The Tribune

Stanley Cartwright says hosting the IDB conference last week at the Baha Mar Convention Centre was simple political expediency by the Prime Minister.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) conference, so highly touted by the Prime Minister Perry Christie, has now come and gone.

What the conference, if anything, will mean for the Bahamas is hard to discern. Will it produce international benefits? We are not sure, and it is too soon to know. Did it showcase the Bahamas as a place to do business or as a country with appealing economic potential? Again, too soon to know.

What we do know is that, courtesy of Mr Christie, $6m of Bahamian taxpayers’ money was expended to provide a venue for attendees and enabled the Prime Minister to fulfil his commitment to these “guests” that his country could host the conference.

Did we say “expended?” Perhaps the words “surreptitiously used” are more applicable.

After all, that is what we suddenly learned when a co-ordinator at the conference revealed the cost of opening the Baha Mar Convention Centre for this event.

It is interesting that the government, and the Prime Minister in particular, has been touting for months that the Convention Centre at the China Export-Import Bank-controlled Baha Mar property would be completed and opened on time for the conference. Many of us were scratching our heads about how this could happen.

After all, China Construction America, the Chinese general contractor at Baha Mar, had walked off the entire Baha Mar project last March, leaving it - including the Convention Centre - unfinished. As part of his touting, the Prime Minister certainly created the impression that his relationship with China Exim Bank - the same bank which has put the property into receivership and ultimately determines what happens on it - is a mutually productive one and that the bank, and its owner the Chinese government, understood the importance of making sure the Convention Centre would be ready for the IDB conference.

At no point along the way did the Prime Minister even hint that Bahamians would have to pay upwards of $6m on behalf of the Chinese government to get the centre to the point where it could be opened.

The Prime Minister has refused to confirm this to be the case - or indeed even this big ticket number. He prefers to “no comment”. But he certainly has not been at a loss for words over the last many months that a viable buyer for Baha Mar was about to step forward and that the resort would be completed imminently, though neither have come to fruition.

Remember only a few months ago we were told by the Prime Minister that Baha Mar would be opened by now. It seems every other week, as the Baha Mar site lays deteriorating, the Prime Minister seeks to create the impression that he continues to have contact with potential buyers or interested parties who are “just around the corner”.

Sometimes he even flies to different international locations with delegations of all sizes just to talk to these so-called buyers.

Now at the Convention Centre, the Prime Minister is at it again. The centre, he assures us, is attracting the mystical Baha Mar buyer, and he is having many important meetings. He can’t reveal the details, but he wants us to know. The greatest irony is that the Prime Minister has showcased the Convention Centre as the pride of the Bahamas due to the vision of Sarkis Izmirlian, the developer, the one whom the government effectively stripped of his property.

The Prime Minister apparently has no concerns that the China Exim Bank’s receiver has just implemented a so-called marketing process to sell Baha Mar that has so many deterring conditions and requirements that it is hard to imagine how any bona fide buyer would even be willing to look at the facility.

Under the circumstances, this is likely to mean basically nothing for all the unsecured Bahamian creditors, even though the Prime Minister and his administration have consistently asserted they would be paid.

To add insult to injury, we have been told that for the IDB conference there were approximately 200 people employed as staff. But nobody is willing to be specific who these 200 people were or from where they came.

Thousands of highly-trained Baha Mar employees had to be let go by Baha Mar’s Joint Provisional Liquidators last October. Are the 200 folks who worked at the Convention Centre from this laid off employee pool? If so, the Prime Minister and his administration certainly have not said so, and one would think they would very much want to. If not, shame on the Prime Minister.

Like he has done continually since last July, despite his posturing, he has once again with respect to Baha Mar turned his back on the people of the Bahamas to promote his own self-serving agenda.

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