EDITOR, The Tribune.

Several of the Minister of State for National Security Senator Keith Bell’s ill-advised statements and public gaffes are an embarrassment to the Progressive Liberal Party government and Prime Minister Perry Christie and will no doubt be used as talking points by opposition candidates in 2017.

Maybe the time has come for the Christie administration to either gag Bell or to studiously review his statements before they are released to the media. He continues to hurt the PLP government with his gaffes.

In the wake of the recent spate of murders, including the Whit Monday massacre in the Kemp Road community of Nassau, Bell told The Nassau Guardian that the crime situation would have been worse had the Free National Movement been in power today. I believe that Bell committed a gaffe when he said this.

He made another gaffe in the same Nassau Guardian interview when he said that the PLP’s decision to erect huge billboards in tourist areas last year wasn’t a bad idea.

However, such bad publicity has the potential to wreck our number one industry, which is tourism. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the PLP cannot see this.

In the wake of the recent murder of American visitor Kyle Bruner, the PLP is suddenly aware of the grave implications such a negative publicity could have on our tourism product.

All of a sudden, the PLP is unwilling to air this country’s dirty laundry in the front of the tourists as it was in April of last year.

I can hardly see the difference between the negative publicity swirling around the Bruner murder in the international press and the murder rate billboards. But that is another argument for another day.

After all the hype and hysteria regarding the PLP’s crime-fighting initiatives in the months leading up to the general election, dangerous crimes such as murder and armed robberies continue their alarming rise with no end in sight. There were between 64 and 66 murders committed under the PLP in 2012. In the first five months of 2013 alone, there have been about 49 murders.

However, PLP detractors are adamant that the true murder count for 2013 is really 58 or so and not the 40-plus that the mainstream media is reporting. Be that as it may, let’s just say for argument’s sake that the mainstream media and the PLP and Keith Bell are correct in their reporting of the official murder count being in the neighbourhood of 49 or so.

This would mean that give or take 115 murders were committed in the first 12 months and several weeks of this PLP administration.

In light of this, it is difficult to see how Bell continues to make public pronouncements about the PLP’s success in combating crime. Bell and his administration and even to a lesser degree the Royal Bahamas Police Force all seem to be unwilling to admit that Urban Renewal has failed miserably. It is now becoming apparent to many that the PLP has no plan B on the drawing board to combat crime. All of their eggs have been placed into the urban renewal basket with precious little to show for it. This is a scary thought. Now that urban renewal and their other crime-fighting initiatives have failed, what next? And where do we go from here?

It is evident to any objective person that these people are way in over their heads regarding this crime crisis. Rather than admit the obvious, Bell wants to compare the FNM’s record on crime with the PLP’s, as if this would inspire confidence in the beleaguered masses of the gang infested and crime-ridden inner-city communities of Nassau. The people in these communities are at their wits’ end and are completely fed up with all these senseless murders.

They voted the PLP into office in order to address the crime crisis, particularly the high murder rate. They are not into hearing about any what ifs had the FNM won the last election. The fact is the FNM is no longer the government; the PLP is.

While some might very well argue that Bell is a loyal PLP who is only trying to prop up his government’s failing crime fighting initiatives, I still say that he committed two gaffes in his Nassau Guardian interview which are an embarrassment to the Christie government. Both ill-advised statements will come back to haunt him and his party in 2017.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama

May 26, 2013.