AS TO be expected the PLP are trying to make hay from the plight of the arrested straw vendors while the sun still shines.They are looking to the Bahamas government to somehow bargain with the US government to have the charges against the Louis Vuitton Sale, arrested in New York and charged with possession of counterfeit goods for resale at their market stalls in Nassau - dropped.

Some of the vendors held in New York have been quoted as admitting that they knew the goods purchased in New York for resale in Nassau were counterfeit, and, therefore, illegal.However, once they passed through Nassau Customs they believed they were absolved of all illegality on the paying of Louis Vuitton Bags, The PLP are now trying to make government complicit in the illegal trade because by exacting customs duty the government tacitly approved their sale in the local market.

When the news first broke in Nassau of the LV,arrest the president of the Straw Business Persons Society said that unless someone could provide a means for Bahamian vendors to get the counterfeit designer bags back in their stalls without risking getting caught by US authorities, "things are going to get rough for vendors and their families. It will she said affect the vendors and it will affect The Bahamas. These bags are generating a lot of funds. The whole economy will feel it. This is what the tourists want cheap designer goods and this is what they should get was the opinion of many of the vendors.Bamboo Town MP Branville McCartney, who wants a crackdown on crime, starting with the petty offences, had his own answer for such an argument. Mr McCartney gave the case of the vendors as an example of where the local authorities had fallen down on law enforcement.

For example he said, with the straw vendors recently, the fact of the matter is what they are doing is illegal. In his opinion the vendors reasoning to continue the trade sent a terrible message to the nation youth.They also say that what the tourists want. Well if the tourist wants illegal drugs are you going to give them that If they want you to rob a bank, you going to do that asked Lv handbags Sale. According to the PLP the vendors held in the US deserve full government support which incidentally they are getting as any illegal act that they may have engaged in was done with the complicity of a Bahamian government that allowed them to do so in a government-sponsored market and collected 10 per cent customs revenue on the knock-off goods.

Now we invite the PLP to take a step back in time to the year 2006 -- it was the five-year era of the Christie administration. At the end of that year Customs, Immigration and police officers swooped on a warehouse in East Street south. There they confiscated a quantity of merchandise more Louis Vuitton Handbags sale, Chanel, Prada handbags and other designer goods. Two persons were charged four years have passed and their case is yet to be heard. The owner, a Chinese national with Bahamian status, pleaded ignorant he did not know that the mock designer goods were illegal.This warehouse was the source of supply for the straw vendors. In a letter written to us yesterday, retired assistant commissioner of police, Paul Thompson, who is still in the police reserve, told us that at the time of the raid he called one of his senior police friends. He told his friend that if the police were to do a proper job they would now have to move on to the straw market and clear the shelves of the same illegal goods there. Mr Thompson was told that that was what the police had planned to do. However, he said, the police got a call from "a senior official in government", who told them to drop the idea of a raid and give the vendors an opportunity to sell the goods.When nothing was done, Mr Thompson reasoned, the vendors thought they were in the clear and sought another outlet of purchase.