The Tribune

By DANA SMITH

Tribune Staff Reporter

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

WEBSHOP operators, their employees, and Bahamians who participate in webshop gaming are not “criminals” and pastors who dub them so should “ask for forgiveness,” Pastor Philip McPhee said yesterday.

He was one among a massive crowd of web-shop employees and vote “yes” supporters who marched to Parliament yesterday morning in an effort to demonstrate how many persons could lose their jobs with a “no” majority in next Monday’s referendum.

“We have already accomplished a whole lot just by marching and coming to Rawson Square and showing to the Bahamian people the strength of the ‘yes’ vote and the importance of maintaining jobs for the Bahamian people who are employed by the webshops,” Dr McPhee said.

The march was “a positive stand,” he continued, and it will show Bahamians that “the best way to go is the ‘yes’ vote” because that will “have benefits and show the kind of solidarity empowerment” that Bahamians presently need.

When asked to respond to criticism from pastors who have consistently called webshop operators and their workers “criminals”, Dr McPhee said: ”Certainly this is not an illegal thing and these young men are not criminals in any way, form or fashion and I detest the pastors who have called them criminals and all of that. That’s wrong. That’s spiritually wrong. That’s ungodly and they need to confess and ask for forgiveness.

“These men are, in my opinion, geniuses and they ought to be given the right to empower the Bahamian people and to bring about the kind of changes in such a major way and say to the world that we are black, intelligent, geniuses in the Bahamas – (and) can take the Bahamas to the next level.”

At a subsequent press conference yesterday afternoon hosted by the Save Our Bahamas Vote “No” campaign, Pastor Lyall Bethel responded to Dr McPhee’s comments.

“We’re not calling them criminals,” he said. “The law is calling them criminals. We’re only confirming what the law says.”