Fred Mitchell Press Release 20th March 2014 Washington DC Consulate good for the Bahamians living abroad Hon. Fred Mitchell Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration There are thousands of Bahamians living the 23 states serviced by the Bahamas’ foreign service office stationed in Washington DC. For the first time in its history, the government of the Bahamas has taken the policy position to extend the reach of the government’s arm into these communities where our people live through a full service and fully staffed Consular Office. This is the role of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, that’s the policy of the government and I stand by it. But beyond that, under United States law, Embassies and Consulates must occupy separate physical spaces and this is the legal reasoning behind the separation of offices in Washington DC. Hubert Chipman should know this or he should have done his due diligence before opening his mouth and sounding ignorant like someone out of his depth. Also, if Hubert Chipman has an alternative and viable policy – like providing and staffing adequate facilities to better address the concerns of Bahamians living abroad at no additional cost to the government – then I’m all ears. But true to form, as night follows day, the FNM who has no position of value on anything, no viable alternative, is at it again opposing for opposing sake and complaining. They somehow manage to agree, but disagree at the same time on the same issue. On the issue of the increase in staffing, the PLP government took the policy position to establish an embassy in Geneva. The FNM government clearly supported this policy by allocating monies in the budget for the establishment of this foreign mission. Why then is Hubert Chipman in the media with this misleading drivel about 300%-400% increase in staffing? How does he agree with the establishment of the mission and disagree with funding the same all at the same time? This is ignorance that I simply don’t have time for nor will I kow-tow to this. The FNM claims to agree with the need for tax reform, but they are “not on the VAT train” (according to Minnis) nor do they offer any alternative. All through the debate on the asset acquisition for the RBDF, one FNM speaker after the other stood on their feet, claimed to understand and accepted the need for the vessels, but complained about funding the vessels; they agreed, but disagreed with the same issue all at the same time. It’s unbelievable! The FNM government managed to waste huge sums of public money on unnecessary repairs to an official residence in Atlanta and so neglected the official residence in London that it cost the current government an exorbitant amount of money in repairs to make the High Commissioners residence livable. To the contrary, the FNM government is the one guilty of wasteful spending of scarce public resources so they should be the last to open their mouths about wasteful spending. This government is providing much better services to Bahamians living abroad and is doing a much better job than the FNM at promoting Bahamian culture, trade and business opportunities and communicating the same to all – both at home and abroad. END
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 13:15:31 +0000
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