Bran: I would have asked Bostwick to step down

Branville McCartney

As of Wednesday, May 21, 2014

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

LEADER of the Democratic National Alliance (DNA) Branville McCartney said yesterday if Senator John Bostwick were a member of his party he would have been asked to “step down immediately” because of the recent criminal charge brought against him.

Mr Bostwick was charged in the Magistrate’s Court on Monday with possession of ammunition and later released on $9,000 bail. He has maintained his innocence and has vowed to “fight the charges”.

Free National Movement (FNM) Leader Dr Hubert Minnis told The Tribune on Monday that the party has not made a decision on whether Mr Bostwick will be asked to resign from his post in the Senate. He said the fate of Mr Bostwick’s political career has not yet been decided as the party is giving the Senator and his family some time to “work through this stress”.

However, Mr McCartney said Dr Minnis needs to make a decision “sooner rather than later.”

“Everyone is innocent until proven guilty and it is not a good position to be in,” Mr McCartney said. “I do feel for his family and his son. We are waiting to see what the leader of the opposition will do in these circumstances.

“I can’t say what they are going to do because it is an internal matter, but Dr Minnis needs to make a decision on the matter soon. If it were me in those circumstances, I would ask him to step down. He is not in a position to stay (on) as a Senator while this is going on.”

Earlier this week a senior FNM official told The Tribune that it is “more than likely” that Mr Bostwick will be asked to step down.

“Everyone is expecting him to resign, it would be the honourable thing to do,” said the FNM, who did not want to be named.

“We do not want to have to ask him to do so, but if he doesn’t it is more than likely that he will be asked to step down.”

According to the Constitution, a person cannot serve in the Senate if they are serving a sentence of imprisonment exceeding 12 months or is under such a sentence of imprisonment, the execution of which has been suspended.

proudloudandfnm 9 years, 11 months ago

Um Branville?

Friday, January 27, 2012

Branville McCartney - Democratic National Alliance (DNA) leader's gross error in judgement in relations to his party’s MICAL candidate, Delano Munroe ...who is facing a criminal charge... ...stealing by reason of employment...

242orgetslu 9 years, 11 months ago

                     PLEASE READ AND PASS ON!
  This is the link where the full story is:http://si.com/vault/article/magazine/...">http://si.com/vault/article/magazine/...

Across the inky-blue Gulf Stream from Florida, near the sheer edge of the Great Bahama Bank, a new island is emerging from the sea. Although it bears the appealing name Ocean Cay, this new island is not, and never will be, a palm-fringed paradise of the sort the Bahamian government promotes in travel ads. No brace of love doves would ever choose Ocean Cay for a honeymoon; no beauty in a brief bikini would waste her sweetness on such desert air. Of all the 3,000 islands and islets and cays in the Bahamas, Ocean Cay is the least lovely. It is a flat, roughly rectangular island which, when completed, will be 200 acres and will resemble a barren swatch of the Sahara. Ocean Cay does not need allure. It is being dredged up from the seabed by the Dillingham Corporation of Hawaii for an explicit purpose that will surely repel more tourists than it will attract. In simplest terms, Ocean Cay is a big sandpile on which the Dillingham Corporation will pile more sand that it will subsequently sell on the U.S. mainland. The sand that Dillingham is dredging is a specific form of calcium carbonate called aragonite, which is used primarily in the manufacture of cement and as a soil neutralizer. For the past 5,000 years or so, with the flood of the tide, waters from the deep have moved over the Bahamian shallows, usually warming them in the process so that some of the calcium carbonate in solution precipitated out. As a consequence, today along edges of the Great Bahama Bank there are broad drifts, long bars and curving barchans of pure aragonite. Limestone, the prime source of calcium carbonate, must be quarried, crushed and recrushed, and in some instances refined before it can be utilized. By contrast, the aragonite of the Bahamian shallows is loose and shifty stuff, easily sucked up by a hydraulic dredge from a depth of one or two fathoms. The largest granules in the Bahamian drifts are little more than a millimeter in diameter. Because of its fineness and purity, the Bahamian aragonite can be used, agriculturally or industrially, without much fuss and bother. It is a unique endowment. There are similar aragonite drifts scattered here and there in the warm shallows of the world, but nowhere as abundantly as in the Bahamas. In exchange for royalties, the Dillingham Corporation has exclusive rights in four Bahamian areas totaling 8,235 square miles. In these areas there are about four billion cubic yards—roughly 7.5 billion long tons—of aragonite. At rock-bottom price the whole deposit is worth more than $15 billion. An experienced dredging company like Dillingham should be able to suck up 10 million tons a year, which will net the Bahamian government an annual royalty of about $600,000.