The Tribune

KEITH Bell, State Minister for National Security, wasted much time in the Senate on Tuesday trying to blame escalating crime on the FNM government. What he should have been doing was explaining why his government’s solution to the crime problem was not working. He should also have been outlining his government’s proposals to get the guns out of the hands of criminals, and any other ideas his government might have devised to keep its election promise to reduce crime. Instead, he was finding excuses to wiggle out of his government’s election promise.

Yesterday, with two more months to complete this year, The Bahamas’ murder count rose to 124 — already one more than last year. No one knows how many more persons will be killed in the next two months.

The PLP won the government in 2012 mainly because Bahamians, tired of escalating crime, fell for the promise that if elected the PLP government, under Prime Minister Christie, had the solution to crime. It was a foolish promise on the part of the PLP and a vain hope by wishful-thinking Bahamians.

As a part of today’s government, we would have expected Mr Bell, a man who spent 23 years in the Royal Bahamas Police Force, to be “the main man” with the secret key to solving crime.

Today, his government is loath to make crime political — although in the 2012 election they made it the centre of their strategy to win the government. They not only erected large billboards announcing the murder rate during the FNM’s administration, but created a storm when the FNM government started to take the placards down, mainly in tourist areas.

When asked last year – as crime under his own administration continued to escalate — whether on reflection he regretted politicising crime in 2012, he answered: “No. I don’t regret anything in a political campaign. It’s a question of taste. One can question that, but no, I stand and fall on the campaign that we had. The campaign succeeded, and we have to govern.”

If that was the Prime Minister’s position then, why is his national security minister of state complaining now? Instead of moaning and accusing, he should be explaining and revealing his government’s plan to fulfil its main election promise — reduction of crime. Mr Bell said criminal gangs flourished under the former administration, adding that the PLP now had to “clean up the mess left by the FNM’s inaction and deal with today’s crime challenges”.

In his desperation, he has clumsily tried to blame crime and criminal gangs as having started and flourished during the FNM’s term in office.

He should know better — especially as a former police officer. Mr Bell entered the police force a year after the 1984 publication of the Commission of Inquiry report into drug smuggling. He should be very aware that the Commission concluded that “there must have been corruption within the Police Force and that corruption must have reached to a senior level of government”.

He should have also been old enough to remember his party’s introduction of “goon squads”. Violence and disrespect for law and order had its birth in those goon squads. They were used by the PLP under the leadership of the late Sir Lynden Pindling to silence this country’s free speech during elections.

Surely, Mr Bell has heard of the saying: “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.”

We shall now try to suggest to him where and when the little acorns were sown – the acorns that today have produced the mighty oaks with which he, his government and this society are now struggling.

In a televised broadcast in the sixties, the late prime minister Lynden Pindling encouraged Bahamians to seize the opportunities provided by his government to become millionaires. We are not suggesting that he was recommending drug peddling, but in those days that was the only trade that could quickly turn a million. Bahamians were living on the crest of the narco-dollar. To be a millionaire was the sign of success.

Teachers complained when their students, asked to write essays on what they wanted to be when they grew up, extolled the life of the drug dealer. They wanted to be like dad, uncle, cousin or a successful friend. They saw the gold dangling from the neck, and dazzling on the fingers. They saw the fast cars, the luxurious life, but worst of all these newly rich were accepted into government’s social circle. Their kind would have been firmly rejected by any principled society. But from the prime minister’s own mouth, to be a millionaire was the sign of success. And, as far as the youth were concerned, the only route that they saw with quick returns was the drug trade.

Two years before, he lost the government to Mr Ingraham’s FNM, Sir Lynden had his regrets. He was facing the same problems that his successors now face. However, unlike them, he was man enough to acknowledge how the problem started, how it grew and became a major social dilemma. But, like his political successors today, he had no solution.

At a PLP convention in 1990, Sir Lynden said he had changed his mind on Bahamian attitudes.

He said too many young men avoid work like the plaque. “We told them,” he said, “that they were too good to be gardeners, too good to be sanitation men, too good to work with their hands.

“As a great grandson of a slave,” he said, “I told many of my brothers, many of those things myself. At the time I was trying to elevate their goals. I wanted to spare them some pain and suffering.

“But I didn’t know then what I know now, that any work breeds character. Too many young men lack character today; too many often shirk responsibility because they have never been held accountable for their actions at home, in school, or in society – therein might be the heart of the problem.”

Rescuing the young Bahamian man from his “deep descent into the abyss of drugs, crime, idleness and despair” was the greatest challenge facing Bahamian society, said Sir Lynden.

“They do not trust in God, they do not believe in the family and they seek no lasting stake in the affairs of their country. They commit to nothing of any permanence – relationships and jobs are temporary things.

“They avoid commitment and responsibility, not to mention work. They want instant wealth, and instant love, but they have little understanding of, or appreciation of either.”

Sir Lynden had much more to say on the subject. He acknowledged his part in what we see today — this was the era in which the acorns were sown. Although he saw the illness, he did not have the cure.

And so instead of wasting everybody’s time, Mr Bell should accept that the problems started in the early days under his own party’s umbrella. It is now up to him and his government to try to bring the community together and find a workable solution.