By LAMECH JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
ljohnson@tribunemedia.net
“WHERE has the Prime Minister been all this time?” was the question the Free National Movement asked after the nation’s chief scrapped a cabinet meeting initially focused on BTC to address escalating crime.
Shock, surprise and amazement were some of the words FNM Chairman Darren Cash used to describe the reactions to Prime Minister Perry Christie, days after the brutal murders at Freedom Park, Fox Hill, “shifting his cabinet’s agenda from BTC/C&W to discuss the issue of crime”.
“The Free National Movement is compelled to ask the question, ‘Where has the Prime Minister been all this time?’” Mr Cash asked in an interview with The Tribune yesterday.
“In the aftermath of the Fox Hill massacre, the decision by Prime Minister Christie to huddle with his cabinet is not unreasonable; it makes sense and is to be expected. However, what has evoked reactions of shock and bewilderment is the clear indication that it had to take yet another tragic incident, such as the brutal shooting and murders in Fox Hill for the Prime Minister to be shocked into action.”
“We have a News flash for the Prime Minister; the Bahamian people have been here all along, and one would have thought that the Cabinet would have had a reality check like everyone else a long time ago. The Bahamian people would have expected the Cabinet to have huddled around the Deputy Prime Minister, then acting as PM after he and the state were held hostage, robbed and terrorized by gun welding thugs.”
On December 30, 2013, three days after four persons were shot and killed one week ago at Freedom Park while awaiting Junkanoo results, Mr Christie held a cabinet meeting to discuss its crime fighting strategies before making them public to assure Bahamians that the government will not compromise itself in an effort to relentlessly fight the scourge of crime.
Among the initiatives revealed were: the formation of a police division specifically aimed at organised gangs, re-introduction of the 12-hour shift, legislative intervention to impose additional restrictions on a judge’s ability to grant bail in offences involving crimes of violence and the use of firearms and to complete refurbishment of additional criminal courts so that as many as 10 criminal courts will be able to hear criminal cases simultaneously.
The cabinet meeting was initially scheduled to formalise a new deal with Cable and Wireless, the current majority owner of BTC. The Prime Minister said, however, that “nothing is more fundamental” than keeping Bahamians safe.
In response to this, Mr Cash noted that while most unfortunate and tragic, “last week’s drive by shooting in Fox Hill is not the first or the second or the third horrific drive by shooting in New Providence during 2013.”
“The apparent lack of reaction by the Prime Minister to previous deadly drive by gangland shootings and the daylight armed home invasion and robbery of his DPM, acting as PM, suggested an unsettling level of complacency on the part of the Prime Minister and gave Bahamians the sense that he believed that he and his Ministers of National Security had matters well under control.
“The Bahamian people did not share the Prime Minister’s apparent confidence. We still do not. As the Leader of the Opposition, Hubert Minnis, said immediately after the PM’s recent ‘press conference,’ he once again said little to inspire confidence that his government would get this critical issue well in hand,” Mr Cash concluded.
Comments
jackbnimble 10 years, 3 months ago
You know what gets me about the crime issue? The fact that we have a Deputy Prime Minister who was robbed at gun point while acting as Prime Minister and what appeared to be his casual brushing aside of the matter. Mr. Davis is a trained attorney, who specializes in criminal law. He has made his living representing persons accused of every form of crime and no doubt specialises (as most attorneys do) in finding loopholes in the law to get them off. He knows where the loopholes are and should be leading the charges (in my humble view) as the country's second-in-command to amend the releveant laws to fix our crime problems.
You know, we can call the talk shows and pen letters to the paper until we are blue in the face. In my mind, the Government knows what to do. I just question if they have the fortitude to do it. From all accounts, it does not appear that they do.
I cannot understand, for the life of me, how a country's citizens can constantly call for capital punishment, and make repeated suggestions to fix the law and our country's leaders, whom the majority of us elected and who are supposed to be working for us, continue to ignore our cries. How much more bloodshed do we need? How many more innocent people need to die before our Government wakes up?
We hear them in Parliament passing or amending all sort of frivilous Acts, yet the foremost things that plague this country - crime, immigration, the economy - are nowhere at the top of the agenda some two years after election and it really should have been the focus from day one.
I GEE!!
realfreethinker 10 years, 3 months ago
Jack be nimble I agree with your comments could not have said it better. For correction purposes,this is a minority elected government.
Emac 10 years, 3 months ago
minority of idiots you mean. I too concur with Jackbnimble. Hit the nail on the head. I for one have no hopes for future of this country. We do not have a leader. It is like living in a jungle without any rules.
TalRussell 10 years, 3 months ago
Not sure if I get Comrade Darron's point, like he ever has a serious one to make, but while I can't affirm the whereabouts of PM Christie on crime since 2012, I can reliably inform the red shirts chairman that I do know for a proven fact, that his Papa Hubert's terrible performance on corrective crime measures did result in his exile of forced resettlement back to Copper's Town. How forced was it? You know I'm dying tell you. Not long after Hubert's resettlement, the good people of Cooper's Town got together as a majority to reject his "love offering" candidate to replace him in the House of Assembly. Just the facts are stated herein. No need make stuff up. Right, Chairman Darron?
jackflash 10 years, 3 months ago
HEY TAL,
NO NEED TO MAKE THIS STUFF EITHER.
Where did Ping get all those millions from and how Lady Ping still got plenty millions.
I think that she should dip into that Swiss Bank account and spread some of them hard earned millions around to us fellow comrade Bahamalanders!
What you say Comrade Tal??
No need to make this stuff up.
We are paying the price for Ping & Co. supporting the DRUG TRADE in the 70s/80s.
That is where this problem started, not with some fisherman from Coopers Town..
realfreethinker 10 years, 3 months ago
Good point jackflash
jackflash 10 years, 3 months ago
Tell me,
Is this bunch of crooks any better?
ohdrap4 10 years, 3 months ago
he was kept in the wilderness by papa.
papa's last endorsement of darren was sometime in 2002.
TalRussell 10 years, 3 months ago
Comrades didn't then PM Hubert's efforts from 2007 to 2012 at overshadowing then opposition leader Perry with the ghosts past of a long-ago deceased Pindling, not cost him the 2012 General Election? Hubert was sent into forced resettlement to Cooper's Town, where the ghosts of Pindling must be haunting the living hell out him. Don't fool yourself to this day aiin't nothing more Minnis and Loretta does fear more than the ghost of Pindling. To this day Hubert sleeps with he socks on, against Pindling ghost toe pulling prevention. Comrades I know all these things are the truth.
concernedcitizen 10 years, 3 months ago
@TALS You got OCD going to bed
jackflash 10 years, 3 months ago
What about the drug money TAL.
We Bahamalanders want our cut!
Don't make us go take it now, we want it spoon fed to us.
Drug money can't done!!
TalRussell 10 years, 3 months ago
The fat man in the red suit lives on. Comrades we do have crime setbacks which should have been better addressed by both PM's Christie and Hubert but for the Tribune's Christmas Message Editorial to have scoffed at the fat man in the red suit, to not be calling on Bahamalad's little children this past Christmas Eve, is about as big of laughing stock around the world as you could have made we Bahamaland. But thank God the world's social media network missed out on reading their advice for readers to 'cancel the fat man in the red suit editorial.' What did Santa and his reindeer ever do them journalist Grinch's upstairs at Shirley and Deveaux, to make them call for such an extreme attack on Christmas. All the fat man in the red suit wanted to do on Christmas Eve was to bring Joy into the hearts of our little Bahamalander's.
TalRussell 10 years, 3 months ago
Is there any wonder that a recent census report shows that more young Bahamalanders want to believe they are descended from monkeys, than Adam and Eve? Our courts send our citizens to jail for possession of pot, while the government license some foreigner connected company to set up for the the manufacturing and sales of them death sentence cigarettes in our Bahamaland. Comrades, if that is not ass think'in backwards justice, then what is? What's next, the government imposing protective taxes to protect local cigarette manufacturing. But not a damn word coming from the pulpits of them loud mouthed , nearer too they Collection Plates, Preacherman's. Are they also Sunday morning preaching that the hand of God is in cigarettes and numbers?
Amen!
242 10 years, 3 months ago
Didn't they say they had a plan against crime that they will implement from Day 1?.
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