The Tribune

FIRST it was promotions being halted – and now it’s contracts under review.

Tourism, Investment and Aviation Minister Chester Cooper said yesterday that the government contracts awarded to Kanoo Pays are being reviewed.

Kanoo Pays is an electronic retail payment provider, which was hired by the previous administration to handle travel health visa payments.

The company was in the news back in June, with then Tourism Minister Dionisio D’Aguilar defending the award of a no-bid contract to the business, saying there were no special favours and accusing the PLP of “trying to make hay where there is no hay” over the matter. He later said that he would “take a cut hip any day” for selecting Kanoo rather than delaying tourism’s restart by going through a contract tendering process.

Then Opposition leader Philip “Brave” Davis, now Prime Minister, said at the time that the Minnis administration was helping FNM insiders with its contract awards.

It’s easy to get into the finger-pointing in all of this – but here’s the thing, there is already a process to review such contracts.

In opposition, Mr Davis chaired the Public Accounts Committee. It never did anything. Whether allowed to do its job or not, that should be the proper venue for investigating government business.

Right now, time is wasting for the new PLP government. It is often said that the first 100 days can be crucial for any new government, and that is doubly so in a situation where we are fighting a pandemic and facing a mammoth national debt. Those problems should be the focus of the new government. Mr Cooper should be seeking new investments as he gets into his job, not using up his time on past ones. That’s the job of review mechanisms already in place. Let the PAC do its job. Let the auditors do their job. Investigate by all means, but do so using the means in place. Otherwise, it looks like politics rather than process. The new government is already intent on scrapping the health visa so there will be no payments to process soon anyway.

We absolutely want to ensure contracts have been awarded fairly. We absolutely want to ensure promotions are done the right way. But if the first days of the new government are mired in re-examining the old, it will hold the administration back from getting on with the new.

There is a lot to get done, so get on with it.

Crime

There has been a spate of murders recently. What is the response of the new National Security Minister, Wayne Munroe? Apparently, there needs to be a greater focus on “properly raising our children.”

He said before Cabinet yesterday: “The fact of the matter is that crime is a function of poor socialisation and so you will see that (the) government’s efforts to tackle crime has to do with how you raise your children.”

He added: “Because when you raise your children that they have no compunction in killing somebody and in robbing somebody, the only thing the police can do is apprehend your child and deliver your child to the justice system for your child to be processed. We need to place more emphasis on stopping people becoming criminals because when they become criminals, the police’s job is simply to apprehend them and place them before the court and so we have to take responsibility for our actions and in it taking responsibility for our actions, we have to place more emphasis on properly raising our children.”

Mr Munroe has been a lawyer representing people in the courts to know the social structures surrounding many people who fall into a life of crime.

For many, there are no mothers. No fathers. Gangs become a replacement family. Many grow up in poverty, many find a place to belong among criminals because nowhere else offers them that place.

So when he says people need to focus on properly raising their children, we have to acknowledge sometimes people aren’t there to raise children. Some parents have been taken away by violence themselves. Some are criminals already. Some break the law just to survive.

In their Blueprint for Change on the campaign trail, the PLP said it would ensure that the necessary reforms would be executed for a safe Bahamas, increasing investment for community policing and introducing policies to counter violence. It didn’t mention that it was your fault, our fault, and we just need to raise our kids better.

It didn’t say that the new National Security Minister’s solution was to deal with the next generation – so what happens with the current one?

Crime does need solutions at all levels – but blaming the parents is not the way to start.