The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

IT has been a long year. Does it feel that way to you?

It’s been a rollercoaster in which we have seen murders continue to soar, another double murder at the weekend in which a young boy was also injured, a fact that should not be overlooked in the noting of more bodies added to the year’s count.

We have heard a few times over the years of killers being described as bold, with people saying killers used to refrain from opening fire when families or children were nearby – but not any more.

It has been a year of scandals – there was the voice notes scandal about which we have still not heard the promised outcome.

Then there was the US indictment that brought more allegations of corruption leading to the highest levels. The government is showing no interest in investigating that, it would seem.

How about Baha Mar? Remember when the prime minister said the attorney general would be conducting a review of the court ruling that saw CCA lose all ends up against Sarkis Izmirlian? The attorney general effectively gave a shrug last week to say there’s nothing that concerns the government there. This is despite the ruling by the US justice that CCA sought to curry favour with the Bahamas government by giving a contract to the son of the then prime minister’s senior advisor. Wrongdoing has been denied there – but you would think a court ruling would prompt a little more than a shrug.

Remember all the talk about how the Grand Lucayan was going to have a new buyer? Any time now. Any day. Real soon. Though perhaps don’t hold your breath.

But for today I return to my first Insight article of 2024, before any of that happened.

Then too I took a look at some of the issues of the day. The murder count was on the list then too – along with the Police Commissioner requiring 14 assistant commissioners when the biggest police force in the UK only needed half that number. A year on, and all those assistant commissioners have not shifted the numbers positively on the murder count. Money well spent?

I pondered whether Prodigal Sons would get seed money again after their double no-show last year. Seed money? They’re first out of the gate on Boxing Day. They’d better show – and they’re not even the biggest story of Junkanoo this year after the recent fiasco over the Valley Boys, who may or may not even be able to call themselves Valley Boys. Let’s take a leaf from Dr Seuss and call them Thing One and Thing Two.

But my real focus was on something there has been absolutely zero motion on over the year.

Freedom of information.

At the start of the year, Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis was pouring cold water on the idea that freedom of information might be coming any time soon, no matter what it might have said in his party’s pre-election Blueprint for Change.

PLP chairman Fred Mitchell joined in to say “we oppose this Freedom of Information Act idea” though there was a bit of rowing back after that. Row as hard as they might though, not a single thing has changed with regard to freedom of information.

Mr Mitchell had said “I’m not sure you get any results from it that people can actually see” despite the copious amounts of evidence to the contrary from elsewhere around the world.

The Office of the Prime Minister had fired off a press release trying to “make absolutely clear the Davis administration’s commitment to the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act”.

I think from what we have seen over the course of the year, we can judge for ourselves how absolute that commitment has been. Or otherwise.

I asked at the start of the year by what date will the freedom of information act be fully implemented. As yet, there remains no date, and no sign of progress towards that date.

So we end the year as we began, with no possibility of using that legislation to hold the government to account.

Where accountability is lacking, governments can act with impunity.

So if a government is not committed to accountability – something Mr Davis had championed in his very first speech as prime minister – should we be surprised when we see the secrets piling up?

This is the building block upon which transparency rests. And we do not have it.

So I am not surprised to see that the government shrugs off any accountability for concerning allegations in the Baha Mar ruling. I am not surprised that we still have no confirmation of whether or not the purported government official in the US indictment really does work for the government or has been paid public money.

In all of this, there seems to have been precisely one man who has been accountable – Commissioner Clayton Fernander. He did the decent thing by offering his resignation, even if it did come after an ill-advised national statement – a national address by any other name – that was really beyond his station and role in office.

Still, these things happened on his watch, and he offered his resignation accordingly. In that, he has been light years ahead of others still trying to dodge the questions that linger on so many matters.