Yes, actually, the cruise companies do hold a metaphorical gun to the government's head. They are among the most aggressive, mafia style negotiators you will come across, continuously threatening to pull their ships and take them to another destination if they don't get their way. Ask any public servant who has had to interact with them, it is basically an exercise in bully appeasement.

Nonsense. The witnesses said the driver was drunk and carrying on bad. He jumped out the truck to dance, forgot to put it in park and it rolled down the hill and hit the people. No foreign inspired threat, just regular local stupidness.

Birdie you really are an idiot. WORSE than Rubis? You mean that time when the PLP government KNEW for more than 2 years that the people of Marathon were being poisoned and killed off, but kept it secret for as long as possible? That time they let a foreign company pay victims off in an effort to keep them quiet, without ever revealing to them the extent of the danger they faced? Drilling test wells for toxic gas in their living rooms but saying 'No no don't worry its all fine.' In any civilised country, several ministers would have gone to jail for that unspeakable moral crime. It is preposterous to suggest an equivalence between that absolute horror with a bad plan to build an oil refinery. Grow up.

@sheeprunner12 - that is not the problem. The problem is that in this law, they can spy on you, without asking a judge for a warrant, and if they decide you may have "offended public morality" - in other words, for any reason they want. This term "public morality" is nowhere defined in the law. This will be used to expose journalists' sources, shame and intimidate political opponents, and silence critics. This is a thoroughly undemocratic law.

Precisely why we must push the government to make such political corruption illegal.

Joeblow - did you see the story in today's paper, the majority do "have status"

Of course Bethel is wrong on the Oban deal. The whole deal is ill-conceived and stupid. Not in the best interests of the Bahamas at all. You can't sign a deal that includes very specific stipulations - including an agreement on the part of our government not to interfere with the project EVEN if it is shown to be environmentally disastrous - and then say you haven't done anything. Our prime minister signed a terrible deal with a very shady fella. That is doing something; a very big thing in fact. A thing that made the international news. There is really nothing else to say.

Give the PLP credit??? Birdie, crack kills. Stop smoking it immediately. Or else your teeth will fall out.

Well_mudda_take_sic - on what grounds? Unfortunately, none of this is illegal. They should remove Ellison from his cushy post, sure, but aside from that they can't make him answer for anything. We should be calling for them to outlaw this kind of blatant political fixing to prevent such behavior in the future, but right now, legally speaking, there is no "egregious misconduct and wrongdoing". Its just another day in the Bahamas.

Neither major party will give him a shot at running because they are too scared he will topple the status quo and empower regular people. He has been refused by the FNM repeatedly, even though he has massive support in Grand Bahama.