By: P.J. Malone

As a reminder, Save The Bays (STB) cried “Wolf!” to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the IACHR believed them, in turn granting STB’s petition and demanding that The Bahamas Government cough up tax-payer resources to protect the Save The Bays Five from (what the public can see) non-existent danger.

As a result of this move by the IACHR, Amnesty International cited IACHR, and also put in their report that The Bahamas has ‘right to privacy’ and human rights issues.

When the State Department wrote their report concerning The Bahamas, in some instances they used words like “alleged” and “reportedly”—Seems like they may not be buying the wolf-cry completely; smart! Nevertheless, the State Department has listed many of STB’s accusations in their report.

In touting these reports, however, Save The Bays forgot to cite examples like these from the U. S. State Department Human Rights 2016 report:

• “The RBPF took action against police misconduct, firing multiple officers during the year for illegal activities, including two officers convicted of stealing $22,000 during a traffic stop.”

• “The constitution provides for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respected these rights. An independent press; a relatively effective–albeit extremely backlogged–judiciary; and a functioning democratic political system combined to promote freedom of speech and press. Independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views without significant restriction.”

• “The government did not restrict access to the internet or censor online content, and there were no credible reports that the government monitored private online communications without appropriate legal authorization.”

Save The Bays foray into the political arena is how this dangerous snowball effect got started.

As a 501(c)3 organization, Save The Bays is prohibited (based on United States Treasury regulations) from actively engaging in political action. For example, IRS.gov states,

“Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

Yet Save The Bays has always had a political agenda as seen by their own admission and in its constant attacks against the Progressive Liberal Party Government.

Save The Bays Director and attorney Fred Smith has created a dangerous snowball effect with his baseless accusations against the Government of The Bahamas. He seeks to create many “black marks” against our country and we should be outraged at his irresponsible, vindictive and malicious efforts to blacken the name of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas among the international community.

These international organizations need to be more discerning and throw away the apple because it is rotten at the core.

In fact, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, “We have cautioned these organizations not to uncritically accept information that is passed on to them, without more investigation.”

International organizations need to heed this advice before they lose their credibility listening to the irresponsible wolf cries of Save The Bays.

It would be wise of them to stop looking at STBs’ shiny red apples for its beauty and inspect the core before indicting an entire country that it knows to have a tradition of sound stable democratic governance and absence of human rights abuses.