THE SHANE GIBSON CASE
The police dragged Shane Gibson to court in hand cuffs even though he had an injured leg when he was first charged.
The second of four politically inspired cases by the Free National Movement Government has begun. Last week a jury was empaneled. This time the FNM is persecuting Shane Gibson in the courts. Mr. Gibson is the former Minister for the Hurricane Relief effort under the PLP Government. This is victor’s justice. The FNM is seeking to fulfil the narrative that they have that the PLP is corrupt. So shortly after the general election, they arranged the arrest of a number of PLP politicians and brought them before the courts.
The names are Frank Smith, Shane Gibson, Kenred Dorsett and Michelle Reckly.
Bahamians we hope have a sense of fairness. We will see whether or not that sense of fairness affects the outcome of this present case.
The whole affair is tragic.
Mr. Gibson is represented by the Attorney from Jamaica K.D. Knight. This is the same attorney who successfully defended Frank Smith. The Government is again wasting public monies by bringing in an English Q C to prosecute the case. The FNM refuses to tell us how much they are paying this Q C to deal with this case.
The general election took place over two years ago. The FNM is still running on about what the PLP did and did not do. This case is designed to form part of that narrative.
At its end, we trust that the defendant will consider suing the prosecution for bringing this case.
Many of the applications in connection with it have taken place in secret. That was wrong.
A previous Judge ordered the media of The Bahamas not to report anything about the case prior to it coming to this state. She was wrong. The media did nothing to protest the matter. They who argued against secrecy when the PLP was in power were silent in the face of the ruling of the Judge. She was the same Judge who tried to injunct the Parliament from discussing a matter in a shocking ruling that was also wrong in law.
The PLP should commit itself to a public inquiry about how these matters came to court and what happened here with the expenditure of public monies for a political purposes.
Number of hits for the week ending Saturday, 28th September, 2019 up to midnight: 148,589
Number of hits for the month of September up to Saturday, 28th September, 2019 up to midnight: 635,590
Number of hits for the year 2019 up to Saturday, 28th September, 2019 up to midnight: 7,116,723