As Bahamians groan over the high rate of crime and the administration of justice in the Bahamas, it must be remembered that the country has for centuries had to contend with a reputation which has been unsavoury.
As far back as the 18th century, The Bahamas was known as a corrupt place with an assortment of criminals involved in piracy-shipwrecking, then rum running and in modern times drug trafficking and money laundering.
Some historians argue that our proximity to the United States has been and continues to be a curse as well as a blessing.
A short account of the colony of the Bahama Islands printed in 1789 is a testimony on how the Bahamas was governed and the poor quality of public officials who were ill-suited for dispensing justice.
On Courts of Law, the document on the defeats of government states: “By far the greatest evil under which these islands have groaned, has been the enormous mal-administration of public justice. The Judges, as far back as we can trace them, have never been lawyers, nor has their unpardonable ignorance been always their most dangerous disqualification. A want of common honesty has sometimes been objected against them, and the most beastly drunkenness has not infrequently polluted the seats of justice. In the court of Vice Admiralty, which has cognizance of offences against the statutes for regulating the plantation trade; where the practice is according to the forms of the Civil Law, and where a sole Judge decides, the present Judge is a most ignorant Quack Doctor, and was formerly Master of a Guinea Ship.”
Of the Attorney General, the account states: “In Colonies which perhaps it would be proper to govern according to Law; and where the Governor’s only adviser in matters of Law is the Attorney General, it would seem in some measure necessary, as well for the security of the Governor as of the governed, that this legal mentor should have some small, some smattering, knowledge of his profession. We mean, with all due deference, where the Law happens, by chance, to be his profession. The present Attorney General of The Bahamas (it is reported) was formerly a Haberdasher, or some sort of shopkeeper.”
ï¾ Today, the Bahamas is more sophisticated, but still has a reputation for having crooked officials in some places. The point is, while people are focused on hooliganism, they often turn a blind eye to white collar crime and official corruption.
As we search for solutions to the problems of crime, Bahamians have to be honest about their past and its complexities.
Crime runs deep in all human societies, but in the Bahamas past experiences show that criminal enterprises brought the country to a standard of existence which make some people proud. However, the criminal who continues to take risks must be hunted down in the interest of decency and law and order in the Bahamas.
Brace For War
The resolve of the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush to attack Iraq and disarm the regime led by Saddam Hussein cannot be lost on anyone. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night before the Congress and broadcast around the world, Mr. Bush made it clear that his administration is pursuing unilateralist policies for war.
Following his address, many Bahamians believed that the President made his case to attack Iraq, as he declassified information which his administration and the United Nations Security Council hold on Iraq.
In a well written and passionate speech, Mr. Bush told the world that for twelve years Mr. Hussein has been running a game and has not complied with Security Council resolutions. Now, since in his speech he said the national security interest of the U.S. is threatened, no one should doubt that there would be a war, unless Mr. Hussein disarms his country of weapons of mass destruction. If he does not, the world should brace itself for a war in the Middle East.
While he may still become a multilaterialist if other countries would join the U.S., Mr. Bush’s unilateralism has sprung from two sources: A suspicion of allies and international institutions, and a conviction that the tasks that multilaterialism accomplishes do not really need doing.
Insight, By Wendall K. Jones, The Bahama Journal
