A vocal church leader has taken the government to task for its willingness to consider legalising gambling for Bahamians and residents.
Pastor Allan Lee said the Prime Minister’s promise to hold a referendum on gambling highlights the failure of successive administrations to enforce the anti-gaming laws already in place.
Reiterating his promise to hold a referendum on the creation of a national lottery and the legalisation of numbers shops before the end of the year, Mr Christie said: “a referendum is necessary to remove the contradictions that have led to gambling continuing to be illegal, yet widely practiced and accepted . . . it is something that I think is very necessary to remove the enormous contradictions that exist in our country where every single Bahamian is walking around knowing that they (illegal web-shops) exist . . . pretending that this activity is lawful”.
In response, Pastor Lee asked: “What is the REAL contradiction here? Citizens ‘pretending that this activity is lawful’, or the government which he leads and is committed to executing the laws of the land, knowing that the web-shops are in fact illegal, knowing where they are and who owns them, yet doing absolutely nothing to enforce the law upon these known criminals?”
Pastor Lee asked if Mr Christie’s first promise to the citizens of the Bahamas should not have been to immediately and aggressively shut down all illegal web-shops and refuse to grant permission for further businesses of this type.
Mr Christie also said that if Bahamians vote against the legalisation of gambling and a national lottery, it would be “logical to assume action will be taken against the illegal web-shops.”
But Pastor Lee pointed that after such a vote, web-shops would only be as illegal as they already are now, and no further laws would be needed to make them so.
He said: “Can we ask for a more direct and clear indictment of the failure – and in fact, refusal – of government, both past and present, to do its job of protecting its citizens from criminals and their activities? Thus, logically speaking, this promised referendum is really a referendum to answer the question: ‘Is the government guilty of failure to do the job for which it was elected to do – enforce the laws of the land?”
Pastor Lee said all discussions of “fringe” issues that distract from this central question are simply “noise in the market” designed to disguise the “lack of courage and leadership” on the part of government to do what it’s members swore to do upon assuming office.
“Do they need a referendum for citizens to tell them to do their job? As my teenage grandchildren would say, ‘Duh?’
“If my esteemed Prime Minister would remove this ‘contradiction’ by vigorously applying the current laws of the land related to gambling and webs-shops right way, the contradiction that has come about precisely because of the failure of past administrations to do so to this point, will be immediately removed, and all the expense and inconvenience of holding a referendum will be made null and void – absolutely unnecessary, and simply a waste of time.”
