The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

and RASHAD ROLLE

THE FREE National Movement will “do everything it has to do” to ensure that Agriculture Minister V Alfred Gray does not speak in the House of Assembly if he remains a Cabinet minister, the party’s leader said yesterday.

Dr Hubert Minnis reinforced the FNM’s position on the controversy ten days after the announcement from the Office of the Attorney General saying criminal proceedings would not be taken against anyone connected to the matter involving Mr Gray, Mayaguana Administrator Zephaniah Newbold and released 19-year-old prisoner Jaquan Charlton, citing a “conflicting nature of evidence”.

“The FNM will permit him to speak as a member of parliament, but not as a Cabinet Minister,” Dr Minnis said. “What he did was wrong. That fact can’t be overlooked or avoided. The matter and its results have been documented and known. This sends a bad message to the international community. This gives the international community the perception that laws can be broken and men in power can do as they feel.

“The Prime Minister should have made the right decision, he should have acted on behalf of the Bahamian people and not on behalf of his party. Now the judicial image of the Bahamas has been distorted.”

Dr Minnis said the FNM will protect the independence of the judiciary. Meanwhile it remains unclear if or when Mr Gray would be reinstated as Minister of Local Government. In March, Mr Newbold convicted and sentenced Charlton to a three-month prison term for assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. He later released the teenager, alleging that Mr Gray threatened him to do so, a claim Mr Gray has strongly denied.

FNM chairman Michael Pintard weighed into the matter on Friday saying that revelations from Acting Attorney General Damien Gomez about why no charges were brought against Mr Gray “changes nothing”.

Mr Gomez told The Tribune on Thursday that the Administrator could not remember exactly what Mr Gray had said to him, adding that such information would be important so courts could determine whether “what was said amounts to a threat”. Mr Gomez said the evidence in the matter was so lacking that the government would have opened itself up to a lawsuit if it had taken legal action in the matter.

Responding on Friday, Mr Pintard said he has “more confidence in the Minister of State for Legal Affairs than” he has for most members of Cabinet. “When I read what he had to say I don’t question whether he is being genuine,” he said, adding that he nonetheless finds it “unsurprising that the administrator could feel threatened as he said he was”.

Mr Pintard said the revelation about the case doesn’t change the FNM’s view that Mr Gray should either be fired from Cabinet or resign.

“One of the things we said from the outset was the reason we thought it was important for an investigation was to determine one, if there were any culpability that required legal intervention and two, how to look at the ways in which public officials tend to overreach and abuse their power,” Mr Pintard said. “And an investigation, once it revealed that kind of action, the leadership could then take measures to correct that in the future. The correction could be a firing of the person responsible, the changing of the system, that is the changing in the law, policy or procedure so that such abuse is unlikely to happen again.

“But in terms of whether or not he acted inappropriately, we are absolutely clear about that. We didn’t need an investigation to determine that dimension of it. We believe what he did met the standard of him being fired or, had he decided to act in an honourable way, to resign. This does not alter our position at all but it does demonstrate that the present system that we have, lacking an independent department of prosecutions, creates unsatisfying outcomes but it fails to prevent a sitting member of Cabinet from investigating matters relating to a fellow member or implement whistleblower legislation that would protect those seeking to provide truth.

“This isn’t about politics but about how you protect the citizens of your country where ordinary citizens with conspiracy theories about politicians and those with power and money see decisions like this are made, you lend credibility to those conspiracy theories and the cynicism that exists among those persons. The Prime Minister could have sent a strong message to the country that if you behave in a way that brings disrepute you would have to pay the penalty. Unfortunately Mr Christie handled the situation in the way he usually handles situations: ineffectively.”

Mr Pintard also questioned why Mrs Maynard Gibson did not herself explain why her office declined to bring charges against anyone connected in the matter, as opposed to leaving the door open for Mr Gomez to do so.

“We are in an unfortunate position as a country in this juncture because there is a pattern of behaviour by Cabinet ministers in this government that when they err, they err on the side of giving the public less information than in giving the public more,” he said.