The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

THE referendum to legalise the “numbers industry” in the Bahamas is no more than a bid to pay back webshop chiefs for their services to the government, DNA officials alleged yesterday.

According to party chairman Mark Humes, despite the government’s proclamations of neutrality on the issue, the government has launched an aggressive public relations campaign in favour of webshop gaming.

“To reasonable thinking Bahamians who are taking note of the vamped up public relations campaign now underway by Mr Christie and the numbers businesses whose cause he seems to be championing, it is obvious that they are betting on the ignorance and desperation of poor, downtrodden black Bahamians to get their ‘snake oil’ remedy for our pressing social ills made legal. It is the DNA’s hope that Bahamians will not buy what they are selling.

“This administration used taxpayers dollars to have their British consultants come here to tell us a national lottery will not work ‘at this time’. Now, the Bahamian people should demand that the Prime Minister’s office release the whole report so that we can all see how this hired group arrived at their conclusion – because the math just does not add up.

“It is time that we not allow our choices to be limited based on someone else’s reporting, unless we are privy to the report and can verify it as such. So we are calling on the Prime Minister to make the report public.”

The DNA’s chairman further questioned the government’s rationale behind expecting to gain only $20 million annually from web shop gaming.

“If the government says it stands to make upwards of $20 million in taxes annually, then that would mean that the take home profits for these numbers businesses can potentially run somewhere in the vicinity of $200 to $350 million a year. How is $20 million more beneficial to social development than $200 million?”

Mr Humes said the benefits of the government developing its own national lottery for social growth in the country would be greater.

It was announced by the Prime Minister last week in the House of Assembly that the $15 to $20 million expected in tax revenue would be used to develop youth, sports, culture, and education programmes in the country.

“It does not make sense that the government should only be concerned with getting proceeds from taxes to take care of social programming when it could control all the proceeds by simply enacting a national lottery – if it is going to make chance gaming legal.”

Mr Humes said that the DNA will continue, right up until December 3rd, to challenge Prime Minister Perry Christie’s administration until a referendum reflective of “real choice” is put to the Bahamian people.