Mr. Raynard Rigby, Chairman of the PLP, proclaimed the other day that in the next election the PLP hoped to receive reasonable support from the white community. Well, I have news for him. If his Government does not by one means or another, legal or illegal, gentle or rough, painful or painless, staunch the tidal wave of crime in this country, there will be precious few whites here to vote for anyone. And they will not be going alone. Many a black Bahamian with the means to do so will be outward bound.
We have not yet reached the point where Mr. Blankenship will order the powers that be (and I don’t mean Mr. Christie) to declare a travel warning to his American citizens proposing a visit to the Bahamas. This would register a bruising blow to our already rocky tourist business. And you don’t quite know how the U.S. Ambassador will act or react. He often brings to mind Mr. Winston Churchill’s comment on then U.S. Secretary of State, Mr. John Foster Dulles. Said he: “Mr. Dulles is the only bull I know of who carries his china shop with him.”
And do not think that all of the crimes reach either the press or the radio stations. There is a whole lot you never hear of. And the handling of those we know about is at times so farcical it would be very funny were it not so terribly serious. In due course, I’ll give you a recent sequence of events to make the point.
Meanwhile, who is ultimately responsible for finding solutions and finding them rapidly? Who has a duty, and the sole responsibility to do something, anything to stop the flow of blood? The Government, that’s who! That’s where the buck stops. I, for one, don’t hear the Government making the right kind of noises, don’t see the Government painting the right kind of pictures. I do not for one second begrudge the Prime Minister his bevy of ill-housed (they said, not me) police guards. That is as it should be. But the rest of us can’t get police guards and we are just as important to us as he is to him!
This pot has been boiling for some time now. Finally, we seem to have reached the point where the pot is boiling over. We can all thank the Government’s school system for their great and obvious success at producing criminals who cannot read or write (which translates into no job) and who, largely because of our failure to have a government-sponsored Family Planning Programme 30 years ago, know zero about either prevention or a sense of responsibility.
Yes, it was a variety of governments who got us into this tragic mess. Every citizen of any party should now demand that this Government gets us out. And in the meantime I suggest they get the building of another prison underway.
Which brings us to a subject that I know full well is highly controversial and very prone to misunderstanding, Question: Does our police force need some outside help, if only for a season? I obviously don’t know, but I do know that under existing circumstances it is a fair question to ask of Mr. Christie and Mr. Farquharson. And this is no time to put forth platitudes on our status as an Independent Country. We have never been truly Independent and we never will be truly Independent. You and I will be as Independent as a U.S. President and Congress allow us to be. Just watch Mr. Blankenship.
To those left to mourn, having your own flag can never begin to make up for the total loss of your own loved ones. And this is no time to think or say, “It couldn’t happen to me.” Trust me. It could!
Yours etc.,
Norman S. Solomon
Letter To The Editor, The Nassau Guardian
P.S. Read Dr. Kevin Alcena’s column in the Tribune of Monday, February 10; he understands where we are and where we are headed.
