“NO role of DPP on social media war” – The Tribune 07.24.2018

Excerpt from this article; “PROGRESSIVE Liberal Party Chairman Fred Mitchell yesterday expressed shock over the government’s decision to refer a ‘simple social media, political war’ to the director of public prosecutions.

In a statement, Mr. Mitchell questioned the use of the state apparatus to investigate ‘some phantom alleged criminal behavior’, and suggested there was an agenda to intimidate PLP supporters.

He condemned the act as shameful and ‘nakedly political’, adding the party expected to see the specific directions given by the Attorney General Carl Bethel gazetted as required by law.

‘We think the real story here is the prosecution that were unleashed on PLP MPs; this is now victors justice again’, Mr. Mitchell said.

‘This reference to the DPP is designed to intimidate PLP partisan in their social media warfare against FNM trolls who continue to defame the PLP leaders.”

As Mr. Mitchell rambles on with, “we think the real story is the prosecutions that were unleashed on PLP MP; this is victors justice again.”, maybe he would like to explain to the rest of us exactly what he is referring to because I would like to just to note for the record that over 80 percent of the population is completely lost by the tenuous connection that he is attempting to make because as far as many of us are concerned he [Chairman Mitchell] has already showed his ‘cards’ with the comment suggesting that this is an “agenda to intimidate PLP supporters”, surely something else must be going on that most of us are unaware of or maybe this is all in Chairman Mitchell’s mind.

It is interesting that Chairman Mitchell would even get himself involved in such a ‘non-issue’ in the first place, as he labeled what is going on as nothing but “a simple social media war.”

The Chairman’s stance is that this issue should not have been forwarded to the director of public prosecutions; stating that “the [PLP] party expected to see the specific directions given by the Attorney General …..” suggesting at this point he is basing his entire opinion of the matter on two things; one, the theory that this is merely something orchestrated to ‘embarrass’ the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) and two, pure speculation; as he does not give any plausible explanation as to why the matter should not have been referred to the DPP’s office.

Stripped back, there are allegations of numerous illegal activities, including murder which would be investigated in any other civilized society, is the Chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party then suggesting that we have not come far along in civility to investigate such matters just because his government decided not to carry out the necessary investigations in the Save The Bays matter?

From what I am understanding, the Attorney General has the right to refer a case to the office of the DPP and after a review the DDP can then refer the matter to the police for proper investigation if he deems it necessary but in this case certain recordings from social media were simply forward to the office of the DPP for him to do with as he pleased; no directive has been given to anyone at this point, so why I is the chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party getting ‘his drawers in a bunch’ over this ‘simple social media war’?  If it is as he says, it will run its course but to suggest that is should not be investigated shows a total lack of civility on the part of Chairman Mitchell and all of whom he speaks for.

Mr. Mitchell’s assertions that this is only attempt to intimidate PLP supporters is asinine, at best because while I may understand that he as chairman feel that he must make a comment on the matter I only ask that at the very least the statement makes a little bit of sense.

There is actually a simple solution to this issue and the chairman needs to think about simply solving the problem within his party while allowing the law to run its course.

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