The former Minister of Housing and Social Development, Algernon Allen has calling for the immediate replacement of the Minister of National Security, Cynthia Pratt. But Progressive Liberal Party officials immediately dismissed his suggestion as irresponsible and even sexist.
With the murder rate for the year now at 11, Mr Allen said the position requires a firmer, more flexible personality who will send strong messages that crime will not be tolerated.
“The country is paralysed by fear,” Mr. Allen told the Bahama Journal yesterday. “It’s been an orgy of unprecedented violence. We must send loud and very clear messages to the elements who seek to disrupt the society and it must come from all sectors of the society and in particular from the government.”
Mr Allen said it is very clear that despite Mrs Pratt’s sensitivity, good intentions and Christian nature, she is best suited for a ministry which these qualities may be better utilised, such as the Ministry of Education, or Social Services.
“I do believe that she is entirely ill suited for the Ministry of National Security,” he said. “Consequentially, I suggest that Mr Bradley Roberts, who breathes the fire and the brimstone, and who has the general public perception necessary to bring the credibility to the administration of the security forces, and the maintenance of the peace, replace the dear Mother Pratt as the Minister of National Security or someone of that nature of Mr Roberts.”
Mr Allen said the government must send very clear and unmistakable messages to the nation as a whole, that it will not tolerate crime.
He said if it does not do so, the country will sink into anarchy, leading to a breakdown of the whole administration of justice and good governance of the Bahamas.
“I do not wish to comment on the initial appointment (of Mrs Pratt to her post), but suffice it to say, that the events which have since followed in the Commonwealth have clearly indicated that the purity of the nation demands a more firm, and a more flexible personality,” he said.
The former minister said his call for Mrs Pratt’s replacement is well thought out and very deliberate.
But responding to the suggestion, the Chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party Raynard Rigby, while a guest on Radio Love 97’s “Issues of the Day,” said, “The last time he checked, the prime minister is charged with appointing cabinet ministers.”
Mr Rigby said the Minister of National Security should also be someone who is sensitive to the problems.
“All of us know that crime is an issue for the Bahamas – and this goes to my point about juvenile politics, what the Honourable Alvin Smith and Algernon Allen fail to say to the Bahamian people, is what the FNM’s policy, strategy or agenda is to curb crime. That’s how you act as a responsible Opposition.”
MP for Englerston Glenys Hanna Martin and Marco City MP Pleasant Bridgewater also attacked Mr. Allen’s comments in the House of Assembly yesterday, accusing Mr. Allen of dismissing Minister Pratt because she is female.
Mr Allen also called for the immediate establishment of a national lottery. He said the government is in urgent need of funding to deal with the myriad of social problems, which he said particularly afflict young men, who are more vulnerable to the lure of criminal activity and other anti-social behaviour.
He said the government needs to designate funds towards programmes to ameliorate the situations facing young, unemployed men and women. Those programmes, he said, should include proper social rehabilitative care.
“It is clear that the revenue base of a nation in the wake of September 11 has contracted,” Mr. Allen said. “It is also clear that unless the government implements creative means of funding, national youth and national rehabilitative programmes will sink deeper into crime and despair.”
By Rogan M. Smith, The Bahama Journal
