PLP government ducking responsibility and warring with police

Thu, Nov 26th 2015, 12:00 AM

In the lead-up the 2012 general election the PLP eviscerated Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham and then National Security Minister Tommy Turnquest on the FNM government's crime strategy and record. The infamous crime statistics billboards belligerently and unapologetically touted by PLP Deputy Leader Philip Davis typified the party's vitriolic campaign against the FNM over crime. Party Leader Perry Christie pressed the case in his August 15, 2011 national crime address: "As I travel throughout our nation, everyone I meet wants to share a story about a neighbor, a friend, a family member who has suffered. In the last few years alone, our communities have seen hundreds of murders and rapes, thousands of armed robberies, more than eleven thousand homes broken into.

"More murders took place last month than in any other month in our recorded history. People are afraid, and they are angry: They are afraid that the violence is going to continue to escalate, and they are angry that the government has offered no meaningful response. Yet here we are, in August [2011], and already 90 Bahamians have lost their lives to violence this year. Ninety - an extraordinary number, a record-breaking number."

He was emphatic about the virulent spiral of crime which he laid squarely at the feet of the FNM: "... The tsunami of violence sweeping our nation was never inevitable. It tells you an important reason for the escalation of crime in The Bahamas is poor governance. This government has been paralyzed, unable to lead on this crucial issue."

Toward the end of 2015 there is a new murder record set under the PLP, and there is still more than a month to go.
Whereas the PLP's 2012 general election campaign targeted the FNM's "poor governance" as the major reason for the high level of crime, the Christie administration is painting itself as generally blameless for today's alarming rate of crime and violence. The PLP's hypocrisy is vulgar and is writ large.

Blame others

Just as the PLP engaged in a massive propaganda exercise against the FNM's crime policies and record, it is now engaging in an extensive propaganda effort to blame others for its failures, namely the Royal Bahamas Police Force and the judiciary. As egregious, though the country is less safe and more violent, the PLP gallingly launched a "Stronger Bahamas" campaign which flies in the face of the frightening reality on our streets. Whenever it fails to govern well, the PLP reflexively reaches for more slogans, more propaganda and more excuses.

When in opposition, Christie and the PLP did not generally criticize Commissioner Ellison Greenslade or his senior command. In 2009, the FNM legislated two terms of five years each for the commissioner of police. Greenslade's terms under the new act began in 2009, so he would have finished his first term. While eligible for a second term it would not have to be offered. The PLP did away with these provisions.

Soon after coming to office, the PLP legislated security of tenure for the commissioner of police, who can now only be removed for cause. Curiously, after doing away with the provisions legislated by the FNM and after ensuring Greenslade's security of tenure, the PLP's national security high command began attacking the commissioner. Indeed, having dramatically failed on crime, last year Christie threw the RBPF and Greenslade under the proverbial bus:"I said to the minister of national security, I'm not prepared to have my own legacy, my own reputation, be tied to a total reliance on the Royal Bahamas Police Force and to the leadership of that force."

At a June 2015 forum Christie talked about walking on eggshells, because, as reported in this journal, "he was frustrated because the police and defense forces were being uncooperative in working together to fight crime."

Pure drivel
Christie's excuse-making was pure drivel. The civilian leadership is ultimately in charge and should break some eggs to ensure cooperation between the uniformed branches if they are not cooperating in the manner civilian leaders deem necessary. National Security Minister Dr. Bernard Nottage has also publicly slapped down the commissioner, who criticized the civilian leadership after the robbery of Acting Prime Minister Philip Davis. Having been openly criticized by Christie and Nottage, Greenslade has now been publicly and aggressively rebuked by State Minister for National Security Keith Bell, responding to comments by Greenslade that the murder rate would worsen if various legislative and policy changes are not instituted.

As reported by Royston Jones Jr. in this newspaper: "Minister of State for National Security Keith Bell suggested yesterday that Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade is failing to carry out all of the government's crime-fighting initiatives, and indicated that perhaps the leadership of the police force needs to be changed.

"'If we are going to fail as a government let us fail because our policies are flawed, but not because we cannot get them executed or implemented,' said Bell in an interview with The Nassau Guardian."

The state minister attacked Greenslade: "I think the commissioner of police needs to be called upon to explain to us and to everyone what does he mean when he is talking about these policy changes. I, for the life of me, don't understand it. But again, I leave it. I am the minister of state.

"I am not the substantive minister, nor am I the prime minister. So, I cannot make him answer.

"He does not report to me. So, I cannot ask him or make him account as to what he means by those statements. I cannot do it. I am not the person, and you can quote me on that."

Bell, a retired chief superintendent of police, who once worked with Greenslade, not only attacked the commissioner, he seemed to be criticizing his substantive minister and the prime minister for not calling the commissioner to account. Bell may not be "the person", but he is a member of Cabinet and shares collective responsibility with his colleagues, a responsibility barely taken seriously by Christie and many in his party who unabashedly flout conventions of parliamentary democracy and Cabinet government.

Once again

If Bell's views are those of the government, they should ask Greenslade to resign. If Bell's views are his own, he has once again deeply embarrassed the government and he should be asked to resign. Christie's silence on Bell's comments is telling.

Meanwhile, Nottage continues his spiral of delusion on crime. Having a few weeks ago upbraided the media on not praising the government when there was a brief lull in murders, Nottage is now furious with the press for reporting on the country's new murder record: "The fact that you all are calling it a record is really unthinkable." One does not know whether to laugh or weep, or both.

Nottage, a good man, is sounding foolish, irrational and unhinged in his comments about crime. He is clearly beleaguered - and disingenuous.

Reporting in The Tribune, Ricardo Wells wrote: "And while he was a vocal critic of the Ingraham administration's crime-fighting policies when he was in opposition, Dr. Nottage maintained yesterday that he never blamed the former government for the escalating crime problem.

"Dr. Nottage told reporters that crime is not the fault of the government but of a troubled society. 'The Christie administration is not guilty of anything. What we have is an unstable community at this present time,' he said, responding to questions from the media.

"'The Christie administration didn't cause that. We have to face what the facts are - the facts are that we as citizens and parents have been derelict in our duty with our children.'

"Dr. Nottage also maintained that while others in the Progressive Liberal Party may have made crime a political issue while in opposition, he never blamed the former administration...

"However, while speaking in the House of Assembly in June 2011, Dr. Nottage said, 'The ineffectiveness of the FNM to address growing crime trends and concerns to ensure that crime is kept at manageable levels, has resulted in a crime explosion'."

And in December 2014, as reported in this daily, "Nottage told parliamentarians - moments before they adjourned until the New Year - that the crime situation was the result of a flawed judicial system."

Little effect

Christie is as beleaguered as Nottage. Vacillating from shirking responsibility to drawing lines in the sand after another wave of crime or egregious event, including the 2013 Boxing Day carnage in Fox Hill, Christie has demonstrated bravado which has had little effect.

Christie stated of the policing system: "To the extent that I am leader of the country, I am going to be intrusive in ensuring that the system that we are operating under is accountable to the people of this country..."

His intrusiveness appears not to have yielded results. Christie fervently promised: "If I have to put a policeman and a police car on every corner, as they do in some countries, we are going to communicate to the criminals in this country that we are going to rout them out wherever they are."

Christie recently declared: "But this country cannot and must not allow what is happening to happen much longer. [This is] not a killing field in The Bahamas and I hope in a couple of weeks you will see the evidence of what I am talking about."

Christie promised another crime strategy within weeks. This is the umpteenth crime strategy to be offered by the Christie administration. All of these promises are piled on top the responses and solutions to reducing the level of crime proposed in the PLP's Charter for Governance, all of which appears to have had little effect.

o frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.

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