By Oswald T. Brown

National Security Minister Tommy Turnquest is being criticized for admitting that he bought numbers many years ago, but given the circumstances surrounding what prompted this revelation, the question arises as to whether this criticism is justified.

My understanding is that the minister was being interviewed on another matter when he was asked whether he had ever bought numbers, and being the honest person that he is known to be, he answered honestly when he said, "I have bought numbers before many years ago, but I never won. So I said that I worked too hard for my money to be putting it into lotteries. I don't buy numbers but I am not opposed to it. I just don't buy it."

True, as the minister with responsibility for the police and the Defence Force, it may have been more judicious for him to decline to comment, but that almost certainly would have been interpreted as evading the issue and inviting the conclusion to be reached that he was trying to hide that he possibly was a daily numbers buyer, as is the case with many Bahamians.

More likely than not, had the same question been put to those religious leaders who are publicly opposed to the numbers game being legalized in this country, if they did not want to risk mortgaging their souls to the devil by telling a lie, they also would have admitted that they had bought numbers in the past or still do so today. Indeed, Bahamians from all walks of life buy numbers daily, although officially it is illegal to do so. In a manner of speaking, the numbers game has become as much a part of Bahamian 'culture' as Junkanoo.

Unquestionably, it is big business. Web shops, where the numbers are sold, are sophisticated operations that are set up like banks, with tellers manning computerized machines that spew out receipts with the requested numbers printed on them.

Web shops exist all over New Providence and Grand Bahama, and reportedly are also well established in such islands as Abaco, Exuma and Eleuthera.

Operators of these establishments conduct their business in the open, especially in New Providence where roadside signs advertise the location of certain web shops.

And as I have noted in this column on a previous occasion, Grand Bahama is home to possibly two of the most professionally run web shop businesses in the country, offering clients the opportunity to place bets on both night and day numbers selected by the Florida, Illinois and New York lotteries.

They have also made it convenient for persons who are travelling to make daily advanced purchases for up to a week, something that I always do when I am going on a trip, especially to the United States where the payout on a $1 bet is only $500, compared to the $800 paid in Freeport.

Obviously, if the police wanted to close down these establishments, they would have no problem doing so because they know exactly where they are located.

This is especially true with regard to the police at the Baillou Hill Road Police Station, which is situated right next to a web shop. But any effort by the police to enforce the law and close down these web shops would be a total waste of time. It is not as simple as it used to be in the days when there were three or four well-known numbers kingpins in New Providence and staging a 'raid' required very little planning. In fact, back then the biggest impediment to a raid being a success was keeping it a secret among a handful of trusted police officers, to ensure that the numbers boss who was about to be raided was not tipped off by a police on his payroll.

Even back then, the most the police ever achieved was to disrupt the business for a brief period. Legendary numbers czars like the late Percy Munnings, Louis 'Stokes' Thompson and Eugene 'The Baron' Toote would be back in business within days after they were raided, which happened very infrequently.

I have addressed this issue in this column on more than one occasion, and my strong advocacy in support of legalizing the numbers game is well-known. I abhor the fact that I am forced to 'break the law' because successive governments in this country have been too afraid of the religious backlash that they believe the legalization of the lottery would trigger.

Most of our religious leaders, of course, have their own selfish reasons for opposing the legalization of the lottery, and those reasons have very little to do with their religious beliefs. Simply put, for some of them it is a matter of economics. They are convinced that those members of their congregations who are regular numbers players support their habit with funds that would ordinarily be a part of their tithe to the church. Of course, they don't consider the fact that when these members win, they may be inclined to increase their tithe as a way of giving thanks to God for their good "luck."

What's more, many of these same religious leaders lack the moral authority to denounce persons who play the numbers, considering some of the practices that they engage in as men of God that are without question not in keeping with their religious status.

Such 'religious leaders' cannot make me feel guilty for doing something that I do not consider to be illegal. As I have noted previously in this column, I lived in Washington, D.C. for 20 years and played the numbers daily during this time in three jurisdictions - The District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia - where the lottery is legal. Only a street separates D.C. from Silver Spring, Maryland, and it is just a short ride across the 14th street bridge from downtown D.C. to Crystal City, Virginia.

So on returning home permanently in 1996, it was hardly likely that I would stop playing numbers because it is still hypocritically considered to be illegal in The Bahamas, even though it has been well established in this country since as far back as the 1950s, when the numbers picked in pre-Castro Cuba were used by operators of numbers houses in The Bahamas to determine what numbers to make a pay-out on.

Surely, using the argument that lotteries are mainly supported by the poor as the principal reason for not legalizing the numbers game in The Bahamas has no merit. People from all strata of our society play the numbers, and it may surprise our religious leaders to find out just who some of these people are. Of course, some 'poor' people who cannot afford to play the numbers on a daily basis do so, and the odds of them winning are astronomical, a fact which I am well aware of. My current regular daily number is 307, which has not come in quite some time. The combination of those numbers did come a couple weeks ago as 370, but I don't generally box numbers, so I just blamed it on the devil that it did not come as 307.

* Oswald T. Brown is editor and

general manager of The Freeport News. Comments on this column can be

sent to oswald@nasguard.com