Response last week to INSIGHT's call for an end to official secrecy indicated clearly that this is a popular cause. People are uncomfortable with the kind of evasive behaviour we saw in the handling of both the Cabinet Room brawl and Daniel Smith's death.
Last week, a full month after Daniel was found dead at his mother's bedside in Doctors Hospital, American 'tabloid TV' was still making a meal of this case. And little of what they said reflected kindly on the Bahamas.
CNN's Showbiz Tonight was asking in aggressive tones why Daniel's body remains embalmed in a Nassau morgue with still no word of a funeral. And Court TV investigator Lisa Bloom stoked up the intrigue by saying: "Drugs are coursing all the way through this investigation."
As four Bahamian police officers returned from California, where they were trying to find out exactly what Daniel was doing in the days before his arrival in the Bahamas, the sub-text promoted via American TV suggested that something underhand might be going on.
Based on whatever report the officers compile, a decision will be taken on whether an inquest should be held. To a layman, however, the case for an inquest is already well established.
Pathologist Dr Cyril Wecht told us Daniel had at least three drugs in his body – one of them the heroin substitute methadone – and that the "acute toxicity" of this powerful cocktail probably caused his death.
With that established, it is clear that Daniel's death was not natural. An inquest now needs to decide whether it was an accident, a suicide, a homicide or a case of misadventure. Nothing less is going to satisfy a Bahamian public which is tired of legal mumbo-jumbo and a ridiculous fan-dance round the truth by government officials.
Meanwhile, the international media continues to focus on the Bahamas in ways that are not exactly to the country's benefit.
In fact, as Anna Nicole's lifestyle comes in for close scrutiny from so-called 'celebrity' reporters, one wonders what, exactly, Immigration Minister Shane Gibson meant when he said the former Playboy playmate was the kind of person this country wants and needs.
In seeking to justify his inexcusable fast-tracking of Ms Smith's residency permit, Mr Gibson seemed to be promoting her as the kind of talismanic investor we've all been looking for, a woman to be deferred to and admired. Had he been given the chance, he would have processed her papers in 24 hours, he said.
Same-day service with a smile for a woman whose prime claim to fame is that she married a very old man with a fortune.
However, since Daniel passed away on September 10, we've all been treated to an unseemly succession of events, including a so-called 'wedding' off Rose Island, a very public argument of the paternity of Anna Nicole's new baby, Dannie Lynn Hope and growing disquiet over this poor boy Daniel's funeral, which has not yet taken place.
We've had Anna Nicole's lawyer-lover Howard K Stern claiming on Larry King Live with something less than total conviction that he is the baby's dad while a Californian paparazzi photographer called Larry Birkhead insists the blonde cover girl was frolicking with him when the baby was conceived.
Running alongside all this sickening guff are reports of a $400,000 tabloid pay-off for exclusive photographs of Anna Nicole and Daniel shortly before his death, a People magazine buy-up of her "exchange of vows" amid a welter of champagne on a catamaran off Blackbeard Cay and suggestions that even the funeral itself will become a tabloid exclusive, with grasping lawyers negotiating a pay-off.
All this in a society where standards are already swilling around in the bilges because of the reprehensible behaviour of politicians with no taste, no standards and no shame. It's no wonder that a culture of secrecy serves the interests of some. That's because they have so much to hide.
Worthwhile, intelligent people in the Bahamas have been rendered nauseous by Anna Nicole, her boyfriend and their lifestyle. It's inconceivable for most of us that this pair could be swigging bubbly and leaping into the sea off a catamaran while Daniel's corpse is still lying in a cold room at a Nassau morgue. As TV host Joe Scarborough said the other night: "I don't know this woman. Thankfully, I don't need to…"
However, young Bahamians are invuted to regard her as an exemplary figure ("the kind of investor we want") for no other reason thatn that she has aquired C-class celebrity status for being a Playboy centrefold, a TV reality 'star', and having a bust of Himalayan proportions. In a country in which ten-year-old mothers and 24-year-old grandmothers are a reality, is this the kind of role model our children need?
Worse still; Ms Smith is seen as preferable – one assumes – to someone like the multi-lingual Cristina Zenato, an excellent Italian dive instructor who was on the verge of being kicked out of the country a few weeks ago until INSIGHT exposed the injustice of her plight, thus forcing a reversal of her work permit refusal.
The call for a Freedom of Information Act is an encouraging development. It shows that the Bahamian public is no longer prepared to accept this travesty of a system, and that accountability and transparency are now required at every level of government.
Over the last few weeks, equivocation, evasion, dishonesty and irresponsibility were allowed to carry the day. In the process Bahamian society slid another foot or two closer to oblivion.
When Joe Thughead from Bain Town plunges a knife through the gullet of an innocent bystander this weekend as, statistically speaking, he is bound to do – let's not hear any high-minded clap-trap from the politicians about declining standards.
They are the embodiment of declining standards in the Bahamas. Joe Thughead knows it and so do the rest of us.
When his knife goes in, Joe will say: Why not? Why not, indeed, given the truly deplorable example set by his alleged betters.
The evasion witnessed over Anna Nicole Smith and the Cabinet Room brawl are symptomatic of a government which has absolutely no moral authority at all. As young Tribune columnist Adrian Gibson wrote last week, maybe their urban renewal programme ought to begin in the Cabinet Room.
From the Bahamian public's standpoint, the worst aspect of this whole rancid affair is that, officially, they still know nothing. They have been told nothing and, even worse, officialdom obviously feels they have no right to know any more than they know now.
While the American public is well-acquainted with every nook and cranny of the Anna Nicole case – thanks largely to Dr Wecht via CNN, Fox News Channel and every other cable network around – the Bahamian public is still kept in the dark by legal authorities here.
However, what people need to know and deserve to know is this: firstly, why did Daniel take methadone when he was already on two, possibly three, types of anti-depressant medication? Secondly, where did he get the methadone? Was it in his possession when he arrived in Nassau – or did someone give it to him when he got here?
It's time for answers. Meanwhile, don't tell the Bahamian people that Anna Nicole is the kind of person we need around here.
Local society is already in meltdown. She has nothing to offer.
Read part 1 of this INSIGHT article
By: John Marquis, from the INSIGHT column in the Tribune newspaper
