The Tribune

WE ARE glad that Prime Minister Perry Christie has put crime at the top of his agenda. He and his party always blamed the rising crime on an inept Ingraham government, claiming that it was his PLP party that had all the answers. Now he is going to be put to the test.

One of his solutions was the PLP's version of Urban Renewal. However, Urban Renewal, PLP-style, was really a misnomer -- in reality it is a form of social work within the communities. The only real urban renewal programme that we have ever seen that would be worthy of the name was the detailed plan completed in the sixties and bequeathed to the Pindling government by the late Sir Stafford Sands, minister of tourism in the UBP government. It was put on a shelf, where it gathered dust and was never heard of again. However, it was the inspiration for Edmund Moxey's Jumbey Village, which before it could be completed, was plowed under by the Pindling government and turned into a dump.

Anyway that is history, we now have to deal with the present and the serious crime wave that is now threatening the country.

The PLP blamed the escalating crime on the Ingraham government, refusing to acknowledge that what we are seeing today is an ever growing crescendo, starting in the drug years under the Pindling government, and steadily growing until today's explosion. Within 48 hours after the PLP won the government five Bahamians were murdered -- three of them in drive-by shootings.

As we write this - 9:15pm - a police flash has just crossed our computer screen. It reads:

"Police are investigating the circumstances into the death of a woman after her body was found in bushes at the rear of a new housing development at Poinciana Drive, Pinewood Gardens.

"Police received reports of the discovery around 6:30pm Thursday... foul play is suspected."

There is now no Ingraham government to blame. The Christie government will have to pull out its bag of tricks and act urgently.

But Mr Christie and his team continue to maintain that it was only since 2007 that the Bahamas has witnessed unprecedented increases in major crime categories, such as murder, armed robbery, rape, burglary, housebreaking, shop breaking and stolen vehicles.

When we look at our files, we see a different picture. We see crime starting in the late sixties, escalating in the drug years of the seventies and eighties, and continuing to grow to the present day.

When the Ingraham government was returned to power in 2007, it would have been justified in saying that crime had escalated during Christie's five-year administration compared to the previous Ingraham years of 1992 to 2002. The truth was that crime was continuing to creep up from the sixties to the present, with a judicial system and its failure to deny bail to hardened criminals adding to the problem. Society had a situation where the jobless criminal was preying on a frightened citizenry while he awaited his day in court.

Also when the Ingraham government was returned to power, it inherited from the Christie government an unmanageably large court calendar.

And so most of the plans that the Christie government says it will put in place to curb crime it will find already there. It is now up to the new government to build on it.

Magistrates can no longer grant bail in serious cases, which are now moving more swiftly through the courts; the ankle bracelet is now in use to keep track of criminals already on the streets, CCTV cameras have been and are still being installed in strategic locations.

The police force's fighting equipment has been upgraded. The Defence Force has also been strengthened to protect our borders.

Mr Christie will find that all he has to do is to continue to build on the Ingraham programme. If his government has any secrets of its own to add to the fighting machine then time is of the essence -- bring them on now and let's see how quickly this government can push back this evil tide.

"The Progressive Liberal Party," says the party's manifesto, "is committed to introducing a sustainable national crime agenda to reduce and control crime throughout our country."

Let's now see what they can do in their first 100 days to combat this deadly scourge.