Pot Shots

Flap over a drug inquiry

Twice a day, the line forms outside a small white building in downtown Nassau. Holding umbrellas to shade themselves from the warm January sun, citizens chat about the proceedings they have been following. "You keep hearing rumors, so there must be something to it," says a middle-aged man. Volunteers a woman who sells straw hats at the open-air market: "Everything is true; the Prime Minister is through."

The focus of this interest is a Royal Commission investigating charges that top government officials in the Bahamas have been involved in drug trafficking and bribery. Prime Minister Lynden Pindling called for the three-man panel last September after an NBC broadcast alleged that a U.S. Justice Department report had linked Pindling and one of his ministers to $100,000-a-month payments from drug traffickers. But any hope Pindling had that the inquiry would eliminate the rumors quickly backfired. At first testimony centered on lower-echelon civil servants: customs officials and police officers who were accused of accepting bribes for turning a blind eye to trafficking on the outer islands. But then witnesses began taking pot shots at the ruling Progressive Liberal Party, government ministers and finally Pindling himself.

Most of the evidence against the Prime Minister and Cabinet is circumstantial and difficult to prove. So far, the only documented charge is that Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Local Government George Smith accepted a $26,000 BMW sedan from a professed drug smuggler. But even in the absence of further proof, the commission's revelations have generated public resentment against Pindling's self-assured, 17-year rule.

The investigation has underscored the concern of many Bahamians about what the flourishing drug trade has done to their 700-island archipelago. For years the Bahamas have been a haven for arms and liquor smuggling. Then in the 1970s the transshipment of marijuana and cocaine from Colombia and other South American countries to the U.S. became a thriving business. Some Bahamians amassed fortunes by providing landing strips, storage depots and distribution channels to drug traffickers. Inevitably, violence followed, and by the early 1980s drug abuse among local residents had become a serious problem.

Because the islands are so close to the U.S. (the nearest is only 50 miles from the coast of Florida), American officials link the U.S. drug problem to the Bahamian traffic. The U.S. has offered Pindling equipment and expertise to destroy airstrips on uninhabited islands where light planes transporting drugs can easily refuel. But Pindling has refused the aid, calling it "inadequate and insufficient." Former Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Thompson told the commission he was "gravely concerned about whether the police administration was really concerned about eradicating drug trafficking." Bahamian Attorney General Paul Adderly adds that both the U.S. Justice Department and the State Department have refused to provide evidence to the Royal Commission.

When the commission's findings are released in the spring, it will be up to Adderly to decide whether criminal charges should be pressed, and against whom. Pindling may not wait that long. It is widely expected that he will try to bolster confidence in his government by calling for general elections. If he loses, his tenure will end in an ironic twist: he came to power in 1967 amid a corruption scandal that implicated members of the previous administration.