Smith: PM should have apologized to Bahamians

The Nassau Guardian

Former parliamentarian George Smith said yesterday he believes Prime Minister Perry Christie should have come back to the Bahamian people and formally apologized for deciding to go against the results of the 2013 gambling referendum.

While Christie told The Nassau Guardian in January that he regrets taking the web shop regulation issue to a vote, he has yet to apologize for ignoring the will of the people as expressed in that referendum.

There has been no indication from him that he intends to do so.

Smith said the apology should have come before the announcement in the House of Assembly that the government plans to tax web shops.

In his budget communication last Wednesday, Christie confirmed that web shops will be taxed as of July 1, 2014.

Smith’s comments came on 96.9 FM’s radio talk show ‘Jeffrey’ with host Jeffrey Lloyd.

His comments were made in response to former Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) minister A. Loftus Roker’s harsh criticisms of the prime minister’s “million plus dollar referendum mistake”.

In National Review, Roker said, “He (Christie) shouldn’t have gone to referendum, because he wanted the referendum to say yes. The referendum said no.

“If I were prime minister, I would resign. If I reached that point. I made a mistake and I would pay for it. I would resign.

“That’s what he should do. And let the other fellow who [comes] along do whatever they want to do. But there has to be a penalty. There has to be something.

“You just can’t keep making mistakes and say I’m sorry...”

Christie’s statement on web shops last week came 16 months after the majority of people who voted in the referendum voted against regulation and taxation.

When Lloyd asked Smith whether he agreed with Roker’s statement that the prime minister should resign, the former MP for Exuma said he maintains the greatest personal respect for Roker.

Pressed on whether the prime minister should have been a “man of his word”, and should be held accountable for promising to follow through on the outcome of the gambling referendum, Smith said, “That is true.”

However, Smith argued that it would be very challenging for the prime minister once the “clear advantages” of a regulated web shop industry became evident, to keep his word on the referendum, especially when considering the international pressures.

Smith said Christie’s comments to The Nassau Guardian in January that he ought to have regulated the web shop sector without going to referendum was an acknowledgement that the referendum was a mistake.

“Now he perhaps ought to have done it earlier, and perhaps he ought to have said to the nation, ‘look, I said I’ll do this. I now know things that I did not know, so I’ve changed my mind’,” he said.

“I think sometimes when grown men, intelligent and responsible grown men, get to the point where they recognize that I was wrong on that point and I do change my mind, I think that is an act of great maturity and great intelligence.”

Before the referendum, Christie had pledged to abide by the results.

Government officials later pointed out the referendum was non-binding.

Smith made that point again yesterday.

“And so, I give him credit for coming to that, and it couldn’t have been easy, and he must have known that he would have faced abuse,” he said, if reference to Christie’s admission in January.

“But if he didn’t have the referendum, the country, and particularly those who are opposed to any form of gambling in this country, they would have said he promised to do it and he didn’t do it, so you would have had to have lived with that aspect, that kind of abuse, and that kind of embarrassment.”

Smith said sometimes people in high office are placed in challenging positions where they are either “damned if you do or damned if you don’t”.

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