By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

FREE National Movement leader Michael Pintard warned the Davis administration not to sign contracts with businesses owned by gangsters, saying this would threaten the government’s reputation.

During Wednesday’s debate in the House of Assembly on the Anti-Gang Bill 2024, he said a necessary approach to addressing crime involves the government setting a good example for the public.

Stressing that “the streets recognise and talk”, he said the government should not do business with people involved in “washing money”.

“When you’re on the stump or in the Parliament, you are talking about a certain standard that you wish to hold the nation up to,” he said.

 “You are recommending a kind of behaviour that you are recommending to our young people. You’re telling young people to get a good education in order to get a job so that you could make money and young people can see that there are a lot people in the community who didn’t get a good education, do not have a job, but still making plenty of money. And some of that money that they’re making is a result of entering into contractual arrangements with government.”

 Mr Pintard noted that Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness recently said his government would not give contracts to gangsters.

 This is not the first time an elected FNM official has made suggestions about whom the Davis administration is doing business.

 In February, former Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis urged his successor to commit not to give criminals government contracts, saying: “I cannot go into any more detail because my life would be in danger.”

Mr Pintard added on Wednesday that no administration should conduct business with anyone involved in crime.

“Both the Free National Movement, the Progressive Liberal Party, all parties that hope to govern the country have to come to a point where it makes a determination that folks who are known to the police, where there are cold and hot cases, where their names are called and are on the file, that they cannot be seated at the table with a minister signing a significant contract,” Mr Pintard said.

He said the administration’s credibility is eroded when the government signs contracts with people involved in criminal activity.