The Tribune

By RIEL MAJOR

PROGRESSIVE Liberal Party Chairman Fred Mitchell said yesterday the opposition’s Senate team stands in solidarity with its leader Philip “Brave” Davis in boycotting Parliament.

Mr Mitchell said he thinks there is an atmosphere of persecution and not prosecution happening against members and supporters of the Progressive Liberal Party.

“We decided to join them so long as they are out and will resume once they have decided that point has been made so this is quite a serious time,” Mr Mitchell said yesterday. “The leader himself is making this known internationally that there is a boycott of the Parliament because of the actions of the government which is persecution of PLP supporters we wanted to make that point this afternoon.

“The government must change course, that’s what civil disobedience is about. We don’t fight with guns and we don’t fight with swords. We use our actions to demonstrate that a democracy is supposed to operate in a particular way and if you don’t operate according to those rules, then sorry, the game can’t go on.”

The chairman said this isn’t about any individual but about the way the system is supposed to operate.

He said: “You can’t expect for me to accept the results of the 2017 election. You want to run around the Bahamas with me calling you Mr Prime Minister, but you don’t want to treat me with respect. Instead you’re trying to lock up my supporters, that can’t play so if that’s the game you’re going to play we’re saying we withdraw our support of that system.

“That encourages that kind of personalised parochial attack not based on evidence which is objective, but based on prejudicial evidence. That can’t work and it can’t play and that’s the point and the problem is that we have to restrain our supporters because the anger is so deep, and it is getting worse progressively.

“Here you have right now two ministers of the government who are judicially condemned sitting in the government and won’t go. That’s the issue they say in parties if your voice is all you have you use your voice. Whatever we have we use. We’re not going to be shooting people and all of the rest of that, we are going to withdraw our support of a system which is persecuting the people who are the minority in the country.”

When asked how long the boycott will last, Mr Mitchell said the PLP will see how the situation resolves.

On Wednesday, Mr Davis announced the opposition will boycott the House of Assembly in protest of “tyrannical attitudes” in government determined to use prosecutorial powers of the Crown to target PLPs.

Mr Davis said the party will not rest until these practices are forever vanquished from society, adding actions at play were not politics, but its criminalisation.

M Davis also hit out at the manner in which the case against former Public Hospitals Authority Chairman Frank Smith, who has since been acquitted, was handled. He did not say how long this boycott was expected to last.

“I announce with no pleasure that the PLP parliamentary caucus will boycott the House of Assembly for a period in protest to mark the seriousness of where we find ourselves as a nation. We will not rest until the tyrannical attitudes and practices are forever vanquished from this society,” Mr Davis said.