{"id":18371,"date":"2012-02-22T22:36:51","date_gmt":"2012-02-23T03:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=18371"},"modified":"2012-02-22T23:42:15","modified_gmt":"2012-02-23T04:42:15","slug":"fred-mitchell-responds-to-guardian-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2012\/02\/fred-mitchell-responds-to-guardian-editorial","title":{"rendered":"Fred Mitchell Responds to Guardian Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"PLP
Fred Mitchell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I wish to respond immediately to the Nassau Guardian\u2019s editorial of 21st February in which it called for me to apologize to Dion Foulkes for words spoken by me in my own defence last week.<\/p>\n

You can hold your breath for that apology. You will see the second coming first.<\/p>\n

Help me understand the logic here.\u00a0 Here I am minding my own business.\u00a0 I have conducted myself with all decorum and responsibility in every public office which I have had the opportunity to have in this country.\u00a0 Suddenly and without warning, a minister of the government whose government had in its possession a report which discredits the very accusations he is about to make, puts into the public domain comments which injure me in my character and reputation. The attacks were unwarranted; the allegations are false and defamatory.\u00a0 They were investigated and the issues settled five years or more ago.\u00a0 The Minister knew this at the time he laid the document in the Senate last week.<\/p>\n

The Nassau Guardian based on these reports in the Senate carries a headline which says that I am accused of corruption.\u00a0 This goes to the heart of my existence as an individual, as a public figure.\u00a0 It imperils my job and my living. It threatens my ability to travel and makes me a target of physical harm.\u00a0 Yet the Nassau Guardian in its editorial is now saying that I must sit back and\u00a0 be a punching bag for every Tom Dick or Harry because I am PLP and in public life and allow these persons without penalty to make allegations of corruption against me. I must simply sit back and say nothing.\u00a0 Worse, and in the most perverse logic I have seen in my career, I must now apologize to Dion Foulkes.\u00a0 You have got to be joking.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only my mother\u2019s home training that has not caused me to do worse.<\/p>\n

The charges of fomenting violence are so contemptible, I hesitate to respond. Obviously, we all speak a different language.\u00a0 Those who know me, know if that is what I wanted to say I would have said so.<\/p>\n

Dion Foulkes, Hubert Ingraham as Prime Minister, Brent Symonette as Foreign Minister and Lynn Holowesko as President of the Senate are all complicit in this matter.\u00a0 I hold them personally responsible for the consequences of their official actions. Let me make that abundantly clear.\u00a0 This is no joking matter to me.\u00a0 The police report now in the public domain speaks volumes about the accuser.<\/p>\n

I ask these public officials this however: a Bahamian Foreign Service officer by a document which they have now clothed with Parliamentary immunity initiates a meeting with an agent of a foreign government; she makes to that foreign government agent an allegation or corruption against a Bahamian minister, her boss at the time.\u00a0 She admits she has no evidence but makes the allegation anyway.\u00a0 Before doing so, she did\u00a0 not complain to the Permanent Secretary of her ministry, the Bahamian Commissioner of Police, the Bahamian Leader of the Opposition, then Hubert Ingraham, nor the Bahamian Prime Minister then Perry Christie.\u00a0 She did not even go to the Bahamian press.\u00a0 This is an officer who is sworn to uphold the integrity of the Bahamian state, who by the government\u2019s own document has provided information to a foreign state, yet by all accounts that officer is still sitting in office. Messrs. Foulkes, Ingraham, Symonette and Mrs. Holowesko all have sworn to uphold the constitution and uphold the sovereignty of The Bahamas. They have done nothing to deal with the foreign service officer. Rather what they have done is to revel in the discomfort they have caused me for political purposes. I can assure you it is only a joke to them and perhaps to the Nassau Guardian.\u00a0 Not to me.\u00a0 The Nassau Guardian has had nothing to say about that dereliction of duty on the part of those named officials.<\/p>\n

It is even more egregious since the charges made by the officer are false.<\/p>\n

And the Nassau Guardian says Fred Mitchell must apologize.\u00a0 In this forum I cannot tell The Guardian the words I would like to say.<\/p>\n

By: Fred Mitchell MP
\nFox Hill<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fox Hill MP Fred Mitchell makes it very clear that he feels no need to apologize for taking umbrage to accusations of corruption that seem to have been made as a political ploy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[93,41,168],"class_list":["post-18371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-corruption","tag-immigration","tag-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}