The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

TRANSPORT Minister Glenys Hanna Martin yesterday urged the government to revisit the Immovable Property Act before the end of its term in office.

Mrs Hanna Martin underscored the need to re-establish land protection policies for future generations during her contribution to debate on the Gaming Bill in the House of Assembly.

She charged that the former Free National Movement administration repealed the law in 1992, which led to the liberal sale of Bahamian land on the international market.

The Englerston MP also declared her support for the Gaming Bill and accompanying regulations, adding that she did not feel the removal of the prohibition against residents gaming in casinos should be an immediate step.

She defended her party’s legacy of nation building against severe criticism of the government’s decision to legalise webshop gaming.

“The Progressive Liberal Party, with all of its imperfections is the party that led the social revolution in this country beginning with Majority Rule on January 10, 1967,” she said.

“These warriors who comprised the PLP were not, as has been claimed, men and women who loved foreigners more than their own people.

“The PLP is the party which led aggressive policies of empowerment in what has come to be known as Bahamianisation; the party that spoke of building our country with our own hands and forged all the new institutions of nationhood that we take for granted in our national landscape,” she added.

In her support of the proposed legislation, which calls for the establishment of proactive measures against gaming addiction and its symptoms, Mrs Hanna Martin said she hoped for similar initiatives to highlight other harmful addictions such as alcoholism.

She said that the country’s greatest weakness was its resistance to confronting its “many contradictions” as a society.

Mrs Hanna-Martin acknowledged that the circumstances surrounding the legislation were controversial given moral objections and the outcome of the 2013 gaming referendum. The majority of people who voted in that process said “no” to the establishment of a national lottery and to the taxation and regulation of webshops.

“I support the continuing prohibition (against casino gaming) for residents for the time being having regard to all considerations, acknowledged contradiction though it may be,” Mrs Hanna Martin said.

“The Bill now places in the realm of possibility the removal of this prohibition. My personal view is this particular step should not be quickly taken as we seek to manage the new reality that we are entering.”