Bahamas suspends parliament after lawmaker throws symbolic mace out window

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(Reuters) – The Bahamas’ legislature was forced to suspend its session on Wednesday after a heated debate about a police corruption scandal escalated, with one opposition lawmaker grabbing the symbolic parliamentary mace and throwing it out the window.

Parliament member Shanendon Cartwright, frustrated after Speaker Patricia Deveaux did not let him speak, was seen rushing up where she was seated, grabbing the parliamentary mace, a heavy ceremonial staff, off the bench, and then tossing it out a nearby window.

“Get him!” Deveaux then yelled, with the incident recorded on a government broadcast.

He, alongside several ally lawmakers, were forced out of the building by police.

The move harks back to 1965, when the leader of the opposition threw the mace out of a window in a push for political change, an event that became known as “Black Tuesday.”

It comes after U.S. federal prosecutors charged several high-ranking Bahamian police officials with facilitating the flow of cocaine into the U.S. in exchange for bribes.

Prime Minister Philip Davis said during the session on Wednesday that the police commissioner had resigned, and promised a complete overhaul of the force to weed out corruption.

Outside parliament, dozens of protesters gathered, shouting “Police are criminals!”

(Reporting by Kylie Madry and Robertson S. Henry; Editing by David Gregorio)