The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

ADMITTING that government’s attempts to take back BTC’s majority shares have not gone the way he would have liked, Prime Minister Perry Christie said the current budget constraints would not allow the move in any case.

This latest development follows a number of different statements on the issue by Mr Christie.

Last December, Mr Christie told this newspaper that Cable and Wireless had no intention of selling their shares and negotiations were deadlocked.

A few weeks later, the Prime Minister then told reporters that the talks between the government and the company were far from over.

Speaking to reporters yesterday outside the Cabinet office, Mr Christie said that up to this point, CWC has resisted the government’s intentions. He believes that a turn of events that saw CWC’s CEO David Shaw announce his resignation from the company had some affect on the current state of the negotiations which are led by businessman Franklyn Wilson for the government. Mr Wilson is the chairman of the state-appointed committee.

“From the outset,” Mr Christie said, “I sought not to have an adversarial relationship, but one where we were able to sit and discuss amicably the intention of a government to acquire an additional two per cent.

“That has not gone in a way that I would have liked it to go.

“There was obviously resistance to the idea and as I have indicated to the negotiating committee there will come a stage when they will have to report to me that they have gone as far as they could unless there is some significant movement by Cable and Wireless and representatives.

“We thought there would have been, but something what happened to Mr David Shaw and seemed to interrupt what I anticipated was going to take place. So again it’s now a question of reviewing where we are.”

As it stands BTC is 49 per cent owned by the public and 51 per cent controlled by CWC.

Last week, “take-back” negotiation chief Franklyn Wilson claimed that his team had come across several “shocking” details of the BTC deal about which the Bahamian people should be informed. However, Mr Wilson has yet to reveal those findings, although he urged the Prime Minister to have a House select committee appointed to investigate them. When asked about the “shocking revelations”, Prime Minister Christie confirmed that he had seen them, but was not surprised by them. “I’m in politics,” he told the reporter, “I find nothing shocking. I have to deal with what I find.”

FNM Chairman Darron Cash has since urged Mr Wilson to stop wasting the Bahamian people’s time with empty promises about BTC.