The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

IT IS rare that any legal cases have serious public implications. The press reports often make them seem too turgid and technical to attract reader attention.

But this one is different. Simply put, Grand Power Company (GBC) is denying that it is subject to our national utility regulator, URCA. GBC argues that it is solely governed by the Hawksbill Creek Agreement, which created the Freeport Free Trade Zone some 50 years ago, and is therefore exempt from the Electricity Act 2015 which puts it under URCA.

This presents a profound, possibly Constitutional, issue that could well be argued all the way to the Privy Council. It applies not just to GBC but to the much broader question of how Freeport and the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) are to be governed. Are they to continue as semi-autonomous bodies, or fall more under the control of a strong central state?

I submit that, smart as lawyers are, this issue should not be left to them. Legal arguments over the scope and intent of Hawksbill versus the authority of a modern legislature will not resolve the issue. What must be decided is matter of politics, in the best sense of the word, and economics. Regardless of what may have been the virtues of Hawksbill as originally conceived, a new arrangement must be created with the objective of offering the maximum growth to the entire island of Grand Bahama, and thus for the benefit of the nation as whole.

Before the issue ascends, or descends, to the realm of endless motions, judgments and appeals, the litigation should be ended and the matter referred to a special Commission where the GBPA, and its many foreign and domestic licensees, sits down with Parliamentarians and spokesmen for civil society, advised by impartial economists, to work out this new arrangement. It will be a negotiated compromise of national authority that will not stifle the best measures of independent self-government - with the clear objective of growth for all rather than power closely held either in Nassau or Freeport.

Such a Commission is not pie-in-the sky. The groundwork has already been laid by the painstaking research of the study committee led by Dr Marcus Bethel, who could become Commission Chairman. What will be needed is simply the commitment by all parties to execute the Commission’s decisions and not simply pigeon-hole them.

RICHARD COULSON

Nassau

July 14, 2016