By ALISON LOWE
Tribune Staff Reporter
alowe@tribunemedia.net:
A FORMER FNM minister and MP has lashed out at the Government and police, accusing them of "terrorising peaceful citizens" as they continue to enforce anti-gambling laws.
Theresa Moxey-Ingraham yesterday described the use of "valuable police resources" to raid web shops where members of the public are "engaging in peaceful and personal activity within the precincts of a licensed business establishment" as a "travesty".
"In a time when crime is rampant, known criminals are on the loose and traffic violations are the order of the day, there is so much of greater value for our Police to pay attention to," said the ex-cabinet minister.
Mrs Moxey-Ingraham made her comments yesterday in a letter to The Tribune, written in her capacity as a member of the Bahamas Gaming Reform Committee. The BGRC wants to see a relaxation of the Bahamas' anti-gaming laws to allow Bahamians and Bahamas residents to gamble.
It claims the laws prohibiting them from doing so, while visitors can at will, are discriminatory and are causing The Bahamas to lose its competitive touristic standing in the region, among other things.
Referring to the enforcement of the laws, which the BGRC consider outdated, Mrs Moxey-Ingraham, who served as MP for Golden Gates from 1992 to 2002 and held numerous ministerial portfolios under the former Ingraham administration, said the "time has long come and gone for this nonsense to stop".
Her comments come in the wake of recent raids on web shops in New Providence, in which a number of customers and employees were taken into custody, and cash was seized by police.
At the time of one of those raids - that of the Collins Avenue location of the Island Luck web cafe on Tuesday March 9 - a number of officers admitted to The Tribune that they saw "no sense" in what they were doing as the numbers house would in all likelihood be open for business again in 24 hours - along with the countless others throughout the length and breadth of the country.
Mrs Moxey-Ingraham said: "Government should not be in the business of making criminals and fugitives out of its citizens, especially over matters such as gaming which can be classified as a 'victimless' activity.
"Our citizens and residents ought to enjoy the same recreational privileges as visitors to these shores, and they have shown by their quiet persistence and their determination that despite feeble attempts by government and the Police to stop them, they fully intend to take ownership of their inherent right to equal treatment within this country."
She suggested that the fact Bahamians continue to frequent numbers houses in large numbers could be taken by the Government as a sign that it is time to legalise the activity.
"Peaceful, forceful civil disobedience is often the people's way of bringing home a message to government about the need to change discriminatory laws and policies, and the continued, indeed growing presence of web cafes across our landscape should be understood as a serious message to government about the need to adopt a new policy direction as regards gaming for Bahamians," said the former minister.
March 15, 2010
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