The Tribune

LESS than two weeks in, and the new Minister of National Security is already threatening to make the PLP's stance on crime look confused, constrained and contradictory. This, at a time when - as the latest US travel warning so dramatically demonstrated - the Bahamas can little afford to be seen as weak on criminals.

By PACO NUNEZ

Tribune News Editor

ON THE eve of the election, soon-to-be Prime Minister Perry Christie said the rise in criminal activity was the number one challenge facing the country, and in its Charter for Governance the PLP promised to "immediately reinvigorate the fight against crime and violence" if elected.

It's not hard to see why the party placed such emphasis on the issue. Public opinion had spoken loud and clear on numerous occasions - the people wanted action.

The FNM also heard the cry. In the last year of its term, the former government undertook a number of legislative changes collectively referred to as the "Anti-crime Bills".

Among other things, the amendments made bail impossible for repeat violent offenders and those accused of serious crimes - a group many, including the then opposition PLP, blamed for the upturn in crime.

The FNM also raised the minimum mandatory sentences for a number of common crimes and in many cases, managed to dramatically decrease the waiting time between the filing of charges against an individual and his or her day in court.

It would seem the new Minister of National Security, Dr Bernard Nottage found in place a solid foundation to build on in his war against crime.

Why then, has the minister come out and declared he is in the process of reviewing the Anti-crime Bills, with a view to reversing some of the changes, in particular some of the mandatory higher sentences?

Although he didn't specify which new penalties he would focus on, the most strident complainers in recent months have been individuals found carrying drugs, particularly marijuana, in modest amounts. Modest amounts - but just enough to be charged with "intent to supply" which now carries a minimum four year sentence upon conviction.

If these individuals are indeed the inspiration for Dr Nottage's review, the minister can at least point to Europe and America, where marijuana's 1950s "gateway drug" label is now largely scoffed at as more and more communities consider legalizing the substance for medical or recreational purposes.

Be that as it may, Dr Nottage and the PLP had better tread carefully in this regard, for a host of reasons which should already be blatantly obvious to them.

For one thing, two weeks in office is a bit soon to be coming across as confused and contradictory, but one couldn't be blamed for regarding the PLP as positively schizophrenic after the strident anti-crime campaign it ran.

The party promised to "wage an unrelenting war on crime and the social issues which give rise to crime", only for Dr Nottage to launch a review of "everything" the FNM did to fight criminality, simply because some convicts complained about their sentences.

State Minister for National Security Keith Bell, doing his best to maintain the hard line, tried to portray his new boss as a no-nonsense operator.

"We have a very strong minister in the person of Dr Nottage and he is not going to allow the current state of affairs to continue. Not on his watch," he said.

Mr Bell, a veteran of the Royal Bahamas Police Force, may well want this to be true, but the good doctor's own words don't exactly square up with the Dirty Harry image: "A lot of the persons who have been - I can't call them victims - who have been convicted have made certain approaches to us about the severity of some of their sentences."

Not that there's anything wrong, in itself, with Dr Nottage espousing the widely held liberal view that locking up non-violent petty offenders often succeeds in doing nothing but turning them into hardened career criminals.

But political views don't exist in a vacuum, and it should occur to him that this very concept was behind the FNM's rejection of the PLP's school policing plan in 2007 - if you treat students like criminals under guard, that is exactly what they'll turn out to be.

Yet with the PLP's return to office, school policing is back, full force. The new Minister of Education Jerome Fitzgerald said getting officers stationed on campus is his first order of business.

What message is the public supposed to take away from all this - that the PLP are soft on adult convicts . . . but hard on children yet to even be accused of a crime?

And, in addition to the PLP's multiple personality disorder when it comes to crime, there is the question of the particular role narcotics play in this society, both historically and today.

According to acclaimed local psychologist Dr David Allen, the plague of drug trafficking that beset the Bahamas in the 1970s and 80s - which at its height led to 80 per cent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States coming through the Bahamas - is the root of our current crime epidemic.

The drug trade led to the emergence of violent gangs, ripped apart the nuclear family and destroyed the moral fibre of the nation by giving rise to an "easy money" culture allergic to hard work and honest gains.

Local drug use flourished as a spin-off of the trade, and to this day it supplements the income of local and international trafficking kingpins, who have increasingly branched off into human and firearm smuggling, further deepening our crime woes.

Unfortunately for local marijuana users, this isn't Amsterdam or California. If Dr Nottage is really considering changing the law on the request of drug convicts, he cannot escape the charge that he is also aiding the international drug trade, the root of the very crime epidemic his government has vowed to wage "unrelenting war" on.

This connection, incidentally, will not have been lost on the government of the United States. And whether Bahamians like it or not, while more and more Americans are willing to consider legalising marijuana at the local or even state level, they still see the international drug trade and everything connected with it as a threat to their national security.

Just last week, the US government issued a devastating warning about our crime levels to their vacationing citizens - our economic lifeblood. Does the PLP think Washington will hesitate to take further action in the face of a government willing to help the illicit industry at the heart of this crime problem, which also happens to be a threat to their national interests?

So, it would seem, in making his comments Dr Nottage put his toe in a rather crowded minefield.

The real question is, why? And the ambiguity of his answer - because of "certain approaches" by convicts - is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the matter for the new government, as it leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

A letter to the editor published in The Tribune last week gave vent to what many have been thinking.

Saying he's always regarded Dr Nottage as a "different" kind of PLP, the disappointed writer asked why the minister is suddenly going soft on crime.

"Is it because of the area he represents, where some of the boys on the block are upset about tougher sentences?" he asked.

People will no doubt continue to make this connection, whether or not the level of criminality in his constituency plays a part in Dr Nottage's reasoning. As such, he risks the issue turning into a flashback to a disastrous epsiode at the beginning of the PLP's last stint in office.

Shortly after being named Minister of National Security, Cynthia "Mother" Pratt was photographed during a tour of Her Majesty's Prison speaking to notorious drug smuggler Samuel "Ninety" Knowles, at the time fighting a losing battle to avoid extradition to the US.

While the incident did not damage Mrs Pratt's popularity or reputation in the long run, it spawned comparisons with the drug dealer-friendly image of the old PLP government led by Sir Lynden Pindling, and was the first of many scandals that collectively led to the party's undoing in the 2007 election.

The PLP has now been given another chance. But two weeks in, and the dreaded image has resurfaced yet again. Responding to Dr Nottage, a commentator on www.tribune242 wrote: "The PLP courts criminals and panders to the ghetto ... very similar to the garrisons in Jamaica. I expect five years of garbage under this government."

Another wrote: "Well the PLP has to appease their base. And their base always has been and always will be criminals. No surprise here."

Dr Nottage should think very carefully about his "review", before he finds himself being blamed for making the third PLP government in a row look the fool over drugs, crime and national security.

What do you think?

Email questions or comments to pnunez@tribunemedia.net, or join the conversation at www.tribune242.com/insight.