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If the media and the Opposition had checked to confirm Elections Minister BJ Nottage’s recent statement that the January Gaming Poll cost $5 million before extensive reporting and announcing a Party position respectively – what happened\u00a0 with the Minister changing the figure he gave, would not have been able to happen.<\/p>\n
And what should also now be checked is whether or not the “I think it’s $5 million” figure he gave last week represented one of two things:<\/p>\n
#1<\/strong> – a combination of the actual public service cost to hold the Gaming Poll plus other payments\/payouts connected to that Poll or<\/p>\n #2<\/strong> – monies spent in payments\/payouts outside of the actual cost. In other words, was the “I think it’s $5 million” figure merely a mistake, or is there much more to it?<\/p>\n Last week Minister Nottage told the media on camera that “he thinks” the Gaming Poll cost about $5 million. The Prime Minister had said it would cost approximately $1 million. Today, Minister Nottage “corrected” his statement, and said that upon checking with Parliamentary Registration the figure is actually only $1.2 million ($1,238,092.95 to be exact).<\/p>\n Now here are the two big issues in this:<\/p>\n #1<\/strong> – when BJ Nottage gave that $5 million figure, both the media and the Opposition ought to have checked with Parliamentary Registration right there and then on what he said – if only due to the major discrepancy between his figure and the Prime Minister’s figure.<\/p>\n But the problem is this – that is not how we do reporting and responses in this country. Whatever falls out of a politician’s mouth, the media and others simply run with it without checking the veracity and\/or accuracy of what has been said.<\/p>\n #2<\/strong> – Both the media and the Opposition will likely say BJ Nottage is playing a game with them by changing the figure. Here’s the thing – if he is playing a game, had both the media and Opposition done their job and checked to confirm his statement – he would not have been able to play such a game. Check what they exclaim to prevent a game. Had both the media and Opposition checked, they would have had the $1.2 million public service figure before Minister Nottage could change or correct what he said.<\/p>\n I, as a writer, intentionally held off on initially commenting about BJ Nottage’s “I think it’s $5 million” statement, and I did so to check some things out first as his statement raised certain suspicions. I received confirmation of some things and was writing this article today when I heard the Minister had changed the figure.<\/p>\n A general election – the major national poll of The Bahamas- only costs a maximum of about $1.5 million to hold. Parliamentary Registration can confirm this. Any extra money would be for overtime paid to Parliamentary Registration to prepare a new Register. Since the January Gaming Poll was held using the current Register and not a new one Parliamentary Registration had to create, overtime costs to create a new Register would not arise.<\/p>\n This information added confirmation to my suspicions that the January Gaming Poll by itself could not have cost $5 million to hold.<\/p>\n So the question that remains is this – did Minister BJ Nottage simply misspeak when he gave that figure five-times above what the poll would actually cost, or does that figure represent more than just the $1.2 million Parliamentary Registration says was spent to hold the shambolic January Gaming Poll?<\/p>\n If the government truly only spent $1.2 million and nothing more – where did Minister Nottage get the $5 million figure from? How do you mix up 1.2 for 5? That’s quite a big so-called “mix-up”, wouldn’t you say?<\/p>\n Sharon Turner Minister Nottage said “he thinks” the Gaming Poll cost about $5 million. The PM had said it would cost approximately $1 million. Here are the two big issues in this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":28934,"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":[137,168],"class_list":["post-40745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-gambling","tag-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40745","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\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwww.thereal242.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"