WITH wrangling over the gambling referendum threatening to kill the government’s winning momentum, Prime Minister Perry Christie did the politically prudent and most intelligent thing: postpone the referendum.
It truly would serve no one to have the public voting amidst so much confusion and entanglement. But the Prime Minister had few others to blame for his unforced errors: the most glaring, his lack of transparency concerning the national lottery; and the most naive, underestimating the power of the black crab.
More disappointing, however, than some of the prime minister’s actions, was the decision of the opposition Free National Movement (FNM) to play tit-for-tat with the referendum. Rather than showing leadership and being transparent about its own failures and actions as government, the FNM seemed intent on sabotaging intelligent debate with politricks.