The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

There is a lot of talk about our public disclosure law and why it is being ignored by so many members of parliament, so let me remind the public about what happened and how we got to this point.

After the PLP Government, under the leadership of Sir Lynden Pindling, passed the Public Disclosure Act members of parliament were quite keen to get their declarations done on time each year.

Those who were most particular were members of the Opposition and some PLP members who felt that Sir Lynden was gunning for them. They also felt that this was the real reason behind the contract provision in the Constitution, so Sir Lynden could have a stick to beat them with.

Then something happened. The biggest scandal ever to rock this country blew up when NBC Television carried a story about drug corruption in the Bahamas. A Commission of Inquiry was appointed to look into the allegations.

Inspector Frank Richter, a British police officer, was engaged to look into the bank accounts and finances of Prime Minister Pindling, which he did. What he found shocked the nation along with all the other shocks of that dark period. He found that Sir Lynden over a particular period had spent eight times his salary!

He found that Sir Lynden’s bank accounts had all sorts of deposits from various sources other than his salary. When Sir Lynden was questioned about them at the Commission of Inquiry, the explanations he gave caused people to laugh out loud.

For instance, one deposit to Sir Lynden’s bank account was $16,000 in one hundred US dollar bills. When asked about this, Sir Lynden said his constituents gave it to him! Sir Lynden represented a South Andros constituency and everybody knew that that kind of money could not come from frying fritters and catching crabs. So people squawked with laughter.

That’s why Bishop Gomez, who was one of the members of the Commission of Inquiry, wrote that he could not say that none of the money in Sir Lynden’s bank account came from drug sources, or words to that effect.

But people realised that the Disclosure Commission which was supposed to examine MPs’ disclosures every year, did not do its job when it came to Sir Lynden. One of the members resigned, apparently out of protest. And that was when other MPs had nothing but contempt for the disclosure process, one of the many things that the PLP has abused, discredited and destroyed in this country.

FORMER MP

Nassau,

June 16, 2014.