It is not possible for The Bahamas to tackle and beat the scourge of crime if crime in any form is being purported and indeed exalted as untouchable. Either we are going to crush crime, or crime is going to crush us.
Any government Minister who is telling the Bahamian people that the courts have ordered the government and the police not to enforce the law with respect to illegal activity is willfully being untruthful to the nation. No court will ever order that a crime not be handled as a crime, and that crime can no longer be fought and prosecuted.
The selling and buying of numbers is a crime in this country and has always been a crime. No opinion poll or injunction changed that law in any way nor could it, and neither of the two suddenly created a situation where that law cannot be enforced. Any government and law enforcement official who is aware that this crime or any other crime is taking place and does nothing to stop it is a party to crime – that too, is the law of the land. So right now we are being governed by an administration of lawbreakers with respect to the numbers business.
And any member of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition who sits by quietly while the same is taking place is just as guilty as those who are perpetrating this web of deceit and criminality on the Bahamian people. Even more to the point, the Opposition as members of the legislature, are aiding and abetting the aforesaid web by neglecting or refusing to stand against it and use all possible legal and civil avenues to thwart it.
Politics should not silence any elected official when it comes to the enforcement of laws and the lawful prosecution and conviction of lawbreakers. If a person’s politics or political organization – either in principle or current practice – is preventing him or her from speaking out against criminality and taking whatever action is in their power to fight against the same, that person (if he or she is truly a nationalist) should consider their politics, and decide whether it is worth the poisoning of the well of our soul as a nation.
If The Bahamas sits by and allows its government to convince it that it is suddenly not a nation of laws that must be upheld at all costs, then Bahamians are surrendering to crime and criminality. What you do not resist and trample under foot becomes your master and you, its slave.
We need to wake up to the reality that there is no such thing as “harmless crime”. Whenever our children grow up seeing that what is supposed to be a crime is never dealt with, they begin to believe that no law matters, and that they can break the law without consequence. And that is what too many of our children who grow to become lawbreakers believe. It is our fault they come to think this way.
The government and the police force must do its job with respect to the illegal numbers business and stop misleading the Bahamian people by telling them they are judicially restricted from doing so.
The government-sanctioned lawlessness in this country must cease.
Sharon Turner
