assisted by Minister of Social Services Melanie Griffin and former Minister of Social Services Algernon Allen.
    Mrs. Christie was also active in public this week, shown below, right, at Government House with outstanding Bahamian students. The students are chosen each year for special awards by a group of the same name headed by Senator Traver Whylly, left. BIS Photos by Peter Ramsay.

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OH BOY! THE BILLION DOLLAR DEAL
The Prime Minister Perry Christie sent a message to his Caricom colleagues that he could not come to Antigua for their special meeting 2nd May to 4th May. There was a big announcement that he had to make at home. And what an announcement it was. The Kerzner International expansion at Paradise Island that was originally supposed to be 600 million dollars in extent is now to be one billion dollars. It required Minister of Financial Services and Investment Allyson Gibson to negotiate new terms and conditions but the deal was done, approved by the Cabinet and the Prime Minister on the second anniversary of his Prime Ministership and the 10th anniversary of the Kerzners in The Bahamas. It was announced to an awed nation. Nothing has materialized on the ground yet but there is a feeling in the air of great expectancy and that things are moving.

The investment is obviously good for The Bahamas but it is obviously not without its worries. One must say that mainly it puts immediate pressure on the Government to do something about the shoddy and run down state of Cable Beach, and the refusal of Phil Ruffin who owns the Crystal Palace and let it slip out from Marriott because of failing in upkeep, to reinvest in the property. Mr. Ruffin should be made to sell his hotel, not yesterday, not today but right away. The place is a dump, and it is unable to keep people hired at the facility on a regular and sustained basis. Often, guests check into the facility, and then check out in hours to go to Paradise Island. Yet the Government is allowing all that valuable capital to be tied up by someone who appears not to have the slightest interest in the further development of the property or the Bahamian tourism product.

The other point that needs to be made is that the sheer size of the Kerzner investment makes its influence disproportionate in the economy of the country. Pretty soon, the Kerzners if they don’t believe it already, will see themselves as the only game in town and begin to act like it by demanding this or that, and if they don’t get it threatening to do this or that. The Government in its anxiety to keep jobs will have to dance to their tune to keep them happy. Already, there is talk in the back channels and from the pronouncements of the younger Mr. Kerzner in the papers, it seems that there is a penchant for suggesting that things must go the Kerzner way or else.

But why complain about the air when there is nothing else to breathe? The fact is that it will provide an additional two thousand permanent jobs and thousands of construction jobs. That’s no small potatoes. It will help the employment of young males in particular who have problems training themselves for skilled jobs. The fact is; Kerzner’s investment is greatly needed.

We welcome the investment. The Progressive Liberal Party and its Minister of Financial Services Allyson Gibson and the Prime Minister Perry Christie ought to be congratulated for working this so that we have this deal. The FNM carpetbaggers were busy spinning their brand of lies over the week, led off by Zhivargo Laing, the former Minister who claimed in his newspaper column that it was the FNM during its last term that approved the one billion dollars investment. Mr. Laing as a professed born again Christian should know better than to write bold faced strangeness to the truth like that but it appears that there is a corrupted spirit in Mr. Laing that causes him to do anything for politics. We urge the PLP to keep the sense of balance that is required and let no man blackmail you into acting against the best interest of the country.

We also urge the Prime Minister and his colleagues to deal with Phil Ruffin. That monstrosity on Cable Beach must not be allowed to sully the good name of the tourism product of The Bahamas. The longer they wait to deal with it the worse it is going to get. The time to act on that is now while the country sees a good deal coming at P.I. and it knows that there is an urgent necessity to ensure that we have some balance at Cable Beach.

Number of hits for the month of May up to Saturday 8th May 204 at midnight: 49,026.

Number of hits for the year 2004 up to Saturday 8th May 2004 at midnight: 939,365.

WHEN SOLDIERS GET WEARY

    There has not been a feeding frenzy like the one we are experiencing in the United States today since the fall of the hypocrites who were trying to get Bill Clinton when he was President. They ended up having to resign for their own sexual peccadilloes. He remained President. Then there was the feeding frenzy that resulted in the fall of the former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. A country that is racist in so many of its characters suddenly got a bout of conscience because he spoke something that is just below the surface in the official campaigns of many Republicans. The U.S. is in that way an amazing country. And so after having made an obvious and huge mistake in going with their arrogance and without cause and with deception into another man’s country, the United States is suddenly in the midst of a feeding frenzy over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
    To say that the pictures of abuse are appalling is an understatement. It betrays a mentality of fundamental disrespect for the people of Iraq and for non-white people everywhere. It also confirms that the looting of Iraqi national treasures that was permitted by the U.S. armed forces just after they invaded the country was not an aberration. We must now mount fresh witness to what is gong on in Guantanamo where in clear violation of all the rules, the United States government continues to hold people in inhumane conditions and without trial.
    Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, whose credibility is already damaged for having misled the world on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when he spoke to justify the war at the United Nations, who should have resigned to save his reputation, has now to get on his bicycle again and use his remaining personal capital to defend a regime in Washington that more and more appears indefensible on this point. These are people who are running a campaign to discredit John Kerry, the Democratic Party candidate who fought in a war for his country, while their President got a bye sitting in comfort in the Texas Air National Guard. They did a similar thing to Max Cleland, the former Georgia Democratic Senator who had his legs and arms blown off in war but they portrayed him as a coward.

    Any country in this hemisphere has to be concerned about the nature and quality of the people one is dealing with. What kind of morality do these people have? Are they willing to do anything? When we look at our own region does what has happened in Iraq now make more credible the allegations of former Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide about how he was removed from office?
    An unlucky Bahamian citizen Norman Darling died in the cause in Iraq. We reported it on this site last week. It was sad for us to see a Bahamian die. We hope that he did not die in an essentially a racist cause, an anti Muslim crusade and an attempt to get at the oil reserves of Iraq. His life was too precious for all that. This week he is to be buried. The United States Government has announced that it will grant him citizenship of the country posthumously. That is a good gesture.
    As we look back on the week’s events in Iraq, the continued death and destruction, the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners, all we can do is shake our heads and say we told you so. Many now argue that the United States has no moral authority in this matter, some say they never had it, but certainly the entire sub strata of their invasion strategy has been torn away by the week’s events.
    It is clear that when soldiers have a sense that they can treat their captives with disrespect, they get it from the leaders. Some head must roll from atop the U.S. administration to make amends. But after public appearances Friday 7th May by the U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, it is clear that the Republican establishment will hold on for dear life, regardless of the level of disgrace. When soldiers get weary, they start doing stupid things, and what happened in the prison is just one example. Photo of prisoner abuse from ‘New Yorker’ magazine. US Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld file photo.

DARLING GETS HIS DAY IN THE HOUSE

Devard Darling, the new darling of the sports world in The Bahamas must have had a wonderful day on Wednesday 5th May in Nassau. The House of Assembly stopped its regular business to promote Devard Darling Day. Mr. Darling is only the second Bahamian in the history of this kind of thing to be drafted into the National Football League of the United States. He was chosen as the 82nd pick by the Baltimore Ravens. (Click here for last week's story).
The pictures of a potent young man with lots of potential, with a charming demeanour beamed out from all the Bahamian newspapers, and politicians crowded to be around him. If things work out, he is sure to have himself some good money. But as we said last week, a word to the wise! He should keep both his hands in his pockets because there will be a perception that you are rich. At 22, you simply don’t have the experience to deal with all the shysters coming around asking for money; from relatives, to long long lost friends, to women, to politicians. Keep your counsel, save your money. Youth and strength last only for a short season. While you are breaking up your body for the entertainment of others get as much as you can in salary and endorsements and be as prudent as you can and save as much as you can. It is the only way to survive for the long term. God bless! Good luck! Devard is shown chatting with Deputy Prime Minister Cynthia 'Mother' Pratt outside the House of Assembly on 'Devard Darling Day' in this Bahama Journal photo by Omar Barr.

US/HAITI/CARICOM
    The United States and Caricom are at loggerheads again over Haiti. The Caricom Prime Ministers who deal with Haiti as a core group met under the chairmanship of the new Prime Minister of Antigua Baldwin Spencer. The Heads: Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and The Bahamas represented by its Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell agreed to issue a letter to the Organization of American States (OAS) calling for a meeting to discuss Haiti and the question of invoking article 20 of the Inter American Democratic Charter. Article 20 calls for the assistance of the OAS when there is an interruption in the constitutional order of a country. The Heads hope by this mechanism to get at the investigation that the United Nations has refused to conduct into the removal of Jean Bertrand Aristide as President of Haiti.
    The question of recognition of the regime in Haiti by Caricom is in abeyance until July. The United States has been trying to force the issue and this week it did so in a big way by inviting the Prime Minister of the interim regime Gerard Latortue to visit Washington. Then he called a protocollary (as in protocol or not a substantive meeting) meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) so he could speak to member states. All Caricom countries agreed in the end to attend but only after the letter was issued.
    St. Lucia and St. Vincent took the position that under no circumstances would they participate in a meeting with the interim Prime Minister. Suriname sent a low level delegate. The Caricom countries are split by those who take the pragmatic view that they have to deal with the people in power and those who are more ideological. The Black Caucus in the US is split in two as well. But Maxine Waters, the friend of former President Aristide and a member of the caucus, denounced the visit of the interim Prime Minister to Washington calling him the head of a puppet regime installed by the United States.
    The former President of Haiti is scheduled to leave Jamaica shortly for South Africa.

THE CANADIANS COME CALLING

Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham came to The Bahamas with his team on Thursday 6th May. He spent one night with his Minister for the Francophone Denis Corderre and the Minister for International Development Aileen Carroll. The team hosted a dinner at the Lyford Cay Club for the Bahamian Foreign Minister and a number of his colleagues. These included the Deputy Prime Minister Cynthia Pratt, Minister of Financial Services Allyson Maynard Gibson, Minister of Housing Shane Gibson, the Minister of Immigration Vincent Peet and the Attorney General Alfred Sears. The Canadians were on their way to Haiti to visit their troops there and to assess the political situation on the ground there as they prepare for the next phase of the UN peacekeeping operation. The Bahamas has said that it will not now be able to put troops on the ground in Haiti until such time as the security situation improves there. BIS photo of Minister Graham greeting Deputy Prime Minister Pratt and members of The Bahamas Cabinet by Raymond Bethell.

A NEW ARCHBISHOP

    Patrick Pinder is now the Archbishop of The Bahamas including the Turks and Caicos Islands and Bermuda for the Roman Catholic Church. This is a signal honour for the Bahamian people, a first for any Bahamian. It has come to a smart and unassuming man. Thirty three years ago, he was the product of single parent home, working his way out of St. Augustine’s College. As he played on the fields of SAC, we wonder if he ever thought then that this could have been.
    The ordination of Archbishop Pinder took place on Tuesday 4th May at the St. Francis Xavier’s Cathedral in Nassau, itself only recently consecrated for the service of Roman Catholics here in The Bahamas. The outgoing Archbishop Lawrence Burke was ordained Archbishop of Kingston, Jamaica two days before the service in Nassau. Hubert Ingraham, the former Prime Minister went to the service in Jamaica (see photo below - Ingraham Coming Back).
    The Bahama Journal reported that Archbishop Burke was granted Permanent Residence of The Bahamas by the Government of The Bahamas. He is a citizen of Jamaica. We congratulate both men. Archbishop Pinder is shown blessing the congregation after his installation at the new Cathedral in Nassau in this Peter Ramsay photo.

NO CABINET RESHUFFLE
The Prime Minister told a radio audience at the start of the week that he has decided that he will not shuffle the Cabinet for now. He said that a number of ministers are involved in projects that are in midstream and that he did not want to interrupt that flow.

THE PRIORITY WATCHLIST AND COPYRIGHT LAWS
    The United States government has announced that The Bahamas is back on the priority watch list of the U.S. Trade Office. We are there because there is a copyright act in The Bahamas, which allows for compulsory licencing. It works like this. If an entity in The Bahamas wishes to use a copyrighted work, and the owner of the copyright refuses to grant permission, the law says you can go ahead and use the work, in this case a broadcast work by satellite, and simply pay a royalty assessed by the Royalty Tribunal set up under the Act in The Bahamas. The owner can then collect the fee from the Tribunal.
    The U.S. has gone ballistic over compulsory licencing. They say that they will blacklist The Bahamas, and start trade sanctions if we don’t change the law. The former Government negotiated a change in the text of the act. There was a row over whether the Berne Convention on copyright admits to the Bahamian practice. But The Bahamas lost the argument not because we were wrong in law but because the United States simply used its power in the marketplace to force a result. One problem is that signals in English off the satellite are not available to us legitimately, and the U.S. owners refuse to licence them in English saying that we are part of Latin America and have to take the Spanish language signals. They say we are too small for them to bother with separate contracts for us.
    The political part of this matter is that most people think that the last Government only passed the act to help Cable Bahamas, the company to which the Ingraham administration against all good sense gave the monopoly to operate cable television in The Bahamas. So the act has now been passed by the present government in fulfilment of the obligation, which the FNM did not carry out. The U.S. has indicated that with the passage of the act, they will then seek to remove The Bahamas from their blacklist. This is American foreign policy at its best: threats and blackmail.
    The end result of trade sanctions unrelated to copyright issues would mean that 60 million dollars of crawfish that we sell to the U.S. each year would be banned and thus jeopardize our fishing industry here. But what does the U.S. care about that--- too bad, too sad.
    A footnote; the satellite cards that are used in The Bahamas for Direct TV access, widely marketed as a commodity by individuals and satellite programming shops have all stopped working in The Bahamas within the last two weeks. It appears that the company that produces the signal has now effectively found a way to stop the pirating of the signals. All those who have satellite dishes have had dead receivers for the past week, when the old cards stopped working.

INGRAHAM COMING BACK

The rumours in the irrelevancy of the return of Hubert Ingraham continue to abound. All around the political halls is he coming the whisper: is or is he not. From all accounts, the man himself is titillated by the fact of the rumours and he is doing nothing to dispel them. He is doing everything to encourage them. The current thinking out of FNM circles is that Tommy Turnquest has simply not enlivened the imagination of the faithful. They want their champion Mr. Ingraham back. They want a return to the glory days.
But what appears now to be a shining era, papers over some real cracks and fissures in the FNM, which have simply not healed. The expulsion of Tennyson Wells and Pierre Dupuch has left sore wounds. If Mr. Ingraham returns, those wounds are sure to be reopened. By the way, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell reported to the media upon his return from Antigua that the Jamaican Government facilitated the visit at Mr. Ingraham’s request to see former President Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti now in exile in Jamaica. Mr. Ingraham is shown being greeted by Archbishop Burke during the archbishop's installation in Jamaica. Tribune photo from Norman Grindley / The Gleaner Company

SHANE’S HOUSING RECORD

At the start of last week, the Prime Minister Perry Christie stood with Shane Gibson, one of his most effective Ministers, to officially commission a new housing subdivision. Housing is one of the areas about which the new PLP is quite proud. In the two years that Shane Gibson has been the Minister of Housing, some 583 houses were built compared to just under 800 for the whole term of the Free National Movement. The Prime Minister expressed some exasperation at the fact the FNM dares to compare what they did with the PLP in this area and more generally to push the propaganda that the PLP is not doing anything. The facts are clear and speak for themselves. BIS photo by Peter Ramsay shows Minister Gibson (partially hidden at left) with Deputy Prime Minister Cynthia Pratt and Prime Minister Perry Christie at the opening of 'Hope Gardens' last week.

FALLOUT IN THE DEFENCE FORCE
    Last week, we reported that Edison Rolle has made certain irresponsible remarks about corruption in the Royal Bahamas Defence Force before the Commission investigating a drug sting operation that went wrong when the Royal Bahamas Defence force intercepted a Bahamas police/U.S. DEA operation in Nassau Harbour in June 1992. The boat the Lorequin was intercepted in the harbour searched by the Defence Force. In the result the drug numbers did not add up and Defence Force officers have been suspected of being involved.
    The Commission consisting of former Justice Stanley Moore, the Archbishop of the Anglican Church Drexel Gomez and former Deputy Commissioner of Police Sir Albert Miller has been hearing testimony for over a month now. Many argue that it is clear that the Defence Force is in deep trouble, lacking leadership, purpose, direction and equipment.
    Now this week following Mr. Rolle's revelations, Mr. Rolle reports that he has been “excluded” from the base. For many, this is a strange move. Mr. Rolle portrays it as victimization, and it has apparently not gone down well on the base.
    A writer to this column has written that the PLP had better fix this. She argues that the PLP is already in danger of losing the support of the Force because the PLP continues to keep the present Commodore there that most officers thought they would move. She adds, “Now it looks like you are attacking the whistle blower instead of dealing with what he said.”

BASIL DEAN’S BOMBSHELL

    There is no doubt in the minds of many that the man who should have been Commissioner of Police was Basil Dean. In the end, he had no prospect of the job under the Ingraham administration, thought to be a PLP, and so he took a better paying job as Vice President for Security at Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island. Mr. Dean was thought to be the policeman’s policeman, having the street smarts to spot the crooks and catch them.
    Mr. Dean returned to the spotlight in what can only be called a bombshell appearance at the Commission looking into the arrest of the ship Lorequin and the way the Royal Bahamas Defence Force dealt with the matter in 1992. On the witness stand on Wednesday 5th May he said that he was appalled at the way the police handled the matter.
    Mr. Dean said that Reginald Ferguson, now Assistant Commissioner of Police had handled the matter poorly by allowing a junior officer to go to the scene to take control of the drugs, which the Commander of the RBDF refused to allow. He said that Mr. Ferguson should have put a senior man on the job or gone himself. He said the same of John Rolle, now Deputy Commissioner of Police and retired Commissioner of Police Bernard Bonamy.
    So where are we? The Royal Bahamas Police Force thought that it was unscathed but it appears that not only is the Defence Force in trouble but so are the police. We agree. The security services in this country do not appear to be adequately equipped to deal with the state of the country as we find it today. Photo of Basil Dean from The Nassau Guardian.

PAT BAIN’S ADVICE ON LNG
    The President of the Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union has been speaking out against the proposed Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects that at least three companies are trying to get approved in The Bahamas. The companies: Tractabel, El Paso and AES all have applications before US and Bahamian authorities to build a facility in The Bahamas that would ship the LNG to the United States in South Florida. One of the projects is for a facility in Freeport Harbour, another at a facility in east Grand Bahama, and another at Ocean Cay, just south of Bimini.
    The environmental lobby in The Bahamas is opposed to the LNG projects. The Government has not made up its mind but there is said to be a concern about the environmental impacts of such a facility in a country with a reputation as a tourism country. The modernists in the country think it is all a bunch of noise over nothing.
    The Minister for Trade and Industry Leslie Miller who is responsible for the approval for the project is a promoter of the LNG projects.
    Mr. Bain has now weighed in saying that he does not think that any project should be approved unless there is legislation in place to protect the environment and there is the expertise in The Bahamas to deal with the matter. He went further and urged the Minister to withdraw from the promotion process saying that it appeared that the Minister was promoting one project to the exclusion of others. He said that he did not think that his elected representative should be doing this. The remarks were reported sound on tape on the morning newscast of the Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday 6th May.

FRED MITCHELL’S ANNIVERSARY IN FOX HILL

Every year since he has been working in the political vineyard of the Fox Hill constituency, Fred Mitchell MP for Fox Hill and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and The Public Service has held a service to mark the occasion of the beginning of this work in Fox Hill. It borrows from a practice of the Baptist Churches, which mark their pastors’ anniversary as a special time every year for celebration and donations to the Pastor.
This year’s service for Mr. Mitchell was held at St. Mark’s Native Baptist Church with Rev. Carrington Pinder presiding. It marked the seventh year of Mr. Mitchell’s service in the area. The funds collected were to be donated to the building of the community centre for Fox Hill. We present some photos of the occasion.

STUART AND SMITH BACK ON THE JOB

    Louis Deveaux who is one of the best bass singers in the country is also a businessman. He owns a trucking business. He has now emerged as leader in that business. There has been a strike by the truck drivers including blocking access to the Hot Mix Facility at Arawak Cay. Brent Symonette, the FNM's spokesman on Foreign Affairs in the House of Assembly, is said to be a shareholder in the company. It appears that the facility is underpaying for loads that the truckers bring to them.
    The BDM, the extra parliamentary party, was at the truckers' side when a press conference was called to defend the interests of the truckers.
    Now that’s the kind of thing we like to see, helping the downtrodden, not attacking innocent politicians over things that have no legs.
    By the way, the leader of the BDM Cassius Stuart who was accompanied by Deputy Omar Smith in the photo in the Nassau Guardian Saturday 8th May celebrated his birthday with a grand event with the cream of the young, beautiful and restless over the weekend. Happy birthday Lord Cassius!

TRANSITIONS
New U.S. Ambassador
The United States President George Bush has announced that he has nominated a new Ambassador to The Bahamas John D. Rood, another one of the good old boys from Florida. He is a real estate man from Jacksonville, the home of the former Ambassador J. Richard Blankenship. The nomination now goes to the US Senate, and gives the lie to the propaganda put before the Bahamian people that The Bahamas would not get a new Ambassador. The new man is said to have better interpersonal skills than the last Ambassador and so will probably serve his country well.

Peter Gordon Dies

Peter Gordon, former Director of Public Works has died in Nassau. He was 68 years old. Mr. Gordon was born in Canada but raised in his parents’ native Scotland. He qualified as an engineer, saw national service in Britain and came to The Bahamas in 1980. He served with distinction in The Bahamas government until his retirement in 1996. He married the former Lynne Haddox (nee Walker as in daughter of C.R. Walker). While the couple had no children of their own together, they had children from their previous marriages who formed a close knit family. Mr. Gordon was cremated and a memorial service held on Saturday 8th May at the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Kirk. He was praised by the Bahamian engineering profession as a pioneer for the profession in The Bahamas and as a mentor to many a young Bahamian engineer.

Korean Boats
The Tribune reported in its newspaper of Tuesday 4th May that the boats that were claimed to be owned by Netsiwell, beneficially owned by Earlin Williams, that caused all the controversy, have now been turned over to their proper owners, Americans of Korean descent. The report is that the U.S. State department intervened and the claim on the boats was released. The boats are to be returned to their new owners and will leave The Bahamas. No confirmation came from The Bahamas Government. Earlin Williams who claimed to be the owner of the boats has been silent.

THIS WEEK WITH THE PM

The tales of Bro. Bookie and Bro. Rabbie as told by the Right Honourable Perry G. Christie, Prime Minister, are keeping these Central Abaco School students rapt with attention. The story telling was one of the more photogenic interludes of two trips in two days this week by Mr. Christie to the island of Abaco.

While in Green Turtle Cay, (bottom left) accompanied by the Minister of Tourism Obie Wilchcombe, Mr. Christie is shown with the representative for the area, former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham.
The week began for Mr. Christie with a series of prayer breakfasts staged to celebrate the second anniversary in power of his Government. At left with the Prime Minister in this photo (bottom right) is Member of Parliament Veronica Owen. BIS Photos by Peter Ramsay.

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THE UNFOLDING SCANDAL
Last week in what was an unusual analytical piece for this column, there was a contributed comment on the unfolding scandal of the treatment of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad, Iraq. There is a lot of talk about it throughout the world’s press. We asked the question last week: what kind of morality do the people who run the United States have? You may click here for a look at last week’s piece.

The United States appears to be in a muddle at what to do about this and at where they really stand. You have the President of the country and its combative Defence Secretary both saying to what extent they apologized and how embarrassed they were about the whole thing. But they immediately went on to obviate the effect of any apology by the President supporting his Defence Secretary in unequivocal terms, and then the Defence Secretary flying off secretly to Baghdad and holding what amounted to an unseemly political rally with the troops wildly cheering at what was ostensibly to make an act of contrition. But more importantly and quite contradictorily it seems to support what the troops are doing.

The European leadership is quite clear on the matter but for the quizzical Prime Minister of Britain who despite all the best warnings and advice in the world, and presumably a smart man, has told his press that he intends to hang in there with George Bush. He said in an interview that this is not the time to abandon your main ally. In contradistinction, the French President and the German Chancellor meeting in France on Thursday 13th May said that they would not commit troops to Iraq under any circumstances, and basically pronounced how shocked they were at the whole matter.

The U.S. as we said is in a muddle. The Secretary of Defence in his appearance last week on Friday 7th May before the Senate said that he thought that the instructions and rules about prisoner treatment were entirely consistent with the rules of the Geneva Convention. It turns out now that the sleep deprivation and other physical pressure tactics were approved by the Defence Secretary. This week as the Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace when asked on Wednesday 12th May at a Senate hearing whether if he saw an American soldier in the position of those Iraqis he would consider it a violation of the Geneva Convention, he had to concede that he would.

The U.S. officials have also decided that they are not going to release any new photos because they say their lawyers claim it would violate the rights of those who might possibly be charged. That is lame, and they should release them all right away. It is the usual trick to use the lawyers as an excuse for a good old fashioned cover up.

We make a more fundamental point here this week. It has to do not with the officials and their response to the whole scandal but with the soldiers themselves on the ground. One has to ask what would have caused these ordinary men and women to dehumanize themselves and their captives in this way. This coming from a nation that is steeped in the public rituals of Christian charity and morals.

What is more, it appears that the young soldiers themselves do not feel that they did anything wrong at all. Not if you were to judge from the first interviews given by at least one of the soldiers and another one of the soldiers' lawyers. They trotted out the oldest excuse in the books: they were ordered to do so. Others are now seeking to use the killing of a young American by his captors as an excuse for what the U.S. soldiers did.

The officials have tried to explain away this reprehensible behaviour by suggesting that it was lack of training, too much pressure and there were too many prisoners. That of course comes back to them for launching a war that they were ill prepared for, that they were warned against doing, that they lied with regard to its objectives, that had murky objectives, and that was doomed to failure because of the nature of the area that they were entering. But it can’t be explained away by lack of training in the military. The training that it must refer to is home training.

One sees why then this is the same people, whose ancestors were able to wipe out the aboriginal populations in their country without concern, lock up Japanese citizens during the Second World War as suspects without trial without concern, enslave millions of Africans without conscience, and still continue with discrimination against the African descendants today. There is much that can be found to explain the insensitivity to all of this. It all comes down to a danger that exists amongst many young people in the U.S. who see other nation’s peoples as less than human because they are poor.

Further, the individual soldiers who gave the excuse that they were ordered to do so were clearly ignorant of history, and their own law. It is no good to say when carrying out an unlawful order that I was ordered to do so. That is not a lawful excuse. That is what the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War were supposed to have shown. German soldiers were executed and imprisoned for crimes committed during that war, when they answered charges by saying that they were following orders.

All of this is depressing for us in the Caribbean region. We have only our moral right to exist and our intellectual acuity on which to depend for leveraging our existence. It is therefore of some note that we see the signs of the America we know in the Opposition ranks in the United States that has finally found its voice to denounce this kind of authoritarianism that has no regard for people it apparently perceives as of a lesser race. We can only hope that these voices become reorganized and will work diligently at withdrawing the United States from this silly mess in which it has gotten itself, so that all the good that the nation has the potential to do can once again get back on track.

A NEW LABOUR SURVEY TO BE DONE
The Government announced last week that a labour survey is to be done to determine within the month what the real rate of employment is in the country. Last year’s survey revealed an unemployment rate of 10.8 per cent up from the previous year. The evidence is there of a further rise in unemployment with more unskilled young workers unable to find jobs. We hope that whatever picture is revealed that the jobs start getting going and soon to put youngsters into a job, some of them for the first time.

HEALTH INSURANCE REPORT IS IN

    Dr. Perry Gomez and his team delivered the report on national health insurance to the Prime Minister on Monday 10th May at the British Colonial Hilton. In presenting the report, the Doctor pointed out that some 340 million dollars are expended on health care in The Bahamas annually. The Government of the Bahamas picks up the tab for 48 per cent of that amount.
    It is hoped that if the plans are approved the National Health Insurance Plan can get implemented within 24 months. This is ambitious. The critics who are against socialized medicine have not yet weighed in. That is what caused the last plan under Sir Lynden Pindling to fail.
    We await with some concern the details of the report to be made public, particularly as it relates to costs and taxation of the individual. But for now it is left to us to congratulate the Doctor and his team for the completion of their report. One hopes that some plan will emerge which will stop this incessant demand for cookout money to pay for health bills that can never be paid for by cook outs. Prime Minister Christie (centre), Minister of Health Dr. Marcus Bethel (right), Parliamentary Secretary Ron Pinder (left) and Permanent Secretary Elma Garraway (second from left) pose with Dr. Perry Gomez (second from right) and members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on National Health Insurance at the British Colonial Hotel. BIS photo Peter Ramsay.

DEFENCE FORCE GETS ONE BLOW AFTER THE NEXT

    Last week, we commented in this column about one of the side problems as we see it with the present Commission of Inquiry looking into events at the Royal Bahamas Defence Force. We have had over the past weeks, the spectacle of one person after the next who appears to have something on their chest, or some vendetta against another individual, simply using the Commission of Inquiry as a means of pouring venom on persons who may or may not be innocent. This week, the situation became even worse with the testimony a police officer Sgt. Philip Moxey attached to the intelligence unit of the Drug Enforcement Unit of the Royal Bahamas Police Force on Wednesday 12th May.
    Sgt. Moxey (pictured in this Nassau Guardian photo) claimed that on 29th June 1992 he received an anonymous phone call from a male voice on the phone, a phone call that he did not think to trace, and a voice that to this day he has not identified, that said that a crew member of the RBDF boat Inagua sold some of the drugs taken off the Lorequin and sold it to Samuel ‘Ninety’ Knowles (see story below as to who Knowles is) for the price of $11,000 per kilogram.
    Sgt. Moxey went on to call the names of persons who were said by the anonymous informant to be connected with it. The transfer of the cocaine is said to have been connected with one Chucker Thompson, a shady character known to the police. It was said that when Mr. Thompson refused to pay for the drugs several officers of the RBDF showed up at the Thompson residence and searched for the drugs in the presence of his wife. It was further claimed that three officers Sham Burrows, Gerard Cash and Lucious Fox were all concerned with removing the drugs.
    The Commission asked Sgt. Moxey why the matter was never followed up by him. That is a good question. But we raise a further concern. The names of the officers have now been called in connection with selling drugs. How do they recover their reputations in the face of these unsubstantiated and protected allegations? It seems to us that something is totally wrong with that. But that of course that is the downside of one of these all encompassing inquiries.
    Knowing the penchant of the United States authorities to believe gossip, no doubt the old ‘pull the visa’ game will be exercised against the persons accused without any trace of any further evidence. And so one must ask the question what if sleeping dogs had been left to lie. This procedure does not seem to be getting at anything other than further sullying the names of the police and the defence forces.

ARTHUR FOULKES RESPONDS TO THE NASSAU INSTITUTE

    We stand four square behind the response of Sir Arthur Foulkes, the former Ambassador and now Tribune columnist, in response to an attack on him by that collection of misfit racist opinions that emanate from the Nassau Institute (The Tribune Tuesday 11th May 2004). We charitably call them a right wing think tank. This body is supposed to be in the Thatcherite mould that is resisting all forms of so called collectivism, seeing socialist shadows behind every attempt at poor people to organize themselves for their own benefit, and every attempt by the Government to intervene in the economy for the benefit of the dispossessed. They oppose all attempts by groups to influence public policy except their own. Sir Arthur identified their officers as Joan Thompson, Ralph Massey, Rick Lowe and Maurice Marwood. They seem to have the tacit support of some person in the United States government as well.
    The institute accused Sir Arthur of being hostile to ideas that suggest limiting state power and control. They represent that they are not political, somehow neutral, when everyone knows that at least one of them is a rigid FNM ideologue. They are in fact all political activists as Sir Arthur says up to their necks. One of them gets no greater joy than sitting in Lyford Cay after one of his letters appears in the press regaling the local crowd with stories of how he told the Government off. Quite simply their opinions are next to useless. Sir Arthur’s well argued and reasonable response is much more articulate than anything that could ever be written on this site on the subject.
    Sir Arthur points out that the Nassau Institute is a study in contradictions. He said one of the marks of right wing ideologues like this crew in the Nassau Institute is to deny the existence of groups, yet they have their own group the Nassau Institute. He also identified the subtext of racism in the Nassau Institute’s approach. They used the expression when talking about Sir Arthur: you can take the man out of politics but you can’t take the politics out of the man. He said what they really meant was that you can take the man out of the bush but you can’t take the bush out of the man. He said they just didn’t have the courage to write it. But we all know what they meant and what their attitude really is. They are to be roundly condemned.

COMMONWEALTH BANK’S ACQUISITION

Chairman of Commonwealth Bank, the largest Bahamian owned financial institution, T. Baswell Donaldson (pictured) announced during the past week that Commonwealth Bank has purchased the loan portfolio in The Bahamas of Citibank, worth some eight million dollars. That effectively ends Citibank’s bad experiment with local banking in The Bahamas. This should add significantly to the bottom line of Commonwealth Bank, which has been doing well as far as their balance sheet goes.
Some shareholders have been worried lately about the management of the company in particular there is back chat in the banking community about the need to get on top of the default portfolio, but most people think that the bank is still quite sound. The bank is said to have some 700 million dollars in assets in its name. The major shareholders in the bank are the Symonette family (as in Brent MP and Craig), Franklyn Butler (as in the son of the late Sir Milo) and Supervalue’s owner Rupert Roberts.

‘NINETY’ PETITIONS THE QUEEN

    Life seems to be getting ever more absurd in The Bahamas. The crowd that is rallying around the flag to avoid the extradition of Samuel ‘Ninety’ Knowles to the United States for trial have now formulated a formal petition to the Queen to ask for the Queen to intervene directly in stopping the extradition. The last time something like this happened was when David Bethel, the late lawyer, came up with the novel proposition before the late Justice Maxwell Thompson that a defendant on death row had a right to petition the Queen directly for his release or commutation of sentence. Justice Thompson agreed at first instance, although it was later struck down in the superior courts.
    The current petition also calls for the release of convicted Druggies Keva and Dwight Major from the clutches of the Americans. To add some interest to the matter, they released a photo (shown at top right) of the Queen after having received flowers from a little girl, Keva Major, not yet married of course.
    There was a rally held at which the protagonists announced that the Attorney General of the country Alfred Sears was to be present. Mr. Sears quite rightly was a no show. There is a dangerous game being played here by wicked and disingenuous headline gabbers like the political activist Rodney Moncur who is in part behind this. Mr. Moncur has now found himself another headline to grab by dressing this up in a cry for freedom.
    Fayne Thompson, the attorney, made what seemed a sensible plea for those who believe that a Black man cannot get a fair trial in the United States.
    Mr. Sears, the Attorney General, is the representative for the Fort Charlotte constituency and some of the persons who support Mr. Knowles and the other detainees live in the constituency. What some argue they are trying to do is put pressure on him to act on their behalf. They should stop it. It won’t work, and it is totally improper.
    The fact is that this society is under threat of being undermined by the drug gangster culture, and if it lacks the capacity to clean itself up then we ought to use what mechanism there is to get it cleaned up. If that means extracting the problem from here and taking it elsewhere so be it.

THE STORY OF THE MONTAGU RAMP

    The Member of Parliament for St. Margaret’s Pierre Dupuch (pictured) has won the Government’s support for another Select Committee, this time to investigate and make recommendations to find a solution to the traffic, health, environmental and related problems caused by the vending and the layout of the area known as the Montagu Ramp. While speaking on the matter on Wednesday 12th May, he discussed the Montagu Ramp and the traffic congestion that occurs in that area of New Providence. He said that something needs to be done because of the congestion but also indicated that the conchs sold there were unsafe because there is a sewerage pipe putting sewerage into the water some ten feet off shore.
    The Montagu Ramp is a long standing problem. The last Government simply wanted to move the people and get rid of them. But Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell while an Opposition member always opposed it. He argued that the Montagu Ramp was what could be called a natural market, and it should be protected. He called then for the Government to buy all the land from the old Montagu property to allow for the public park that forms the Montagu Bay to be expanded, to provide parking and shifting the course of the Eastern Road so that the park could be traffic free. At the time, it would have taken six million dollars to buy the land. No one listened to him.
    Now the issue has come up again, and one hopes that former activist Mitchell is now in a position to help these people out and expand and beautify the park. The land that could have been used for adding parking and rerouting the road has now all been parcelled up and sold into separate bits to private developers. But some clever planning should be able to make a useful plan of reorganizing the market for the benefit of the traffic, and ensure that the food sold there is healthy as well. This country is all too ready to plan poor people out existence as if they are an inconvenience, instead of part of the engines of this economy. Those persons at the ramp have a loyal customer base, and they are independent businessmen. It would be a great shame to simply cause the market to move and ruin their independent lifestyle.

AN ANGLICAN PRIEST ATTACKS ‘CULTS’

    Stan Burnside, the cartoonist, made a bit of fun out the story. Archdeacon Etienne Bowleg, rector of the Anglican parish church of the Holy Trinity was appearing before the National Cultural Development Commission and came up with the novel warning that The Bahamas was seeing an increase in cults and sects. He named among them the Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and the Unity School of Christian.
    One writer to this column suggested that the language of the priest was patently offensive, and went further by saying “for the priest to suggest that any of those denominations are cults is simply inaccurate.” Archdeacon Bowleg, not Archbishop warned Bahamians to be aware of 250 religious groups in New Providence, which might appear to be authentically Christian, but they are not. The joke is that the Nassau Guardian called him Archbishop Etienne Bowleg.
    But the more serious thing is that just like the evidence before the Commission of Inquiry people really have to think carefully when they get into the public forum when they say the things they say. They often do untold and irreparable harm, by not thinking carefully about what is being said and the possible unintended consequences of what one says, particularly as regards the practice of one’s religion, a right under the constitution. Indeed, the Anglican Church, which found its genesis in political expediency in the 16th century, ought to be careful before going there. The Seventh Day Adventists for example have a doctrine that is no different from any other Christian denomination. They are exceptional in their training of young people, and in the training and example that they give in the leadership of the church through their pastors. The pastors are some of the finest trained examples of Bahamian male leadership in the country. No we do not agree that they qualify as a cult. 'Sideburns' from the Nassau Guardian by Stan Burnside.

CARL BETHEL: I WILL RUN

Somebody must have been fooling with Carl Bethel, the now chairman of the Free National Movement, and the former MP for Holy Cross (pictured). The sign outside the FNM’s Holy Cross branch building was freshly repainted with his likeness and Mr. Bethel felt moved to issue a statement which said that he did not agree to stand down for any possible race at a bye-election in the Holy Cross constituency, if the Court of Appeal upholds the finding in bankruptcy against MP for Holy Cross Sidney Stubbs.
Under the law Mr. Stubbs remains an MP, although he cannot carry out any of his functions as long as he has been declared a bankrupt. If the appeal is dismissed, he vacates his seat forthwith. If not, then he resumes his seat. The rumour has been going around that attorney Bran McCartney was to be the choice of the FNM for the seat and that Carl Bethel had been asked to stand down. With Mr. Bethel's statement, he now makes it clear that he will step down for no man. But a word to them all - don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

THE FOREIGN MINISTER IN THE UK

    Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell has returned from a four day official visit to the United Kingdom. The purpose of the visit was the biennial UK/Caribbean Forum. Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom and the Caricom countries meet together to discuss relations and mutual co-operation. While Mr. Mitchell pronounced the meeting a success on a number of issues including co-operation on HIV/AIDS, national security and trade, Mr. Mitchell said that the meeting showed more than ever the need for the countries of the Caribbean to start to look after their own interests.
    At a press conference at the airport on his return on Friday 14th May, here is what he had to say in his own words as quoted by The Tribune Saturday 13th May:
    “Coming from the meeting, what Caribbean countries know, if they didn’t know before, is that notwithstanding the old colonial and sentimental ties between the United Kingdom and the Caribbean, those bonds and ties of sentiment are slowly dissolving.
    “It is clear that the United Kingdom values its relationship and trade with the Caribbean, but the Caribbean can no longer depend on sentiment, history and goodwill for its national interests to be pursued.
     “The Bahamas has been independent for more than 30 years and some of its other Caribbean neighbours have been independent for 40 years or more, making it clear that Caribbean countries have to begin to stand up and look out for their own interests.
    “This meeting and meetings of this kind are useful in helping to further define and strengthen the regional integration movement. During the meeting, the UK government continually said it was important for the Caribbean to speak with one voice.
    “Increasingly this is an issue we have been trying to bring home to the Bahamian people, that developed countries of the world prefer to deal with the Caribbean as a region as opposed to individually given our size.
    “The Bahamas has to now in defining its relationship with these countries, strengthen its co-operation in a regional way and take a greater leadership role in the regional body if our national interests are to be properly pursued.”
    Caricom Foreign Ministers and UK counterpart pictured at conference. Photo - Patrick Tsui

SHANE SHINES AGAIN

Shane Gibson, the Minister of Housing, hosted Prime Minister Perry Christie this week to an outing once more in a Government housing project. This time, the Prime Minister officially opened Pastel Gardens subdivision on Monday 16th May. He was taken on a tour of the new area by Mr. Gibson who is making a reputation for himself as a Government minister who gets things done in housing. We think he is doing a fantastic job producing quality and affordable housing. The only pity is there is not enough land and not enough houses to go around. The new development will include 172 homes most of which are now ready for occupation. The project will also have green spaces, a commercial area, a set aside for a primary school, a church and a park. Unveiling of plaque - BIS photo / Peter Ramsay; Minister Gibson greeting young Pastel Gardens resident - Bahama Journal photo / Omar Barr.

“CONTINUITY & WHOLESOMENESS” IN QUEEN’S HONOUREES

Twenty five outstanding Bahamians were honoured by Her Majesty the Queen Thursday in a ceremony at Government House where the honourees were invested by Governor General Dame Ivy Dumont. Prime Minister Perry Christie gave comprehensive remarks, recalling, from memory, the service which each had given to the country. Mr. Christie said the nation has “a duty to try and understand the continuity and the wholesomeness of our country,” made up of all people who have given so much. He called for the nation to rise above its divisions in recognising such persons and to find in them “the kind of pride in our country that (it) demands of us”. Please click here for the Prime Minister’s address and more photos from the investiture.

PLP ON ATLANTIS & NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE REPORT
The Progressive Liberal Party issued a statement Sunday 16th May, putting into political perspective the Government's achievement on the Atlantis billion dollar new investment and the report on National Health Insurance. Party Chairman Raynard Rigby also reminded the FNM that it "has a duty to its supporters and to the nation at large to demonstrate a greater degree of political maturity in matters of national importance.
"This is no time," said Mr. Rigby, "for petty, purely partisan and hopelessly naïve political commentary. Events such as the unprecedented leap forward in tourism about to take place at Atlantis and the dawning of a National Health Insurance scheme for all Bahamians are times for national support, consensus and unity between all Bahamians off good sense and goodwill." Please click here for Mr. Rigby's full address.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Credibility
    I enjoy reading Bahamas Uncensored, and I look forward to my “fix” every Sunday afternoon. I know that you are a PLP supporter and you believe that the government has made some mistakes but is going in the right direction. I find it disturbing with the previous view in mind that you would mislead your readers and spin facts.
    You said that Hubert Ingraham was an uncouth bumpkin (which was an unnecessary slur and an insult to those of us who believe that effective communication has nothing to do with diction as long as the listener takes away what the presenter wanted him to), but you went further to say that Hubert Ingraham lost his office on May 2, 2002. What office did Mr. Ingraham lose? I thought he was not seeking the office of PM in the last election.
    Please try and maintain high standards always because I will stop reading if your site does not remain credible.
Steve Saunders

There will be arguments from time to time about the use of language, and we do not pretend to always get it right. The fact is there is a view in The Bahamas that believes exactly what was asserted in the article about him and that is all we said. We did not go so far as to call the man an uncouth bumpkin. That this view exists cannot be denied. You may disagree and you may think it is a slur but some people think it is true, just as they think some rather unpleasant things about members of the Government with which you may agree or disagree.
As for the fact of losing office, he was the Prime Minister up to 2nd May and when the FNM lost the election, he lost the office of Prime Minister. But we thank you for your comment. Ed

THE DROUGHT BREAKS?
The weather is not the kind of topic you find people talking about or checking about on a day to day basis. You leave that sort of subject for countries where the weather is subject to minute by minute changes. It is not a serious concern in The Bahamas because the sun always shines, more or less, and it is always hot, more or less. But for the last few weeks, people have been talking about the weather the fact that it is bone dry, and it has not rained, and there is a need for rain.
It is not unusual for there to be no rain from February to April, but this year seems to have taken the drought to extreme. When flying over Andros, you can see the smoke from the forest fires, and they have been putting them out in New Providence and in Grand Bahama. On Saturday afternoon 15th May, there was a half hour rain shower, and some are talking about the weather again, wondering this time whether the drought has broken.

BAHAMIAN US SOLDIER BURIED

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, centre left, and Major Gen. George Keefe of the Mass. National Guard, centre right, salute as the casket of Army Pfc. Norman Darling, arrives for his funeral at the Mass. National Cemetery in Bourne, Mass., Monday May 10, 2004. Darling, a Bahamian, was a member of the US 1st Armoured Division. He was killed in Iraq (see original story) while on patrol on April 29, 2004. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

THIS WEEK WITH THE PM

A slight departure by popular demand this week. Last week, Prime Minister Christie twice visited Abaco, yielding a photograph of his famous 'Christie Shuffle' and others of him greeting schoolchildren there. Some international readers, having heard of these in the local newspapers, asked if we would oblige.

No problem... here is Prime Minister Christie demonstrating his inimitable Junkanoo dance for former Prime Minister Ingraham and others at the Island Roots Festival in Green Turtle Cay, Abaco.
First official business of this past week was a trip to the British Colonial Hotel by the Prime Minister to accept the National Health Insurance report (see story above). Afterward, Mr. Christie paused outside, much to the delight of a group of tourists who greeted him and snapped photos.
This past week, Mr. Christie travelled to Washington DC to receive an award in his honour and later in the week to Jamaica to address a group of medical professionals there. We promise to try for photos of those events in next week's edition.

Officials of Pharmachem, an international pharmaceutical manufacturing company now set up in Freeport, Grand Bahama, paid a call on the Prime Minister this past week at the Cabinet Office. From left are Bahamian Randy Thompson, Administrative & Business Services Manager with Pharmachem Technologies; Pharmachem executives Joe Steele and Pedro Stefanutti; Prime Minister Christie, Pharmachem's Ernie Presbe, Willie Moss, President of the Grand Bahama Port Authority and Edward St. George, Chairman of the Grand Bahama Port Authority.
Below are the requested photos of the Prime Minister greeting schoolchildren in Abaco. It seems the nation's Chief Exec made quite a hit with the youngsters. BIS photos / Peter Ramsay.

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THE NEWSPAPER WARS
The Tribune carried a self serving story on Thursday 20th May in which it claimed that it is drubbing the Nassau Guardian in the sales war every day and every week. The headline said: THE TRIBUNE SOARS WHILE THE GUARDIAN PLUMMETS. The Tribune claimed that since it began as a morning paper in 1998, its figures have been exceeding the Nassau Guardian that once had dominance in the morning market. The story is very curious. It appears in the same timeframe that a former Nassau Guardian employee Larry Smith started to write a column in The Tribune.

The Tribune quotes an unnamed source as saying: “I am trying to find a word that describes the setting up there. Clueless sounds about right. Its [The Tribune’s morning move] success must have been very demoralizing for the Guardian’s management, who seem to have no answers for their rivals supremacy”. Unnamed sources in a mainline newspaper is the first recourse of cowards.

This practice that The Tribune now has of basing stories either on no sources or on unnamed sources is a constant worry that they may in fact be making up quotes to fit their story. In that respect, and most newspapers in the country are now guilty of it, they are following the down market newspapers like The Punch and The Source who have to tell ever more outlandish lies in order to get sales. The over reliance on unnamed sources strikes at the credibility of the newspaper.

The Tribune quotes statistics to back up what they are saying. According to them, The Guardian’s sales have dropped by 12 percent over the past year on four or five days of the week. They say from October 2003 to March 2004, they beat the Guardian in sales: Guardian 69,055, Tribune 73,939. They go further; from January 2004 to March 2004, The Tribune’s weekly average was 75,190 while the Guardian’s was 67,325.

A very strange thing then happened, with Wendall Jones, the Publisher of the very much third man in the race The Bahama Journal, weighing in to say what a bad newspaper The Guardian is and that an insurance company has no right running a newspaper, and that they should sell it to some one who does know how to do so (presumably him). Mr. Jones was always an ambitious person, nothing wrong with that. He also decried the standards of journalism and writing at the Nassau Guardian. The question everyone was asking was why would he want to be on the side of The Tribune that certainly holds no brief for him and would destroy him and his business in a hot minute. The quick answer was that the Colina Insurance group that owns the Nassau Guardian is suing Mr. Jones' company for libel after he published some information about their purchase of the Imperial Life business in The Bahamas.

All that said, The Tribune ought to be careful about its assertions. The old saying is that there are lies, damn lies and then statistics. We have also criticized The Guardian for not getting it right but we certainly don’t go that far. We would venture to guess that The Guardian is by far the popular choice for reaching the Black Bahamians, the heart of the population. So that even today, if you want to influence public opinion in the Bahamian community through a newspaper at large, you had better get it in the Nassau Guardian. The Tribune may be selling more papers by the figures (and we don’t quite accept that) but it still does not have the impact in the community as a newspaper. It is perceived in many quarters as hostile to the Black Bahamian and his interest, politically motivated, tainted and inspired. But it is useful when someone feels aggrieved because they know that they can always get a hearing in The Tribune.

The feeling of not being part of the majority in The Bahamas has been further reinforced by the import of English journalists who, in effect, run the paper. Some of these people who run the paper don't know the community they live in, don’t know the personalities, and are trying to turn The Tribune into a kind of Daily Mail or up market version of The Sun, two down market English papers that regularly engage in political smut and sex to sell papers. The Trib is not quite there yet but they ought to be very careful about standards. Their trend is toward a peculiarly English newspaper position with lurid headlines, where sometimes the headlines don’t match the text. Small and unimportant stories are placed with banner front page headlines to get people to buy the newspaper, and the content often doesn't match up with what is in the headline. Sad too that The Tribune appears to believe that it must match The Punch for the lurid and sensational. They are certainly not yet in that class but clearly have been influenced by the market effect of the down market papers.

Truth be told, The Tribune is in some respects a better paper in its writing and it is more penetrating, more balanced, more aggressive and more incisive. But that fact has not moved the Bahamian populace as a whole in its reliance on it for news. The Tribune is associated with the old Bay Street and colonial establishment and is therefore suspect when it comes to that.

Charles Carter, the Nassau Guardian’s Publisher, told The Tribune that it was not true that their sales had fallen in the last six months. He said that in fact the sales had gone up. He said: “We are trying to improve what people read and that’s why we were telling Bahamian stories. Read the paper. Read what we put in ‘Lifestyles’. The paper speaks for itself. Just look at today’s newspaper and you’ll see what we’re trying to do.”

The Tribune now has eight persons with work permits on staff with a foreign editor for all of their major departments to foreign persons who run the presses. The Nassau Guardian may have one work permit holder. The Nassau Guardian is a Bahamian product. The Tribune cannot really claim to be so. That may be the reason that by and large, the feeling is that impact for impact and pound for pound, if you want to influence Bahamian public opinion in newspapers, you had better put it The Guardian.

Number of hits for the week ending Saturday 22nd May 2004 at midnight: 60,427.

Number of hits for the month of May up to Saturday 22nd May 204 at midnight: 178,439.

Number of hits for the year up to Saturday 22nd May 2004 at midnight: 1,068,778.

ARCHBISHOP GOMEZ’S DAMAGE CONTROL

    On Friday 21st May, the Nassau Guardian published a front page story featuring an interview with the Anglican Archbishop Drexel Gomez. In a short phrase it can be described as damage control. Damage control from an ill considered, inappropriate and intolerant statement by one of the clerics of the Anglican Church. (Click here for previous story).
    The Archbishop was trying to explain his church's position on cults and whether or not he considered the Seventh Day Adventist Church a cult as his cleric Archdeacon Etienne Bowleg had earlier characterized them. The Archbishop said that he did not. He also said that the Archdeacon was expressing his personal opinion, and that he was not speaking for the official position of the Anglican Church. It must have been excruciating for the Archbishop to have been put in this position. He is usually a man of carefully nuanced language, and certainly had a reputation for tolerance. The Anglican Church itself is known for its decorum and tolerance generally of other people’s views and choices. So the comment of the cleric came like a bolt of lightening out of the blue. Loose lips sink ships, it is sometimes said.
    The whole thing caused a storm in the Christian community with statements by the Seventh Day Adventists themselves and also by the new leadership of the Christian Council. Here is what the Seventh Day Adventist leader Pastor Leonard A. Johnson said about the Archdeacon’s comments: “ill advised, superficial, lacking in research, confusing and contradictory. The comments are not supported by the Bible which is the only authority of what is true or false regarding the teachings of scripture.”
    The Bahamas Christian Council's leader Rev. Dr. William Thompson had this to say: “The BCC takes exception to the overall tone of the Archdeacon’s remarks. His pronouncements were unfortunate. The Council believes that the Archdeacon Bowleg has the right and freedom like everyone else to articulate his views but in this instance, it is very surprising it is very easy for someone to interpret his remarks as overzealous, too general, insensitive and unnecessarily critical. One of the strengths of the church is the diversity of views that interconnects and interlocks at the core of our convictions and belief which is Jesus Christ.” We need say no more. Nassau Guardian photo

THE POLICE DEFEND THEMSELVES

    The former Commissioner of Police Bernard K. Bonamy appeared before the Commission investigating what happened in June 1992 when the Royal Bahamas Defence Force boarded a boat called the Lorequin in the Nassau Harbour and confiscated the drugs on board. Former U.S. Ambassador J. Richard Blankenship brought up the matter on 6th December 2002 in a joint task force meeting between Bahamian and U.S. officials. It caused a serious incident between the two countries.
    The direction that the Commission has been taking shows that the Defence Force itself is in deep trouble with its leadership and procedures. It also reflects badly on the Police Force. Former Assistant Commissioner of Police Basil Dean put the cat amongst the pigeons by saying that the entire matter was handled improperly by the police officers in charge of the incident at the time including now Deputy Commissioner John Rolle and Assistant Commissioner Reginald Ferguson (Click here for previous story).
    There were also adverse comments about the then Commissioner Mr. Bonamy. The Commissioner took the stand this week to defend his handling of the matter. He said that the U.S. Ambassador never raised the matter with him, nor did any other U.S. Ambassador in the ten years since the incident happened. That leads us to another point, which is; how this country is chasing after a shadow and spending all this money on an exercise that will only tell us what we already knew and that was that the leadership in the Defence Force was and is weak and unsatisfactory and needs to change and be changed. But you know the foreigner has to tell us that we are no good and then we accept it.

THE PUNCH LIBELS MITCHELL
The slimy down market Punch newspaper in The Bahamas published a story, which made allegations against the Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell in its newspaper of Monday 14th May. The Tribune carried a story the next day of a statement by Raynard Rigby, the Chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party in which he defended all Ministers of the government from what appeared to be a slimy disgusting campaign against government Ministers by all of the down market papers. In The Source there was a gross criminal libel against male cabinet ministers. In both the case of The Punch article and the case of The Source, action is likely to be taken that will see the matter end up in the courts.

NO LIGHTS ON THE HIGH SEAS CAUSE ACCIDENT
    The evidence during the past week at the resumed hearing of the Wreck Commission into the sea tragedy on 4th August last year when four people died during an excursion weekend trip to Cat Island was interesting. It is clear that there was negligence on the part of someone.
    The headlines included the fact that the Captain of one vessel was asleep at the time of the accident. That the MV United Star did not have any lights as it approached. That in violation of the law there were not rules and regulations procedures on board for the underlings to follow when the Captain of the United Star was not on the bridge. That the persons who were actually at the wheels of both vessels were not licensed to be at the wheels. That it appears that the collision could have been avoided if the person at the wheel of the MV Sea Hauler had simply left the boat on the course it was going, instead it appears he tried to make a sharp turn and it was that turn that caused the accident. At least that is the evidence of the unlicenced persons at the wheel of the MV United Star.
    You could say that none of this raises confidence in the people who arrange the excursions at sea, but more importantly it seems to suggest that the regulatory climate for these vessels is not as vigorous as it should have been. It will be interesting to see what the recommendations of the Wreck Commission will be. August 2004 will make one year since the accident happened.

THE ‘NINETY’ KNOWLES CASE
    The attorneys for convicted drug criminal Samuel ‘Ninety’ Knowles were in court on Friday 21st May. They were there to argue a case of judicial review against the Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell who is also responsible for extraditions and who signed a warrant on 7th April for the removal of Mr. Knowles from The Bahamas on drug charges.
    The lawyer for Mr. Knowles who is a Queens Counsel from the United Kingdom made the charge that the signing of the warrant was an attempt to shortcut a judicial process and was grossly unreasonable. Any Bahamian would know that such a characterization against Fred Mitchell is incredible.
    In the result, the Government’s lawyers undertook before the Court not to remove Mr. Knowles from the jurisdiction until such time as all the legal processes are completed, rendering the application of Mr. Knowles’ lawyers nugatory. The warrant still stands and presumably as soon as the court processes are completed, the warrant can be carried out unless there is a ruling to the contrary.
    Again, it is our view that Mr. Knowles should be extradited from this jurisdiction as soon as legally possible.

A WONDERFUL DAY IN FOX HILL

The song says: “It’s a beautiful morning. I think I’ll go outside for a while and just smile.” That must have come to mind when Ambassador Sidney Poitier and Director General of UNESCO Koichiro Matsuura showed up at the Sandilands Primary School in Fox Hill to mark the 200th year of the fight against slavery. The year 1804 was when the Haitian slaves successfully overthrew the French government marking the beginning of the end of slavery in this hemisphere. This year is the 170th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in The Bahamas.
The children of the primary school marked the occasion in song and poetry and dance. The guests were moved to tears. The representative for Fox Hill Fred Mitchell reminded his guests that the day was not a day for words but a day for symbols, simply for the children to remember that 170 years ago the slaves were freed and that we ought to remember and identify with that great act of courage and freedom. The Sandilands Primary School ground itself has been the site of a school for African peoples for 106 years. The celebration of Emancipation Day in Fox Hill has been done continuously for 170 years. We present the pictures of a beautiful day in Fox Hill.

TRIBUTES TO BASIL JOHNSON AND REG LOBOSKY

The Civil Society Consultation group at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that was up until his death headed by Reginald Lobosky, the attorney at law, paid tribute to Mr. Lobosky and to Basil Johnson, the ex R.A.F. service man who died as well earlier this year.

    The Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell paid tribute to the two men as role models for Bahamian young men. He said that he had followed the careers of both men. When Mr. Lobosky served in the Senate he was a lone voice crying out against the PLP, then at the height of its power, yet battled on alone. Mr. Mitchell said that when he became an Opposition Senator he patterned his behaviour as an Opposition senator after Mr. Lobosky. He paid tribute to Mr. Lobosky’s contributions as a Senator, a lawyer, and a part of civil society. Others paying tribute were Freddie Munnings Jr., Raymond Winder on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce and Brian Nutt of the Bahamas Employers Confederation.
    The Minister also paid tribute to his cousin Basil Johnson who saw action in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He was unique for a Black Bahamian in his time. Following his return to The Bahamas, he started work at the Electricity Department, later the Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) and was a pioneer in the trade union movement. He was founder of the Bahamas Trade Union Congress. Mr. Johnson was a fiercely proud man with strong opinions a good work ethic and a directness that unnerved many. The Minister spoke of his support for the ex servicemen and his participation in selling poppies every year to provide for the well being of the men.
    Also paying tribute to Mr. Johnson was the Rev. Matthias Munroe, an ex-serviceman himself (pictured, right). At top left, one of Mr. Basil Johnson's daughters, Felicity, is pictured at top left receiving a plaque of honour by the Civil Society from Minister Mitchell; top right, Sarah the widow Lobosky is pictured receiving a similar plaque. At left in both photographs is High Commissioner A. Leonard Archer, co-ordinator of the Civil Society consultations.

BUDGET TIME COMING
The Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Perry Christie presents the nation’s annual budget on Wednesday 26th May. The budget sets out the Government’s spending plan for the next year. It also says what the Government expects to collect in revenue. It does not affect much except that it gives an indication of the relative health of the economy and what if any expansion there is likely to be in the economy. Of key importance is what new taxes if any will be advanced by the Government. The other problem is the size of the budget deficit, which would indicate what the plans for borrowing are for the next fiscal year. If there is a large deficit, the gap between revenue and expenditure, then the Government's borrowing could well crowd out the demand for borrowing in the private sector and choke off any local expansion plans.
The Department of Statistics is about to do a labour survey and there is great worry that unemployment has risen during the last year when the figure was reported at just over 10 per cent. The hope by many is that there will be no new taxes but that productivity increase and expansion in the economy will drive increased revenue. The Kerzner project on Paradise Island is being counted on to get things going but Mr. Kerzner is constantly threatening the Government over its plans for a third phase because of the announced plans for the development of Cable Beach. We hope this year that the address does not exceed thirty minutes.

THIS WEEK WITH THE PM

In the third such event in as many weeks, Prime Minister Christie opened a new Government housing subdivision this past week, this one called Jubilee Gardens II, off Firetrail Road in the southwest of New Providence. Mr. Christie is shown with Minister of Housing Shane Gibson presenting new homeowners with young fruit trees for landscaping.

JUST ONE MORE - This lady and her children (photo at right) petitioned the Prime Minister directly for just one more new home, for them, during the official opening of Jubilee Gardens II. Mr. Christie is caught at the moment of directing his Minister of Housing on the request.
Sir Sidney Poitier and the Director General of UNESCO were both in town this week and met with Prime Minister Christie.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Response to ‘Unfolding Scandal’
A brief comment. I am a Bahamian living in the United States. I agree with your view of personal accountability in the abuse scandal, but am quite opposed to the tone that America is what’s wrong with the world today. I think many countries take their dollar, and complain. I wonder what would happen in the world if say a Russia, or Iran was the major super power. I think that with all its mistakes and “atrocities” America is still a major component of good in this world.
Spencer Rolle
We agree. The point is that there must be frankness about all of this. We must be honest with one another. The forces of good in the U.S. must rally themselves out of their torpor. We never suggested that the U.S. is the cause of all evil the world. But it can do so much more than it is now doing--Ed

KERZNER SHARES TO BE ISSUED

    Gilbert Morris who heads the Landfall centre was in the news several times this last week advocating revolution in the financial services sector. It is time that the Government finds some way to utilize this important voice on behalf of the struggle for Black empowerment in the country.
    This time we highlight his view that the Kerzner plan for building a brand new hotel in the country will not end up enriching Bahamians involved in the financial services sector because they will have no opportunity to be involved in the brokering and negotiating for the financial instruments to finance what is now planned to be a billion dollar project. We agree and the Government ought to examine how this can come about.
    Coincidentally, the Central Bank Governor has now announced that plans are at an advanced stage to allow for the purchase of shares in Kerzner International by Bahamians. We presume that this means without the penalty being applied for the purchase of stocks on overseas markets that Bahamians have to pay. Tribune photo of Dr. Gilbert Morris.

RONNIE BUTLER TO LEAVE HOSPITAL
Ronnie Butler, aged 66, the popular musician who popularized the song Going Down Burma Road and is latterly famous for the song Age Ain Nothing But A Number, was hospitalized with a blocked artery at the Doctors Hospital on Wednesday 19th May. His daughter reported to the Nassau Guardian that the blockage was removed and he was expected to be released from hospital on Saturday 22nd May. He spoke to the newspaper as well and said that he was feeling fine.

RON PINDER LAUNCHES WEBSITE

Ron Pinder, the Member of Parliament for Marathon, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Health and the youngest MP has launched a website. Mr. Pinder launched the Internet address (www.ronpinder.com) with a gala reception at Graycliff restaurant last week. Nassau's glitterati and political elites were on hand for a good time, courtesy of Mr. Pinder and the Prime Minister did the honours. BIS photo by Peter Ramsay

STAN EXPLAINS THE POSITION

    The Opposition’s Tommy Turnquest, grounded by his own political concerns, has been seeking to make hay out of the fact that the Minister of Foreign Affairs travels to various international meetings on behalf of the Bahamian people. Stan Burnside ran a cartoon that captures what we think is a proper response.
    The Minister of Foreign Affairs has censured his critics on the subject as ignorant. Presumably this includes Mr. Turnquest. We think that Mr. Turnquest is not ignorant, just seeking to make political hay out of the ignorance of others.
    A Minister of Agriculture goes to the farms to make sure that the farmers are farming, the Minister of tourism goes to where the tourists are to make sure they come here, a Minister for the police, ensures that she meets with the police. So it should follow that a Minister of Foreign Affairs travels to where his counterparts are and that they travel here to discuss the foreign affairs of their countries. Duh! Sideburns by Stan Burnside from the Nassau Guardian of Tuesday 18th May.

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THE DAY OF THE BUDGET

The Bahamas has by world standards a small economy. The revenue of the country is just about one billion dollars. The annual spending by the country is just over a billion dollars. Compare that to the United States that will run a six hundred billion dollar deficit this fiscal year. Compare that to the fact that a single man Bill Gates, a United States citizen, is said to be worth 44 billion dollars. Compare it also to the fact that the New York City School Board has an annual budget of about eight billion dollars.

So it was always a bit of a stretch for many, and we have said so in this column and its predecessor, why the Budget process of the country takes so long, seems so overly dramatic, and overly technical. And until this past week, no one seemed moved to do anything about it. The debate that surrounded it is usually drawn out, with long winded speeches in the House of Assembly and days and days upon end with endless rhetoric over spending this money that in the scheme of things in the world is not very much at all.

In retrospect, you can perhaps understand why it emerged that way. Those who can think back to the early days of the PLP's days in office might remember that many argued that the PLP would have to call upon Stafford Sands, the UBP's Minister of Finance before the change to stay on as Minister of Tourism and Minister of Finance. No one thought that the talent was there in the PLP to do it.

Carl Francis, who had been a Math teacher at one time in is life, took on the role of Finance Minister. The first budget of the PLP under its stewardship revealed a change in priorities for the country. For the first time in its history, tourism was knocked out of the first spot in budget allocation and education became the main priority of the Government. It is really doubtful that up to that time any one really paid attention to the budget of the country.

It soon became clear that the Budget was the means that the new Government used to redistribute income in favour of the Black people in the country.

The shift to education meant scholarships for young Bahamians to go away to school. Many of them are now running the country. Some of their children are coming into the system and will soon themselves be running the country. The Budget then began to loom large in the imagination of the people of the country.

The matter took on even greater importance during the term as Minister of Finance by former Deputy Prime Minister Arthur D. Hanna. Mr. Hanna is still the country’s longest serving Minister of Finance and he got to deliver his budget communication live on television and on radio. The speeches tended to be long and unfocussed, but they were used as an occasion to showcase Government policy. They became real propaganda pieces.

They also led to marathon debates. In those days, the fiscal year of the country was the calendar year. That did not change until Hubert Ingraham and his trusty hand Bill Allen became the financial stewards. In 1993, the fiscal year was changed to begin on 1st July.

But during Mr. Hanna’s time, Norman Solomon was the Leader of the Opposition and the chief spokesman on Finance for the Opposition. Sometimes he would speak for three whole Parliamentary days or more. The result was that often in the middle of the Christmas New Year’s season, Members of Parliament were up until the wee hours of the morning trying to complete the debate so it could go on to the Senate. It was quite simply ridiculous and unnecessary. But everyone wanted to speak, and it became part of the festive season.

To show how important those words spoken on the Budget over so many years were: does any one remember anything Mr. Solomon or anyone else said during those marathon debates of the 1970s and 1980s?

That changed slightly with the coming of the new fiscal year. No more late nights at Christmas but the marathon debates still continued and the late nights up to the last minute continued. No one liked to hear himself talk more than Hubert Ingraham, and he would go on and on for endless hours. The Budget communications were sometimes three or four hours long.

In Opposition the now Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell always asked the question why is a country with less than a billion dollars in revenue, that has a budget and fiscal policy that could not possibly affect anything in the world have to take three hours to read a budget communication and endless more hours debating it? He argued for limiting the time of the Communication to fifteen minutes and then the debate down to a few spokesmen from each side and end the matter and move on.

That was not to be, and typically the Minister is too far out in front of where everyone else is. But he was taking his cue from the British Government that has a short statement by the Chancellor in the fall and one in the spring and Britain is a country that actually influences world events.

There are those who argue on the other side that part of the effectiveness and legitimacy of Government comes from grand events and ceremonies and the Budget Communication just like the ceremony of the Opening of Parliament is one of those necessary things that you have to do in order to ensure that the people of the country remain engaged in the work of Government and witness its power and majesty.

Fair enough! But up to last year it was entirely too long and full of highly technical information that no one could give a hoot about and fewer still understood. The Prime Minister himself adverted in the speech to that fact and said he had deliberately acted to cut it down.

And so we come to the Budget Communication of this year. The Prime Minister spoke for about one hour and half. The communication was 48 pages; about one half of what it was last year. It could use further culling but that is a good cautious start. The House leader has said that the debate will be structured differently this year. When one reads the communication (click here) you will see that much of the detail has been left for Ministers to give during their debates. One hopes that Ministers themselves will limit themselves to one half hour each.

But the congratulations must go to the PLP for a good second budget. The point is that yet again we are running a 164 million dollars deficit but that is just about 2.9 per cent of GDP in GFS terms and it keeps our debt ratio under 40 per cent of GDP. The Government itself is aware though that the United States is running a five per cent of GDP GFS deficit, and the IMF while critical is not crawling down their backs. Barbados is up around nine per cent. The fact is that Governments have to be careful not to let statistics and artificial constructs cause social chaos.

We look forward to the reports to the nation of the Ministers and to the responses of Parliamentarians as the debate unfolds over the next few days.

Number of hits for the week ending Saturday 29th May 2004 at midnight: 54,137.

Number of hits for the month of May up to Saturday 29th May 204 at midnight: 232,576.

Number of hits for the year up to Saturday 29th May 2004 at midnight: 1,122,915.

House of Assembly photos - Top; Prime Minister Christie delivers the Budget Communication
Middle; Minister of State for Finance Senator James Smith shares a point with Minister of Transport Glenys Hanna Martin in the public gallery;
Bottom; Minister Smith elucidates to the Prime Minister after the Budget Communication
BIS / Peter Ramsay

WHAT IS IN THE BUDGET
The Prime Minister outlined a budget in which the total deficit less debt redemption of 97 million is expected to be 164 million dollars or 2.9 per cent of the GDP of the country in GFS terms. GFS means Government Finance Statistics which is the measure used by the UN to compile gross domestic product. The Prime Minister announced no new taxes but there are raises in fees coming mainly to the offshore and company’s sector. You may click here for the full address.

HUBERT’S BAD BEHAVIOUR
It is often a sad spectacle to watch the behavior of the former Prime Minister of The Bahamas Hubert Ingraham in Parliament. Mr. Ingraham came to Parliament for the reading of the Prime Minister's Budget Communication. He sat in his seat and heckled from the seat interrupting the now Prime Minister several times. It was petulant and childish. Then when he had been put in his place, Mr. Ingraham simply gathered up his belongings in the middle of the address and left the precincts of the House. It is really time for this man to retire. The contempt of Parliament is certainly unbecoming.

THE BAPTIST CONVENTION

    Rev. Dr. William H. Thompson, the President of the Bahamas Baptist Missionary and Education Convention, the umbrella group for all Baptists in The Bahamas, opened its annual convention on Monday 24th May 2004 in the presence of the Governor General Dame Ivy Dumont, the Prime Minister Perry Christie and half the Cabinet. Dr. William Thompson, the President gave a fiery address that was a review of all of the events of public life in which the church had an interest. He praised the Ministers of Immigration Vincent Peet and Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell for the manner in which the crisis with Haitian immigration was being handled. But he called for the regularization of the children of Haitians born in The Bahamas so that they might get citizenship of the country. That seems sensible to us.
    The President also made a comment about the coming of a cruise to The Bahamas of gay men and women in July of this year. It has caused much commentary in The Bahamas largely from religious denominations that believe that the ship should not be allowed to come to The Bahamas. The President reiterated his church’s opposition to homosexuality, and quoted from what he called their constitution, the Bible. He said that he did not need to comment directly on the coming of the ship but simply refer the press to the Bible, which clearly said that homosexuality was wrong, and that the church could not support it.
    Dr. Thompson is also the head of the Bahamas Christian Council, and he led a group of clergymen to meet with Prime Minister Perry Christie. According to a statement issued by that church body after their meeting with Prime Minister Christie on Thursday 27th May “As guests of our country visitors must either conform to and comply with our Christian standards or go elsewhere.”
    One remembers the story of the staff of Half Moon Cay, aka Little San Salvador. They decided to go on strike because they said that for moral reasons they could not serve gay men and women who came on a cruise to the island. All of them lost their jobs! At first they seemed prepared to accept the sacrifice. Six weeks later they were in the paper crying for their jobs back. One of them said that he was wrong and realized that The Bahamas is in the service business and could not engage in discrimination. Unfortunately, the job was gone. A hard lesson! Rev. Dr. Thompson is pictured in this file photo.

THE GAY SHIP’S ACOMING

    Notwithstanding the comments from the church, the so called gay cruise ship is still coming to The Bahamas. This cruise to The Bahamas, which should be coming in July, has been advertised for months. One of the American headliners coming on what is being billed as a gay family cruise is Rosie O’Donnell (pictured), the American entertainer who herself is lesbian.
    The idea is said to be for persons who are gay to be able to come on a vacation with their families. With gay marriages now becoming legal in at least one state in the United States and civil unions between persons of the same gender being accepted as well, this would seem to be a growing market for travelers.
    The Bahamas faced this issue under former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham who issued statements saying that the government of The Bahamas does not interfere with the personal choices of its visitors once they obey the laws of The Bahamas. Homosexual conduct is not illegal in The Bahamas between consenting adults. The Ministry of Tourism under now Minister Obie Wilchcombe issued a similar statement.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER IN MEXICO
    Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell was in Guadalajara, Mexico this week for the summit of Latin America and the Caribbean with the countries of the European Union (E.U.) 27th May to 29th May. The Leaders agreed on a lengthy declaration that saw common understanding on the need to promote policies that create social cohesion. There was also a renewed commitment to multilateralism.
    The Cuban Foreign Minister showed up and tried to derail the conference by seeking to have inserted in one paragraph of the document a denunciation of the United States. When the E.U. failed to agree, the Cubans then angrily said the whole paragraph should be deleted. They filed a protest at the end of the meeting decrying the failure. That left no paragraph condemning the unilateral actions by the U.S. even though the U.S. was never called by name. Then Cuba said it was the fault of the E.U. that caused the whole matter to collapse. Not so. False premise. The Cubans are good at rage. They had won a victory but didn’t know it.
    There is no doubt that the U.S. is wrong in what it is doing to Cuba but the Cubans don’t make it easy for their friends to support them when they themselves snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

A WORD OF CAUTION ON SUMMITRY

    In the heady world of summitry, you could very well get carried far away from the realities of life. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell is in a constant battle to justify his mission for The Bahamas. It all looks like fun and games and travel. No one recognizes the hard slog and inconvenience. But it is a heady world, where the doors open, the airports offer the best, the authorities are there waiting for you and the roads are all clear to allow you to travel without let or hindrance.
    The summitry gives an opportunity to the Heads and their Ministers to meet each other on a human level and actually see if they can work out in a general and specific way some policies that will actually help their people. Each country has its own agenda. The Bahamas is simply trying to get its name known on the world stage, as more than a tourist country, so that policies by the developed world don’t abruptly injure our economy. The idea is to get known by more than the United States.
    The third summit of Latin American and the Caribbean with the European Union provided an opportunity for the countries of the Caribbean to meet the new members of the European Union. In The Bahamas’ case, we signed formal diplomatic relations with the Republic of Slovakia, one half of the old Czechoslovakia. There were detailed meetings with Mexico. There was an introduction to the elusive French who have been aggressively bashing The Bahamas and other financial services sector nations.
    The Cubans were there with their usual aggression hoping to get a statement that would bash the United States. No such statement emerged. In a tactical error, the Cubans insisted on language, just two words, that the European Union could not accept. The backchat says that the EU countries particularly the new ones and Britain were extremely nervous about any paragraph that would seem to be bashing the United States. The argument was that the U.S. was not there at the table and so there was a fundamental unfairness to that. That was just a patch up excuse for a plain old fear of the United States and what it would do to any country that it perceived in its back yard to be bashing it.
    As for the Cubans they had a point that you had to condemn unilateral action and also the fact that the Helms Burton law and its extraterritorial affect is simply outrageous and against international law and comity. Now the Issas of Jamaica who own Superclubs Breezes are going to lose their visas because acting under the lex situs (law of the site of the land), they were able to invest in properties in Cuba. The US says that because those properties were once owned by U.S. citizens and confiscated by the Cuban Government, then the persons who invest are to be penalized by the withdrawal of their visas. Knowing the kind of people we deal with in the U.S. today, no one wants to cross that bridge. And so no paragraph in the declaration.
    But while the U.S. was not there in the flesh, there is no doubt that their political and intelligence operatives were skulking around in the shadows, trying to influence the result. In the 19th century then US President James Munroe enunciated the Munroe doctrine that the U.S. saw this whole hemisphere as its own backyard and that no interference by the old world powers would be countenanced. Of course the E.U. is in fact the old world powers and they were right in the back yard of the U.S. in Guadalajara, Mexico having a big party and discussion that was really aimed at creating a second sphere of influence to rival U.S. power in the world. But you can’t poke the lion in the eye. Everyone wants to tread carefully.
    Countries like The Bahamas and the Caribbean countries are nonplussed at these forums at how cautious the developed countries are about their reactions to the U.S. and why the U.S. looks so strangely at Caribbean leaders who seem to have so much mouth, starting of course with Cuba that has been poking the eye of the lion for over forty years. Caribbean leaders simply say what they like. But they suffer for it, benign neglect and if they get too far out of hand like Michael Manley and the boys in the 1970s, they get removed from power. Well that’s the cold hard reality of it all.
    So while one gets a good rush from summitry, and to summit is better than to fight, let us be realistic and keep our feet firmly planted to the ground. The Mexican President put on a good show in Guadalajara last week but at the end of the day, protesters embarrassed him by battling in the streets with the police and injuring 20 of them before the night was over. BBC photo of riots in Guadalajara.

THE SHAME! THE SHAME!

When Joseph Conrad wrote the Heart of Darkness, penning the words repeated in the film Apocalypse Now: “The Horror! The Horror! ”, he could not have been thinking about The Bahamas in 2004. But we adapt it slightly and write: “The shame! The shame!” On television in front of the world and in the newspapers of the world were pictures of Bahamian young men lying down in handcuffs on the road. All of the patient work that is being done by the Government and law abiding citizens to clean up the country’s image goes down the drain in one shot of those young men. The Bahamas is simply a country of drug traffickers, it would seem to say.
In a joint U.S Bahamian operation that tracked their fast boat from Grand Bahama to Florida six men were interdicted with 1000 kilogrammes of cocaine street value 100 million dollars. Five of the men were Bahamian from Bimini and Grand Bahama. It only goes to show that all of the preaching that is done from public platforms about this stuff has very little impact. Already some 40 or more of Bimini's young male population are involved in drug trafficking and are locked up in Miami jails. There are now five more. These five obviously didn’t learn any lessons from the others. All we say again is: “The shame! The shame!” The six are Nigel Gray, Davero Rolle 21, Neno Cooper 25, Santino Whylly 28 and Teko Small 19.

BAIL GRANTED! BAIL REJECTED!

Jeanne Thompson, the Justice of the Supreme Court, ruled this week that Austin Knowles ($200,000) and his co-defendants Edison Watson, Nathaniel Knowles, Shawn Bruey and Ian Bethel ($100,000) should be released on bail because inter alia, the conditions in the prison constitute cruel and inhumane conditions. The decision was made on Tuesday 25th May. The Crown was livid. The euphoria of the defendants short lived. The crown moved immediately to appeal the decision of the Court of Appeal, which issued a stay of the matter in short shrift. It is true of course that the conditions in that prison should in any system constitute cruel and inhumane punishment but the Courts in The Bahamas have consistently ruled that despite the bad conditions they do not cross the constitutional threshold. Justice Thompson thinks otherwise, and we agree with her.

MAGISTRATE DIES

Acting Magistrate Clyde Newton aged 43 died suddenly in Nassau on Monday 24th May. It is believed that he suffered a heart attack. Mr. Newton, described by friends as an Andros man through and through, was also said to be a pleasant man who will be missed by all. Mr. Newton is a nephew of former Minister of the Government Darrell Rolle.

BAY STREET REDEVELOPMENT

We believe that it is the Bible that predicts that one day the lion will lay down with the lamb. Well, it wasn’t quite that but the picture was somewhat remarkable; there was the former Leader of the Opposition Norman Solomon, the very symbol of Bay Street and old money in Nassau sitting down with Perry Christie, the heir to Lynden Pindling at a luncheon to talk about the redevelopment of Bay Street. Under Mr. Christie’s leadership a joint effort by the Office of the Prime Minister, the Nassau Economic Development Commission and the Hotel Corporation of The Bahamas are working toward the redevelopment of Bay Street. The Prime Minister was able to announce that Sol Kerzner’s Atlantis has agreed to put some one million dollars toward the project. Bay Street has definitely seen better days. It is in need of refurbishment and upgrading. We think that it is overdue and support this worthy effort. BIS photo - Peter Ramsay

COMMISSION ENDS ITS WORKS
    The Commission of Inquiry headed by the former Justice Stanley Moore is about to commence the work of writing its report. The last of the hearings took place during the last week. The Commission was called as a result of an allegation made by former Ambassador to The Bahamas from the United States J. Richard Blankenship.
    On 6th December 2002, Mr. Blankenship alleged that there had been political interference in the conduct of an investigation into a drug bust by the Royal Bahamas Defence Force that caused the investigation to be flubbed. That certainly was not supported by the evidence in the Commission but plenty else came out. One such thing was that the Defence Force and the Police Force have deeply flawed decision making processes. It also appears that there were deep divisions between the leadership of both forces.
    It is not clear whether or not the state of the evidence is such that any conclusive finding can be made about what happened at the time in June 1992 to the drugs and whether if at all the drugs actually disappeared. Some have testified that there were indeed missing drugs, others say that there was a miscount. Whatever the case, there should be recommendations made about what to do to correct what is obviously the leadership problem in both forces. We await the outcome. The other Commissioners are Anglican Archbishop Drexel Gomez and former Deputy Commissioner of Police Sir Albert Miller.

BRADLEY ROBERTS ANSWERS THE PROPAGANDA

    We stand with Bradley Roberts in his response to the nasty filth that was printed in The Source, a down market paper that is to the left of the nasty enough Punch newspaper. The Source is a weekly tabloid started by the disgruntled Mohammed Harajchi when he could not get what he thought he had been promised but had not been promised by the PLP. The paper has been used to spread the most appalling filth against Ministers of the Government. One such story was one that indicated a relationship with a female who operates a cellular phone business that the paper says is a friend of Bradley Roberts the MP. The reporter for the paper questioned Mr. Roberts about it and he gave her a few choice words. The newspaper then ran a story in its press under the headline: BIG BRAD GOES MAD. Here is what Mr. Roberts said that he said in his own words as reported to the Nassau Guardian on Tuesday 5th May 2004:
    “I became incensed over the ill manner of the reporter’s approach and walked away after about 20 seconds. The inference by the reporter was sick and uncouth. I have turned the matter over to the police.
    “I never assaulted the reporter, but let her know in no uncertain terms what I thought of her actions. Here is what I said.
    “Do you go around asking people their private personal business? What concern is that of your newspaper or any Bahamian as to who goes with who? I told her that was not her business. I asked her what would she think of me if I asked her who she was going with, who her ma going with, who her pa going with. I told her I wouldn’t waste my breath to answer her.
    “Assaulted who? My driver was standing right there and a police officer. Assaulted who? Anyway I passed the matter on to the police for them to deal with it. At that point I became quite annoyed and I walked away.
    “Tell them to get all the attorneys in the world they want to get. You could imagine someone being so insulting and uncouth. I don’t play with children my dear!”

2^nd May, 2004 *Welcome to bahamasuncensored.com* *How do you do today? It's great to have you as a reader. We have the most incisive political news about and from The Bahamas!* *Please tell all your friends about us.*
BAHAMIAN DIES IN IRAQ...	WHY HAVE TIES WITH SOUTH AFRICA?...
THE DEFENCE FORCE AND CORRUPTION...	A NEW CHRISTIAN COUNCIL PRESIDENT...
RIGBY SPEAKS OUT ABOUT THE FNM...	GIOVANNI STUART...
BLACK TUESDAY PASSES QUIETLY...	DEVARD DARLING GETS A CONTRACT...
TRAFFIC ACCIDENT CLAIMS OTHER LIVES...	MISS FOX HILL EMANCIPATION DAY...
BATELCO...	WATER AND SEWERAGE...
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR...	THE FOUNDATIONS BILL - A NEW PRODUCT...
THE AMERICANS CANCEL...	THIS WEEK WITH THE PM...





The Official Site of the Progressive Liberal Party...	The Official Site of the Free National Movement...
PLPs On The Web...	Interesting Places...
Bradley Roberts / PLP Grants Town	Bahamas Government Website
Neville Wisdom / PLP Delaporte	Reg & Kit's Bahamas Links
Alfred Sears / PLP Fort Charlotte	Bahamians On The Web
Melanie Griffin / PLP Yamacraw	Bahamian Cycling News
John Carey / PLP Carmichael	FredMitchellUncensored.Com ARCHIVES...
Grand Bahama PLP

9^th May, 2004 *Welcome to bahamasuncensored.com* *How do you do today? It's great to have you as a reader. We have the most incisive political news about and from The Bahamas!* *Please tell all your friends about us.*
WHEN SOLDIERS GET WEARY...	DARLING GETS HIS DAY IN THE HOUSE...
US/HAITI/CARICOM...	THE CANADIANS COME CALLING...
A NEW ARCHBISHOP...	NO CABINET RESHUFFLE...
THE PRIORITY WATCHLIST AND COPYRIGHT LAWS...	INGRAHAM COMING BACK...
SHANE’S HOUSING RECORD...	FALLOUT IN THE DEFENCE FORCE...
BASIL DEAN’S BOMBSHELL...	PAT BAIN’S ADVICE ON LNG...
FRED MITCHELL’S ANNIVERSARY IN FOX HILL...	STUART AND SMITH BACK ON THE JOB...
TRANSITIONS...	THIS WEEK WITH THE PM...





The Official Site of the Progressive Liberal Party...	The Official Site of the Free National Movement...
PLPs On The Web...	Interesting Places...
Bradley Roberts / PLP Grants Town	Bahamas Government Website
Neville Wisdom / PLP Delaporte	Reg & Kit's Bahamas Links
Alfred Sears / PLP Fort Charlotte	Bahamians On The Web
Melanie Griffin / PLP Yamacraw	Bahamian Cycling News
John Carey / PLP Carmichael	FredMitchellUncensored.Com ARCHIVES...
Grand Bahama PLP

16^th May, 2004 *Welcome to bahamasuncensored.com* *How do you do today? It's great to have you as a reader. We have the most incisive political news about and from The Bahamas!* *Please tell all your friends about us.*
TOMMY SAYS HE’S NOT AFRAID...	A NEW LABOUR SURVEY TO BE DONE...
HEALTH INSURANCE REPORT IS IN...	DEFENCE FORCE GETS ONE BLOW AFTER THE NEXT...
ARTHUR FOULKES RESPONDS TO THE NASSAU INSTITUTE...	COMMONWEALTH BANK’S ACQUISITION...
‘NINETY’ PETITIONS THE QUEEN...	THE STORY OF THE MONTAGU RAMP...
AN ANGLICAN PRIEST ATTACKS ‘CULTS’...	CARL BETHEL: I WILL RUN...
THE FOREIGN MINISTER IN THE UK...	SHANE SHINES AGAIN...
“CONTINUITY & WHOLESOMENESS” IN QUEEN’S HONOUREES...	PLP ON ATLANTIS & NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE REPORT...
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR...	THE DROUGHT BREAKS?
BAHAMIAN US SOLDIER BURIED...	THIS WEEK WITH THE PM...




The Official Site of the Progressive Liberal Party...	The Official Site of the Free National Movement...
PLPs On The Web...	Interesting Places...
Bradley Roberts / PLP Grants Town	Bahamas Government Website
Neville Wisdom / PLP Delaporte	Reg & Kit's Bahamas Links
Alfred Sears / PLP Fort Charlotte	Bahamians On The Web
Melanie Griffin / PLP Yamacraw	Bahamian Cycling News
John Carey / PLP Carmichael	FredMitchellUncensored.Com ARCHIVES...
Grand Bahama PLP

23^rd May, 2004 *Welcome to bahamasuncensored.com* *How do you do today? It's great to have you as a reader. We have the most incisive political news about and from The Bahamas!* *Please tell all your friends about us.*
ARCHBISHOP GOMEZ’S DAMAGE CONTROL...	THE POLICE DEFEND THEMSELVES...
THE PUNCH LIBELS MITCHELL...	NO LIGHTS ON THE HIGH SEAS CAUSE ACCIDENT...
THE ‘NINETY’ KNOWLES CASE...	A WONDERFUL DAY IN FOX HILL...
TRIBUTES TO BASIL JOHNSON AND REG LOBOSKY...	BUDGET TIME COMING...
THIS WEEK WITH THE PM...	LETTERS TO THE EDITOR...
KERZNER SHARES TO BE ISSUED...	RONNIE BUTLER TO LEAVE HOSPITAL...
RON PINDER LAUNCHES WEBSITE...	STAN EXPLAINS THE POSITION...






The Official Site of the Progressive Liberal Party...	The Official Site of the Free National Movement...
PLPs On The Web...	Interesting Places...
Bradley Roberts / PLP Grants Town	Bahamas Government Website
Neville Wisdom / PLP Delaporte	Reg & Kit's Bahamas Links
Alfred Sears / PLP Fort Charlotte	Bahamians On The Web
Melanie Griffin / PLP Yamacraw	Bahamian Cycling News
John Carey / PLP Carmichael	FredMitchellUncensored.Com ARCHIVES...
Grand Bahama PLP

30^th May, 2004 *Welcome to bahamasuncensored.com* *How do you do today? It's great to have you as a reader. We have the most incisive political news about and from The Bahamas!* *Please tell all your friends about us.*
WHAT IS IN THE BUDGET...	HUBERT’S BAD BEHAVIOUR...
THE BAPTIST CONVENTION...	THE GAY SHIP’S ACOMING...
FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER IN MEXICO...	A WORD OF CAUTION ON SUMMITRY...
THE SHAME! THE SHAME!...	BAIL GRANTED! BAIL REJECTED!...
MAGISTRATE DIES...	BAY STREET REDEVELOPMENT...
COMMISSION ENDS ITS WORKS...	BRADLEY ROBERTS ANSWERS THE PROPAGANDA...







The Official Site of the Progressive Liberal Party...	The Official Site of the Free National Movement...
PLPs On The Web...	Interesting Places...
Bradley Roberts / PLP Grants Town	Bahamas Government Website
Neville Wisdom / PLP Delaporte	Reg & Kit's Bahamas Links
Alfred Sears / PLP Fort Charlotte	Bahamians On The Web
Melanie Griffin / PLP Yamacraw	Bahamian Cycling News
John Carey / PLP Carmichael	FredMitchellUncensored.Com ARCHIVES...
Grand Bahama PLP

Compiled, edited and constructed by Russell Dames Updated every Sunday at 2 p.m.

Volume 2 © BahamasUncensored.Com

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