Appointing a retired justice to review the cause of the delayed release of a report on Rubis is “pathetic,” according to former Free National Movement Chairman Darron Cash.

“Pathetic is the one word that adequately describes the latest announcement that Prime Minster Perry Christie and his attorney general have appointed a retired justice to investigate why it took the two of them over one year to release to the public a critically important report on the Rubis oil spill in Marathon,” Cash said in a statement.

He called this investigation a joke, similar to the attorney general’s investigation into the matter involving Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources Alfred Gray.

On Monday the government announced that Justice Joseph Strachan was appointed to conduct a thorough independent review into the cause of the delayed release of the Black and Veatch report on Rubis’ oil spill.

According to Cash, this announcement is evidence that Prime Minister Christie is “clueless” as to what is happening in the government.

“They need no investigation,” he said. “It should be self evident as to who commissioned the report. That person and we presume it was a minister, ought to have been the first person to act.”

Cash explained that Christie, Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson, Minister of Health Dr. Perry Gomez and the Member of Parliament for Marathon Jerome Fitzgerald have “failed.”

“They do not need a witch-hunt to blame anyone else,” he said. “They all failed in this critical instance of governing. The Rubis matter was Crisis Management 101.”

Cash further explained that it is evident that no one in the Christie administration cared enough about the health and safety of the people in Marathon because “it was simply not important for them.”

He pointed out that the attorney general indicated that the matter “got lost in the shuffle.”

“Even with two ministers in the Office of the Attorney General they are still incapable of effectively managing important matters. It is a further indictment on the attorney general that she can act at a moment’s notice to run to the rescue of the political appointees who oversee Urban Renewal but she, evidently, had no time for and moved in slow motion when it came to serving the needs of the people of Marathon,” the former FNM chairman said.

“Clearly, the ‘constant communications’ that Rubis said it had with the government was not enough for the prime minister or the attorney general to ask themselves, ‘why is Rubis doing all this and sending us all this information?’”
Cash said the prime minister must be “non compos mentis” if he thinks anyone will believe the “ridiculous announcement” of a retired justice to review a report on Rubis.

“The Bahamian people have long passed the point of ‘either or’ with this government,” he said, adding that the government is “clueless, incompetent, insensitive, out to lunch and out of touch.”