The Tribune

By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

Tribune Staff Reporter

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

NATIONAL Security Minister Wayne Munroe said criminalising marital rape should not be a significant priority of the Davis administration because the Progressive Liberal Party did not promise it in its Blueprint for Change manifesto. 

He declined to give his position on the issue.

“I don’t see any point on stating an opinion on something that’s not on the legislative agenda and the Prime Minister’s spouse has already said that we need to have widespread consultation,” he said. 

 “What Wayne Munroe thinks about something that will change the fundamental social institution is not as important as what the hundreds of thousands of Bahamian people think about it who got married, who are married. That’s more important.”

 Reporters have recently asked Members of Parliament their position on the matter as the Davis administration weighs amending the Sexual Offences Act to criminalise it. 

 It is unclear when consultations on the proposed legislation will end or when a law to criminalise marital rape will be brought to Parliament.

 The Bahamas’ legal system is one of about 35 worldwide that does not recognise marital rape without conditions.

 Pressed for his view, Mr Munroe said: “I haven’t seen it in the Blueprint for Change. I didn’t campaign on it, to ask anybody to vote for me because we would criminalise that. I campaigned and asked people to vote for me for doing certain things.

 “My task is to do the things that I told them I would do if they voted for me. This thing that a politician can be elected and do whatever they like puts politicians as gods and that is not healthy and that is not right.”

 Some women’s rights advocates have accused the government of “dragging its feet” on marital rape legislation.

 Mr Munroe said: “Well, anyone who can point to the Blueprint for Change and say that the people voted for us to do this, because that’s important … We got elected based on what is in the Blueprint for Change.

 “This is what we say we’re going to do, so if you voted for me and we didn’t say anything about marital rape, and then I jumped up and talked that I will press marital rape without asking you who sent me to the House, that’s not the way democracy works, either. Otherwise, it would be you just got elected and do whatever you choose.”