{"id":60579,"date":"2014-04-16T08:39:02","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T12:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/target\/webshops-are-still-in-limbo-status-must-be-settled"},"modified":"2014-04-16T08:39:02","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T12:39:02","slug":"webshops-still-operating-despite-christies-pledge-to-close-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2014\/04\/webshops-still-operating-despite-christies-pledge-to-close-them","title":{"rendered":"Webshops Still Operating Despite Christie&#8217;s Pledge To Close Them"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_19071\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19071\" style=\"width: 166px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-19071\" alt=\"Numbers kingpin Craig Flowers\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/craig-flowers2-166x250.jpg\" width=\"166\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/craig-flowers2-166x250.jpg 166w, https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/craig-flowers2-99x150.jpg 99w, https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/craig-flowers2.jpg 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 166px) 100vw, 166px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-19071\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Numbers kingpin Craig Flowers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">Gangster Craig Flowers, numbers kingpin and head of FML Group of Companies, in a radio interview last week, was asked for his opinion about the government&#8217;s decision to go ignore the wishes of the people and licence the webshops.<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">\u201cLet me assume,\u201d Mr Flowers replied, \u201cthat you would have voted \u2018no\u2019 to the questions asked, that we should not regulate webshops. We should let them run rampant. We should leave backdoors open. We should let whatever, drugs, money laundering run in and out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">\u201cI am speaking about the question,\u201d he clarified, \u201cand the question was whether or not you, who voted no, you are saying leave webshops alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">Mr Flowers has a warped interpretation of how the public voted. Nobody believes that that was how the public expected their \u201cno\u201d vote to be interpreted. In fact, virtually everybody who voted expected their resounding \u201cno\u201d vote to be interpreted as a demand to have all webshops closed immediately.<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">Indeed, it was Mr Flowers himself who, a few days before the vote, said that if Bahamians vote \u201cno\u201d he would be the first to close down his webshops \u201cwithout remorse\u201d.\u00a0 Prime Minister Christie had also promised the webshops would close if the referendum failed \u2014 in other words if the vote was \u201cno\u201d \u2014 webshops would cease operation.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_27084\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27084\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27084\" alt=\"Perry Christie\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/perry-christie1.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/perry-christie1.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/perry-christie1-150x112.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-27084\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Perry Christie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\">The \u201cno\u201d vote was considered a huge loss to the government.\u00a0 All along, Mr Christie assured that the government had no horse in the race. But, it turns out, not only did the PLP have a horse in the race, but, as a Tribune editorial states, &#8220;that handsome brute was saddled and champing at the bit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"permalinkable\" id=\"h55794-p18\">After a resounding defeat at the polls, Prime Minister Christie declared that, \u201call offending webshop owners and operators are placed on notice that all their gaming operations, including all online gaming and the numbers games must cease with immediate effect. Failure to do so will .leave web shop owners, operators and web shop gaming patrons exposed to arrest and criminal prosecution without further notice or warning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"mct_ai_excerpt\">So much for Mr Christie&#8217;s integrity [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p id=\"mct-ai-attriblink\"><a href=\"http:\/\/tribune242.com\/news\/2014\/apr\/14\/webshops-are-still-limbo-status-must-be-settled\/\" target=\"_blank\">Click here to read the original editorial at tribune242.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a resounding &#8216;No&#8217; vote in the referendum, Prime Minister Christie declared that offending webshop owners and their gaming operations, including all online gaming and the numbers games, must cease with immediate effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":19071,"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":[93,137,1999,40,142,60,502],"class_list":["post-60579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-corruption","tag-gambling","tag-gangsters","tag-government","tag-incompetence","tag-plp","tag-web-shops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60579","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=60579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}