Bahamians gamble when and where they wish.

And clearly also, there are very many Bahamians who will routinely decide to spend their hard-earned money on strong drink and on other ‘vices’.

When they do, those who would rescue them need resources sufficient to the task at hand. So, we today insist that lotteries should be so legalized in The Bahamas that they could be taxed and that revenues earned thereby should be ear-marked for social development.

Bahamians will do what they like with their own money.

This might well explain how untold thousands of Bahamians routinely spend some of their hard-earned money on bets and other wagers.

They do so because they want to do so.

It is our considered conclusion that – when they do so – they should not have to be left burdened with the guilt that comes with knowing that they are ipso facto law-breakers.

The law should be changed to allow Bahamian access to gambling in all its forms wherever and whenever in the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.

We reiterate the view that tells the world: Bahamians who wish to gamble should be free to do with their money as they see fit. If as they do so they end up distressed – that too is their business.

We are confident that Bahamians like their counterparts world-wide are – in the main – wise enough and responsible enough that gambling will be for them little more than a game or pass-time.

This is what it is right now.

We hasten to add that we are fully supportive of all those clerics and other religious who insist that each and every Christian should render to Caesar what is his and to the Almighty what is evidently and rightly due Him.

Any and all clerics and other religious who are adamantly opposed to gambling should feel free to advise their followers as they see fit.

Evidently, each and every one of these people can – if they wish – in the secrecy provided by Caesar’s voter’s booths do whatever they wish.

This is how things are done in a democracy. When the votes are counted, the voice of the people is as the voice of God.

No matter how expansive the current regime’s vision happens to be, plans, projects and other proposals are mere wind in the absence of resources needed to have them animated, capacitated and successfully implemented.

This is just the way the cookie crumbles in a very real world where there is no free lunch – you will pay for every thing you get.

If you want the police to be better trained and better equipped, you have to pay. The same thing applies to schools, qualified teachers, better clinics, better hospitals and so on and so forth.

This means that you have to find the money.
This is the current administration’s greatest challenge in a time when money coming in from the outside is not guaranteed to increase as it did in times past.

With “things tight” the government must still find the money.

Obviously some of this money can and should come from the lotteries operations now extant throughout this land.

There is no better time than NOW for the current administration to resolve – by way of referendum – the gambling issue.

For our part, we are fully agreed with all those other pro-gambling advocates that we should – as a people united in service and love – wake to the reality that each and every one of us has rights to their person, their property and their privacy.

In addition, each and every Bahamian should – as far as the law allows – be freed from the tyranny of any clique that would dare sanction the government and prevent it from carrying out the wishes of the people.

In addition, the public at large loses faith in the criminal justice system when money is wasted on trying to enforce laws that are unenforceable.

This is the crying shame that so very many clerics and other religious routinely countenance as [paradoxically[ they turn a blind eye to the fact that some of their staunchest followers either work as croupiers or who – as they wish- routinely play the numbers.

These people pay tithes!

Very many so-called [self-professing] Christians routinely and ‘religiously” attend and participate in Church activities , but who are wont – on any given day- to just as routinely take their chances on this or that number.