The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

THE Bahamas now has a total of 87 murders for the first eight months of 2017. That is an average of a little over ten murders per month. At this rate, the country will once again reach the mark of 120 murders. The FNM government and National Security Minister Marvin Dames have stated that they will use everything on the law books, including capital punishment, to make The Bahamas safe for law-abiding citizens. Bahamians want a safe country. They are tired of the wanton bloodshed on the streets of New Providence and Grand Bahama.

During the last Progressive Liberal Party government of former Prime Minister Perry Christie, the country recorded approximately 600 murders. Under former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham’s administration of 2007-2012, there were about 490 killings. Eleven hundred murders in a mere decade.

This country has developed an unsavory reputation in the international community of being extremely dangerous like Jamaica. In a Facebook debate I had with an Australian atheist in 2016, he pointed out to me (much to my embarrassment) The Bahamas’ high violent crime rate, including murder. Small wonder many stopover visitors are no longer coming to our country. The Minnis government must not pander to the Grand Bahama Human Rights Association (GBHRA), as it pushes ahead in enforcing capital punishment. The GBHRA was totally insensitive towards the families of murder victims when in its press release to The Tribune it stated that even murderers have an inalienable and sacred right to life.

Each time the government brings up the matter of capital punishment, anti-death penalty lobbyists such as the GBHRA are quick to express their opposition. Mentioning the fact that US states which have retained the death penalty having a higher murder rate than the states which have abolished it will not sway the minds of Bahamians who are at their wits’ end with the bloody carnage.

That line of argument rings hollow, considering the fact that successive governments have acquiesced to the position of anti-death penalty lobbyists over the past 17 years -- a timeframe which has been the most violent in modern Bahamian history. My point is this: the powers-that-be has pandered to anti-death penalty advocates by not executing convicted murderers. Yet the country is extremely violent. The position of the GBHRA and other anti-death penalty lobbyists has not worked at all. It has failed miserably. If it had worked, maybe their argument would have had a leg to stand on.

The Bahamas is touted as being a sovereign nation. Yet its highest court is the United Kingdom’s based Privy Council - a court which has hamstrung the government in its ability to strike fear into the hearts of violent criminal enterprises which are terrorising Nassau. With all due respect to Privy Council Lords Johnathan Mance, Brian Francis Kerr, David Neuberger, Matthew Clarke, Nicholas Wilson, Johnathan Sumption, Robert John Reed, Robert Carnwath, Anthony Hughes, Patrick Hodge and Lady Brenda Hale, they live in an elitist bubble in a first world country, and are therefore woefully unable to empathise with the masses from the Over-the-Hill communities which have borne the brunt of the 1,100 plus murders in the past decade.

The Justices of that high court are out of touch and hold to views on the death penalty which are irrelevant to this country. If a referendum to decide the way forward with regards to the Privy Council is held, 90 per cent of Bahamian voters would vote to drop that high court without hesitation. Bahamians want the death penalty enforced.

KEVIN EVANS

Nassau,

August 20, 2017.