Bahamas Blog

I signed up for DSL service from Batelco last week, Friday. I wanted to give the national phone company the opportunity to provide my Internet connectivity after giving my business to Cable Bahamas' Coralwave for a few years. Call me patriotic.

The people at BTC said my new DSL service would take until Tuesday (today) for the account to be hooked up.

This morning, I unhooked my cable modem from Cable Bahamas, installed my new DSL modem, reconfigured my computer and was ready to roll at 9:00am.

No connection. All day I waited.

I called BTC a few times to see why it was taking so long. I had already waited four days for something that seemed like it should have been connected by the time I got home last Friday.

Calling BTC is an especially frustrating experience. First of all, no one ever even answers the phone, and once you get through no one you speak to can help you and instead has to forward you to some one else, who has to forward you to some one else, etc. One can never seem to get connected to anyone who knows anything about what's going on.

The friendly lady in the DSL department told me she doesn't know why it is not hooked up yet, but of course, there isn't anything she can do. Meanwhile, all the key players are, as usual, unavailable.

Mervin Major, the man apparently in charge of DSL, is "out" and unavailable.

BTC's under-boss, Leon Williams, is as usual, "off the island". I wonder if BTC would be better run if the managers weren't always "off the island." It must be hard to run a company, correctly, when you are never there.

Finally, there is Michael Symonette, the top man at BTC, the man who is responsible for all this confusion and incompetence. Of course, he's never available either.

Small wonder why BTC and their DSL service gets clobbered by Coralwave. BTC can't even hook-up a paying customer after four days. There is no excuse for that. If this is indicative of the service I am going to receive as a customer of BTC's DSL, I might end up back on Coralwave within the week.

Quote:

"Say what? He gat extradite? Boy, that nigga' owed me 50 dolla. I knew he gon leave town witout payin me. He do anyting to get outta payin me."

Former acquaintance of Samuel "Ninety" Knowles

There is still a rumble in the Bahamian media about the "rushed" extradition of Samuel "Ninety" Knowles to the US on drug charges. Only in The Bahamas would six years be considered "rushed".

There have been a few in the media who say Knowles wasn't accorded his "day in court", referring to a pending matter in the Bahamas Supreme Court over whether Mr. Knowles would receive a fair trial in the United States after President George Bush labeled "Ninety" a "cocaine kingpin".

Despite the concern that the statement may have caused Mr. Knowles or his lawyers, it means little to the jury pool in America. Mr. Bush also called most Americans "terrorists" when he decided, all by himself, to wiretap, basically, the entire country. So, I really doubt him calling Samuel Knowles a "kingpin" would have much of an affect on the fairness of his trial in the US.

The people who say Ninety didn't get his last chance in a Bahamian court are wrong. What these people are either ignorant of, or are taking advantage of the general public's ignorance of, is the fact that there were two separate exdradition requests.

Concerning one extradition request, the Privy Council did, indeed, rule that there was a pending action in the Bahamas Supreme Court. The learned justices sent that matter back to The Bahamas to be decided there.

However, and this is a big however, in the OTHER extradition request case the Privy Council ruled against a similar appeal, to a separate Bahamas Supreme Court decision, in which Mr. Knowles' lawyers again argued, this time unsuccessfully, that Knowles could not get a fair trial in the United States. In other words, the Privy Council felt he could indeed get a fair trial. That meant Knowles was "good to go". He was to be extradited according to the treaty between the Bahamas and the US.

Even that took two weeks. That's no rush.

But what about the other case that was to go back to the Bahamas Supreme Court? That is the case that his supporters now say he was "robbed" of.

That case was rendered moot by the Privy Council's decision in the other extradition case. The US dropped the case, meaning that there was no longer another case against Mr. Knowles in that matter.

Despite the public outcry by his attorney Roger Minnis and Senator Damien Gomez, Knowles HAD his day, many days, in court. Having won extradition in one matter (and they only need to win it in one matter) the US dropped the other request.

There is hardly a need for Mr. Knowles' appearance, or his Defense Attorney's appearance, in the Bahamas Supreme Court if there is no longer a case to answer to.

Besides, the appearance in the Bahamas Supreme court was to be in front of Justice Lyons, a real judge, not one of the rent-a-judges that helped get the case as far as it had gotten to that point.

When you get one of those poorly argued "Bahamian-delayed" cases in front of a real judge, the game ends there. Only with rent-a-judges like Hugh Small and former Supreme Court Judge Stanley Moore can corrupt lawyers buy "justice."

I doubt a real judge, like Lyons, would have found much merit in Knowles' claim that he couldn't get a fair trial in the US. The Privy Council didn't buy it. It's unfortunate that we have so few real judges in the Bahamas.

Anyway, despite what his disgruntled former acquaintance said above, many of the people who knew "Ninety" personally say that Knowles had more ethics and business sense than many of our current politicans.

Ooh, that's a scary thought.

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This is a good article that pieces together all the information available on the death of Anna Nicole Smith's son, Daniel, in The Bahamas.

It also suggests that all is not as it appears.

Minister of Immigration Shane Gibson's handling of Anna Nicole Smith's permanent residency permit is the focus of a number of news stories recently.

It became a hot topic last week when the former Minister of Immigration under the FNM administration, Dr. Earl Deveaux, made public comments criticizing the fast-track treatment given to the former Playboy Playmate's application.

Also last week, the FNM released a statement alleging that Minister Gibson had visited Ms. Smith in hospital and at home following the sudden death of her 20-year-old son Daniel, who died in Doctors Hospital while visiting his mother and new born sister on September 10.

In defense, Minister Gibson admitted that Anna Nicole Smith was his "personal friend", figuring that would explain the personal attention he lavished on the celebrity. What Gibson didn't think of, was that his admission also explained how she got her permanent residency status so quickly... favouritism, which is a bit like "reverse vindication" and something that ethical politicians would try to avoid.

Sadly, Prime Minister Perry Christie attempted to defend Minister Gibson, saying that the PLP is merely "establishing new records in efficiency." But there are dozens of people who applied for permits well before Ms. Smith did, and who are still waiting for status, who can testify that the process has not been made any more efficient.

The two political parties can try to turn this into a political circus but it is not about politics. The fact is... Shane Gibson got caught playing favourites, and that's no way to run a country's immigration department.

Mr. Gibson needs to stop acting like a star-struck schoolboy. I suggest he put away the Playboy magazines, zip up his pants and tend to the matters at hand, after washing his own.

I think it is especially scary that the Prime Minister is considering naming Damien Gomez to the Bahamas Supreme Court.

That is as bad as Wayne Munroe being the head of the Bahamas Bar Association.

OMG, he already is.

No wonder the Bahamas legal system is so dysfunctional.

But to further sully our already questionable international reputation by placing Gomez on the Supreme Court is nothing short of a crime against Bahamians.

Both Gomez and Munroe joined with Knowles' attorney Roger Minnis in protesting Samuel 'Ninety' Knowles "unfair" extradition. The attorneys felt that the extradition was "rushed" and that Ninety didn't get his due legal process in The Bahamas.

I said before that people who supported that train of thought were wrong. They were criminally-minded and the controversy would end if the matter was ever argued in front of a "real" judge.

Well, it was.

Attorney Roger Minnis went to the Supreme Court to have Ninety's extradition, in effect, overruled. And also to have Fred Mitchell (who signed the extradition order) and Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson thrown in jail for contempt of court.

How ridiculous is that?

Well, Justice Jon Lyons of the Bahamas Supreme Court ended the debate and the legal shenanigans, ruling that the 'game is over' and that any further legal activity would be 'sailing close' to an abuse of the legal process. Lyons supported his wise decision by adding that the proposed arguments were destined to fail at the Privy Council, based on previous rulings by the learned justices. All that would be accomplished, Lyons said, would be an unnecessary delay of the case and the possible embarrassment of the Bahamian judiciary.

Now, this makes a dangerous situation even more dangerous.

It is a clear and present danger to the Bahamas legal system that someone with such poor ethics as Wayne Munroe would be the head of the Bar Association.

How much worse would it be, if an even more unethical louse, like Damien Gomez, were named to the Supreme Court. We only recently retired the infamous crook Stanley Moore from the bench. We do not need more of his criminally-minded ilk in our judiciary.

Damien Gomez publicly announced his warped opinion on the Knowles' matter. In other words, if this case had been delayed a few months, if and after Gomez was made a Supreme Court Judge, the evil little scamp would have ruled in Ninety's favour. Justice would have been perverted. The precedent set by the Privy Council, in an earlier ruling, would have over-ruled by Gomez in a trashy display of legal abuse.

And this is the man Perry Christie wants to appoint to the Supreme Court of The Bahamas.

Think again Perry.

Am I alone in condemning Damien Gomez and his aspirations for the Supreme Court?

Take our fair-and-balanced poll and let's find out.