The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Many Bahamians are being distracted by the sideshow that the prime minister has tried to create announcing a new deal on the ownership of BTC.

Informed people know that there has not NO change in the ownership of BTC. Cable and Wireless is still the majority shareholder in BTC.

Then there is the prime minister’s latest overseas jaunt to Atlanta. He must be trying to build up that “legacy” he likes to talk about. He does seem to take comfort from the dreams he pretends are reality.

I wonder if those people honouring Mr Christie as a human rights defender in Atlanta know that he leads a Government that arbitrarily subjects legal residents and citizens to random search and detention, refuses to condemn individual uniform agents of the Government who violate the human rights of people held in detention, and that appears to have a difficulty in categorising the deaths of citizens who died in police custody during 2013 as murder.

Now we are informed that the Prime Minister is off to Cuba accompanied by Cabinet Ministers. Still another Ministerial delegation is chasing press headlines visiting the Dominican Republic.

We must not become distracted. At least 10 people have been killed in our country in the first 24 days of this year. The newspapers, radio and television have reported the following killings in The Bahamas since January 1, 2014:

• Two people killed on Jan 1st, one on Hospital Lane and the other on Ida Street.

• A third man was killed on Taylor Street on January 3rd.

• A fourth man was stabbed to death after a fight in a night club on Faith Ave on Jan 4th.

• A fifth man was found lifeless and badly burned off Cowpen Road on January 5th.

• Two men were found dead in separate locations in Abaco on January 18th, both with gunshot wounds, taking the total number of killings to seven.

• An eighth man was shot and killed in his Sequoia Rd home on January 21st.

• A ninth man was found dead in his home on Market Street on January 24th and

• A tenth man was found fatally wounded in his Freeport, Grand Bahama, home over this past weekend.

It is very clear that too much time and money are being wasted by this government travelling abroad at public expense without any benefit to the Bahamian people; appointing committees and commissions to investigate matters that are fully known and understood by the Government and the general population; hiring expensive foreign consultants on all kinds of things – from gambling to VAT; and holding expensive public opinion polls which they call referenda to suggest that they are doing something that is needed. They are not and we must tell them that we know that they are not fulfilling their obligation to govern in the interest of the Bahamian people.

CECILE EVANS

Nassau,

January 26, 2014