The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

FREE National Movement officials accused Prime Minister Perry Christie yesterday of being more concerned with “shuffling” than with addressing concerns Bahamians may have about the safety of schools and communities.

A stabbing incident at Government High School (GHS) last week caught the attention of many in the country, promoting worry and a debate about long-standing crime problems.

While the FNM’s candidates for Mount Moriah and South Beach, Marvin Dames and Jeffery Lloyd, said they visited GHS on Friday to meet with staff and students of the school, they attacked Mr Christie during a press conference on crime yesterday for not directly addressing the incident.

The FNM spent more time criticising the PLP than it did discussing its own crime plan.

However, Mr Dames said the party wants to “develop a zero tolerance attitude to all crimes,” place emphasis on law enforcement training and deal with “intelligence on the highest level.”

However, Mr Dames did not reveal many specifics of the FNM’s plan, out of fear the Progressive Liberal Party would steal these ideas.

In terms of school safety, Mr Dames said metal detectors must be placed at entrances to every junior and senior public high school in the country, adding that there must be better screening of students as they enter school premises.

He added that “professionally trained security officers” should be engaged to supplement the police presence in schools and the better use of technology like CCTV is required.

“The Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) has become obsessed with optics and have clearly chosen political mileage over the welfare of our country’s citizens,” Mr Dames, former deputy commissioner of police, said. “On the day that social and traditional media were ablaze with images of lost youth attacking each other, pledging commitments to cowardly gangs who poisoned the minds of our children and a sense of dread sank in as errant reports made the rounds, the PLP chose to have a huge party, bussing in supporters and using the national broadcaster as a propaganda tool to cover their failed leaders in glory as the nation cowered behind closed doors.

“I was aghast that as a student (lay) in the Princess Margaret Hospital nursing stab wounds, reportedly inflicted by other children, there was not one word about the incident from the prime minister of our nation,” Mr Dames added. “Instead of using the national platform to reassure a terrified citizenry, the prime minister took to the stage and to what he does best when he has no clue what to do: shuffle, shuffle, and more shuffle. I was mortified that as exhausted police officers and teachers worked to reassure the fragile confidence of the security of our schools and neighbourhoods, the Minister of National Security (Dr Bernard Nottage) basked in the adulation of his supporters without uttering one word about the situation in our schools and on our streets.”

For his part, Mr Lloyd said when he and Mr Dames visited GHS on Friday, they discovered that out of 900 students, only 32 showed up, most of them prefects.

“They expressed their own deep and traumatised concern for the state of their school and the fact that on many, many occasions there are fights on the campus,” he said. “Students advised us when we met with them in individual groups that they saw this (stabbing incident) coming. Just the Monday before and the Tuesday and the Wednesday they had fights on the campus.”

Mr Lloyd added: “Where is (Mr Christie) in the wake of this tragedy? Where is he in the face of this terror that is consuming our schools? Is he busy campaigning for his precious post as PLP leader for this week’s convention? Or is he off somewhere once again shuffling to the Junkanoo beat? Why has he failed to address the nation or at least visit the campus of the Government High School in the aftermath of these heinous events?”

Although Mr Christie made no direct mention of the GHS incident during his public appearances last week, he did discuss crime generally during an event marking the opening of the Office of the Public Defender.

On Thursday, he said he had spent most of that day in a conference with the Minister of National Security Dr Bernard Nottage, State Minister for National Security Keith Bell and Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade, receiving security briefings and discussing crime challenges.

PLP MP Arnold Forbes was on site at GHS on Thursday after the stabbing incident.

Speaking about the FNM’s plans to get a handle on crime, Mr Dames said: “We will not be introducing any form of selective policing. We’re not going to cherry pick what we deal with. We’re going to give the police the freedom to carry out the laws of the Bahamas. We’re going to develop a modern, efficient crime fighting machine; well trained. We’re gong to spend a tremendous amount of time and resources and energy on training our law enforcement officers across the board to ensure that they are capable or more capable and they are confident in the execution of their duties and know exactly what they are doing when called upon. We will work closely with community partners to change the culture of violence in our communities.

“ . . . We’re going to deal with intelligence on the highest level . . . we’re going to introduce a national intelligence component that you’ve never seen before. We have one now but there’s no legislation governing what they are doing and do we know what they are doing? What exactly is their mandate? We are going to articulate the mandate of a real NIA (National Intelligence Agency) that will effectively make inroads into the trafficking of illegal firearms, alien smuggling, drugs and every other form of criminality that continues to erode this country.”

He said the party will also “empower” communities so they can be an “an integral part” of the crime fighting machine.

“I don’t want to give too much because they may postpone this election into next year and take some of our ideas and introduce it into their plan and say they got the real deal,” Mr Dames said.