The Free National Movement said yesterday that the government’s “incompetence and indecisiveness precipitated a diplomatic crisis” as it relates to the two Cuban dentists who were finally released after being detained at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre for 10 months.
“It has taken the PLP government 10 months of dithering before they finally understood that there was always a way open to them to resolve this matter,” the FNM statement said.
The announcement that Drs. David Gonzalez and Marialys Darias-Mesa departed The Bahamas yesterday was made by the United States Embassy.
The embassy revealed that the doctors were escorted by Bahamian immigration officials to Kingston, Jamaica, and then boarded a private airplane bound for Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The government later issued a release, saying that the doctors arrived in Jamaica early yesterday.
The FNM said, “It is typical of the contempt this government has for the people of The Bahamas to whom they owe their positions of authority that they did not think to inform the public as soon as possible after a decision had been made and the matter brought to a conclusion.”
In its press statement, the government explained that the Department of Immigration and the United Nations High Commission for Refuges had earlier both advised that neither individual could establish a credible claim of a well grounded fear of persecution in their home country, Cuba.
The statement said that this mean that they did not qualify to be political refugees in the Bahamas.
“However, the UNHCR did further advise that they would not object to a humanitarian gesture of paroling the individuals out to allow them to join their families in circumstances where such a request was made by the two individuals.”
But the FNM said the government was seeking to excuse itself by claiming that a painstaking process over an extended period was necessary in order to bring this matter to a conclusion.
“We reject that as nothing more than a cover-up for ineptitude and incompetence on the part of the government,” the FNM statement said. “The chief cause of this protracted crisis was precisely the government’s inability or unwillingness to deal decisively with it. The Bahamian people now understand fully that this is typical of the way they have been governing the country and look forward to the day when the affairs of the nation will be in more capable hands.”
By: Candia Dames, The Bahama Journal
