The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell yesterday hinted at the need for tax reform to help the government finance important initiatives as he supported the borrowing of $232 million to buy nine new Royal Bahamas Defence Force vessels amid fiscal challenges in the country.

He said as fishermen suggested enough wasn’t being done to “stop Dominicans from pillaging fish from our waters,” the government was “trying” to address their concerns.

“Unfortunately in our country,” he said during a debate in the House of Assembly, “we have a tendency to get so self-absorbed about our own issues that we don’t see the larger issue of a resource challenged country. In other words, if you don’t have the money, you can’t buy the boats or the guns and so there is a problem. So you come up with something you think will fix the tax system and another group runs off the deep end saying you can’t do that. So the result is there we sit in a rich country with a government that is often made to look like a mendicant because the revenue simply isn’t enough.”

“Despite all of that,” he said, “today we launch off into the deep. We will buy these ships. We have to do it or the people who come to invade us will take away our very life.”

Mr Mitchell said purchasing the vessels will give the Bahamian government greater credibility when it engages regional leaders about the country’s poaching concerns.

“Your diplomacy can only be credible if you have force to back it up,” he said. “Or put it another way, even your friends will not respect you unless you come to the table showing that you are serious.

“With the purchase of these vessels, the salutary message has got to be to friend and foe alike that in the world of immigration interdiction, in the world of fishery poaching, if you venture into The Bahamas, you will be caught, you will be stopped, you will be prosecuted and you will go to jail.”

“In other words, my friends, no point in my going and sitting down with the Haitians or the Dominicans and saying to them we want you to stop your people from coming here stealing our fish or landing illegally in our country, if they know that at the end of the day we are not going to do one thing about it.”

“As a foreign minister I certainly want to know that when I travel abroad I am not travelling with a weak hand and words only. Words have to be backed up by action. Sometimes it means putting your money where your mouth is. That means you have to pay for leadership in the world.”

Mr Mitchell also paid tribute to Able Seaman Fenrick Sturrup, 21, Marine Seaman Austin Rudolph Smith, 21, Marine Seaman David Allison Tucker, 21, and Marine Seaman Edward Arnold Williams, 23, the four men who died when HMBS Flamingo was sunk by Cuban vessels in 1980.

The nine RBDF boats will be obtained by the government through a loan with Deutsche Bank.