The Tribune

BAHAMIANS this week believe they have been both misled and ensnared by our Prime Minister. The question now is, what will we the people do about it?

What we watched unfold from the gaming poll and its results, to the Prime Minister’s subsequent decree, to the court action that followed aptly demonstrates two things.

Firstly, that Mr Christie and his government, while usually being accused of incompetence, are supremely capable of orchestrating a teeming mirage to distract a people made thirsty by the desert of games, waste and lack of transparency that is their governance.

And secondly, that with the present state of the media and the Opposition, the government appears to believe it can possibly preserve such mirages until the Bahamian people are overcome by thirst, confusion and frustration and become too tired to want to fight their way out of the government’s deserts.

Were it not for Mr Christie’s statements leading up to the gaming poll and alleged substantial campaign contributions made by numbers bosses, it may have been harder to believe that instead of his being a victim of circumstance in all this, he in fact may be the opposite.

Let’s dispense with the platitudes about the government “not having a horse in the race”. There is not a Bahamian who has been both following and involved in this process who believes that, and that is because it is untrue and the government made no real effort to try to prove it to be true.

From early on, Mr Christie said in various derivations that he viewed the opinion poll he created and would put to the Bahamian people as something he was not legally bound to follow. It was a message Bahamians caught – which is why many chose not to vote in the poll. Those who did vote had their reasons, resulting in nearly all of the country’s 38 constituencies voting against the government’s poll.

On-air numbers surrogates and politicians quickly jumped into damage control mode, insisting that since less than 50 per cent of voters turned out, there was no real mandate given by the poll. It was a nice try, albeit entirely irrelevant with a “referendum”. In a referendum in The Bahamas, it does not matter how many people turn out to vote. Once a question(s) carries the majority of total votes cast, the question is passed. If it does not, the question fails.

As for a perceived mandate from a national opinion poll, put this poll in the context of our primary national poll: a general election. In general elections, victories are not counted by total votes cast, but by constituencies won. In this poll, voters did not randomly cast their ballots – they cast ballots by constituency. Their votes were counted by constituency, reported by constituency and officially confirmed by constituency.

Had this exact same vote count taken place in a general election, the Party that won this poll would have captured either 36 or 37 of our 38 seats in Parliament. The present government has 30 seats and that reality still overwhelms many. So while 45 per cent of registered voters voted, 36 or 37 of our 38 constituencies rejected the government’s poll. That is more than a mandate, that is a trouncing at the hustings that would cause any parliamentary democracy to run scampering for law and history books were it general election results.

After the poll, everybody waited to see what Mr Christie would do. To be sure, many people still felt he would do nothing, even though the poll was resoundingly defeated. Then to the surprise of most, the Prime Minister made an announcement the following day – “it has now become necessary to effect the closure of all web-shop gaming operations in The Bahamas,” he said.

Enter the clowns, because this is where what people thought was a brave show by the Prime Minister was probably the greatest show on earth, and not in a good way.

Webshops in this country all have a licence – not for gaming, but for providing internet access to patrons. Providing internet access is perfectly legal, and outside of any proven illegal activities going on, the Prime Minister does not have the authority to order a licensed business to close its doors – and he knows this. But what he also surely knows is that Bahamians use the terms “webshop” and “webshop gaming” interchangeably, so when they heard the announcement, they automatically assumed it meant all webshops must close. But that is not what Mr Christie actually said. He said “webshop gaming” must close, not the shops themselves. Get it? Keep this in mind as you read on.

After the announcement, the media reported that an application for injunction would be filed the next morning by webshop owners to keep their businesses open. Now, whether you want to believe that all the separate and individual numbers men just happened to have the same mind, have the same interests and hired the same attorney to file for the same injunction all within moments after Mr Christie made that announcement is entirely up to you.

But since the Prime Minister never in fact ordered the webshops themselves to close, though that is what the media reported and the public thought, consider the likelihood of numbers bosses amazingly all coming up with an application to block what was never ordered to begin with. Their injunction was not needed because their shops were never ordered to close to the public – their injunction was a smokescreen and seemingly, part of the show.

The next morning, lawyers announced the grant of the injunction. This is where the greatest show on earth took a detour into the embarrassing realm of media languidness and Opposition inertia, where government and lawyers craftily blitzkrieged the public with legal jargon and the use or omission of the terms “webshop” and “webshop gaming” that any lawyer knows would surely confuse much of the general public.

The media announced that because of the injunction, webshops can go back to business as usual, reporting that Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson said the injunction meant “the status quo would be preserved”. But neither the courts nor the Attorney General said webshop owners were free to break the law by selling numbers as a result of the injunction, because that of course would be untrue. It was the media that put that misinformation out to the country, plunging much of it into a state of confusion and anger. People then believed it was suddenly okay to buy and sell numbers and to do so without fear of arrest or prosecution because of a court order.

The facts, however, are that a court injunction preserves the lawful status quo – it does not and cannot suddenly make illegal activities legal. And in this matter:

1 - The status quo is that webshop gaming in The Bahamas is still illegal just as it was before the poll, the police can still arrest and charge offenders and can do so at any time unless and until Parliament makes webshop gaming legal via the Lotteries and Gaming Act. Injunctions cannot and do not order the police force to not enforce the law – no court order will do that.

2 - The status quo is that all webshop owners have a (presumably) valid business licence to be open – just not to conduct gaming. So yes, to preserve the status quo would be to allow their doors to remain open just as they were open before, but only to do what they are licensed to do – provide internet access to patrons – not to conduct illegal gaming in any form.

When attorneys told the media the injunction “prohibited the government and the police from interfering with the business of webshops ” – they are right – but take note of what they said. They said the business of “webshops” not “webshop gaming” – and what is the legal business of webshops? Not numbers.

As long as webshops do only what they are licensed to do, then that specific form of business cannot be interfered with by the authorities – it is anything illegal that they may do that the authorities are fully free to deal with according to law. This is why an injunction was not needed to preserve this status quo – this is already the law of the land. Not making this clear is perhaps the biggest error made by the media and an error interested parties probably felt would be made. When the public heard the statement, it assumed it meant the government and police cannot touch numbers anymore because of the court order. That was and is not the case.

And when attorney Wayne Munroe told the media what “might” appear in a later court action, the media did not make it clear that his legal arguments about webshop gaming had nothing to do with the injunction itself. Therefore, the public wondered if those arguments about webshop gaming being legal were successfully decided upon as part of the injunction. This further deepened the public’s confusion about what the court’s injunction really meant.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Leader of the Opposition, who the night before gave a national address that left many Bahamians wondering if he was in the same time zone and reality as the rest of us in this matter, refused to comment on the injunction, essentially abdicating his responsibility to be the Constitutionally elected voice of clarity and proper information where the government failed to be that voice during the week’s sitting of Parliament.

The Prime Minister on the other hand, used the tried and true trick – he could not speak anymore because the matter was before the courts. The Prime Minister is not a party to the injunction and was entirely free to speak on what the injunction meant for the Bahamian people, particularly since the injunction was supposedly sought because of his “closure” announcement. If Mr Christie was true to his “closure” statement, and thus had an interest in making the public understand that buying and selling numbers was still as illegal after the injunction as before, he absolutely could have and should have as Prime Minister, but he did not. The Attorney General also ought to have made this clear, but did not. There was hence no voice that spoke for the Bahamian public – only for the numbers bosses.

The tenuous part to all this, is that if the numbers bosses do proceed with a case, the government must mount a defence, which essentially means the government will be required to mount a fight against all its “horses”.

But Mr Christie has given us little hope that his government would mount a real court battle against numbers bosses. After all, these are men of whom he repeatedly refused to deny claims that they heavily funded his election campaign. How much faith would you have in a man fighting to take down the men whose money allegedly helped put him in office?

And so since the Prime Minister had to face his “horses” while still making the people think he kept his word, what became the lead act in the greatest show on earth? He makes an announcement of a “closure order”, followed immediately by a “sudden” court action that seemingly reversed his decree. So Mr Christie winds up looking like the leader who tried to follow the will of the people, but was thwarted by the almighty courts. You’ve got to admit, it’s a very good lead act that apparently worked with at least the one of the poll’s strongest opponents – the church.

The church’s campaign spokesman said he believed, based on the Prime Minister’s “closure” announcement, that Mr Christie did in fact fulfil his word to follow the people’s will. I cannot fault the churches or other Bahamians for believing this though – this show was not crafted to fail.

Left to question what is next are the Bahamian people, who are angrily asking, “Why did we bother voting at all?” It is a legitimate question, but one that should not be answered with “our voices don’t matter”.

This show in my view, was designed not only to frustrate voters about the gaming poll, but to frustrate voters about whether their voice matters at all – because if they cease to believe it matters, they will cease to mount any necessary battles against the government of the day.

What Bahamians should understand is their voice obviously has more power than they may realise, because this show to sidestep it was not shaped haphazardly. If your voice did not matter, there would be no need to try to trick you into believing that the courts are the enemy.

Never mind that an opinion poll was not needed to change our gaming law – the reality is your government spent $1 million of your money and asked for your opinion in a vote. You have played, now they must pay.

What will the Bahamian people do? It all depends on how much they want to send a clear and strong message to the government that they will not stand for this show or any other. And by the way – numbers men are not the only people who can get injunctions.

If numbers bosses are in fact waging a fight against the government, then the government must decisively demonstrate that it is not prepared to have what it claims is its commitment to the rule of law undermined.

If it does not, then the government would have successfully demonstrated that this is not actually a fight between them and the numbers bosses, but it is rather them and the numbers bosses working together in a fight – against us.

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