In a recent statement Mr. Christie basically admitted that he miss-handled the issue of the “regularization” of web shops. He said he should have regulated the industry rather than allow Bahamians to vote on the issue.

Moved from its original date December 3rd, 2012 to January 28th, 2013, voters overwhelmingly rejected the government’s offer to regulate and tax web shop gaming with 50, 270 people voting against the “opinion poll” and 32,533 voting in favour of “regulating” the industry.

Recently, Mr. Christie said he ought to have “moved immediately to regulate the industry without going to a referendum and to articulate to the people of the country that we were going to have enormous problems trying to have an environment where web shop gaming is not regulated.” Yet according to the Prime Minister at the time, he did not have a horse in the race. The Prime Minister has the nerve to say this after taking the country to a referendum/opinion poll which cost The Bahamian people millions of dollars.

Unless under pressure from a certain grouping, it is difficult to understand how the Prime Minister in his recent statement about the outcome of the referendum/opinion poll has the audacity to tell the Bahamian people that he regrets holding the referendum/opinion poll and hinted that his government may still regulate web shop gaming despite the no vote.

We in the DNA strongly believe the country did not have to find itself in this situation because the Prime Minister was informed long before the referendum/opinion poll that the very foundation of such a “referendum” was ill conceived.

You cannot regulate something that is not lawful, and the Prime Minister was informed of this repeatedly. However, the Prime Minister and his band of merry men decided to go ahead with what they eventually described as an opinion poll. So it had no legal bearing whether we voted yes or no.

Moreover, during that period leading up to the referendum/opinion poll Mr. Christie's government admitted that they could not enforce laws that make it illegal for Bahamians to use web shops for gaming purposes.

In any other country, a government that admits that they could not enforce their laws would be asked to step down and allow another administration to take over. First world countries and truly developing countries would have insisted on this administration’s resignation.

The Prime Minister is an attorney by profession and he has attorneys in his Cabinet and surrounding him. He is quite aware that if he wished to legalize the web shops, it’s just a matter of amending the Lotteries and Gaming Act by the stroke of a pen.

In a statement that was made in November 2012, the DNA said no matter which way the Bahamian people voted on the referendum/opinion poll, we would be in the same position as before the poll, and here we are in February 2014 in the very same position. The only difference now is the fact that web shop gaming has become even more entrenched in the community and the industry continues to blossom seemingly unabated.

The Prime Minister was elected on the May 7th 2012 to do the job of governing, not to be indecisive and play politics and favours with important issues like the rights of Bahamians or the lack of rights for Bahamians to gamble in The Bahamas.

Looking back after more than a year following the exercise, the government has presented the Bahamian people with nothing more than a very expensive opinion poll that will be paid for by hard working Bahamians, the majority of whom are barely able to make ends meet. It was a colossal waste of time!

The DNA would now advise the Prime Minister that when he talks about regrets, he must now pay close attention to the noise in the market regarding the implementation of VAT, a tax to be placed on the backs of the poor people of this country while the country is in a recession. If there is any type of regret the Prime Minister is facing now, he needs to know that the biggest regret he would have in his political career would be to cause the people of The Bahamas and generations to come to suffer grave financial distress because of the implementation of VAT. If the Prime Minster is thinking about regrets, he had better think long and hard about that one.