The Tribune

“GET up and get going or you will be gone!” was the swift kick in the pants that the late Prime Minister Sir Lynden Pindling gave his MPs on the last night of the PLP’s 35th national convention. The date was November 7, 1990. The MPs obviously did not take him seriously because two years later – August 19, 1992 – after 25 years in office they were gone. Given the heave-ho by the Bahamian people who by then had had enough of being taken advantage of. Bahamians went to the polls and turned the government over to Hubert Ingraham’s FNM. The situation at that time was the same as it is now — unemployment was high, the economy was in trouble, and internationally the Bahamas was known as a ”nation for sale.” The FNM, under the astute leadership of Mr Ingraham, stepped into the breach and governed for the next 10 years, soon erasing “the nation for sale” tag from our nation’s escutcheon.

Although Sir Lynden did not follow his own advice, this is what he told his MPs on the last night of the 1990 convention.

“The last thing that we must do today to ensure continued success tomorrow,” he said, “is to be straight with the Bahamian people. We must tell the good news when it is good and the bad news when it is bad,

“Our people can be trusted with the truth. They will forgive us when we are wrong, as long as we tell them the truth they will understand our mistakes, so long as we admit them and set about to correct them.

“We must tell the Bahamian people the right and the wrong, the good and the bad. We must continue to be straight with the Bahamian people.

“Wherever we have made promises in our constituencies and have not kept our word, we must go back to our people and tell them we are sorry. Tell them we were unable to do what we promised and why.

“We must be straight with the Bahamian people. Don’t promise them a job when looking for votes and then hide from them when they come looking for you to see if you really mean it.

“We must be straight with the Bahamian people,” he repeated. “When we are straight, when we consistently tell them the truth, the good and the bad we will continue to enjoy their confidence and we will continue to earn their support..”

Sir Lynden reminded parliamentarians that they existed to serve the Bahamian people, not the other way around.

Today we see the results on all sides when one ignores such sound advice — today even when on infrequent occasions Bahamians are told the truth, they do not believe it and use the most colourful language to dismiss the hapless politician - one only has to read some of the comments on tribune242.com to understand their disgust and disillusionment.

In May, against the background of a foreign publication predicting that the once promising Baha Mar resort would bankrupt the Bahamas, the resort’s court appointed receiver announced that there is a “good expectation” that the $3.5 billion hotel will be sold before September - in other words in two months time.

And on the Ed Field’s show last week Prime Minister Christie disclosed that China’s Export-Import Bank has a possible buyer in mind. “The bank,” said Mr Christie, “would have only chosen someone with an incredible capacity to finance a $2.5 billion deal and finish it. And so these things I think are in progress, I think we are closer than we’ve ever been before.”

If the name now floating around on the sip-sip train is the potential buyer to whom the prime minister refers then it is true that his group has the billions to finance the completion of Baha Mar, but unfortunately, the organisation also has the billions to buy the government and turn this little archipelago off the toe of Florida into a second crime-infested Macau.

In The Tribune on Monday, July 18, under the heading: “Why Baha Mar’s new owner cannot be Ho” the writer reported the rumour that the Stanley Ho family of Macau heads the list of preferred bidders for the resort.

“The Ho family,” he writes, “has made its money in Macau, the gambling mecca of China, which carries with it an unseemly reputation of organised crime, prostitution, drugs and money laundering. All it takes is a quick internet search to find that the Ho family, and its patriarch Stanley Ho have been right in the middle of the controversy.”

The Daily Telegraph of January 26, 2011 in a feature article: “Stanley Ho: the Macau gambling king who defied the odds” – reported that Mr Ho refused to cooperate with an organised crime investigation in the Philippines, telling the South China Morning Post: ‘These reports only say that I know some triad (criminal gang) members. Well, maybe you have come across some. To be associated with or to know someone is completely different.”

And the late Lee Kuan Yew, the legendary first prime minister of Singapore who was credited with turning the small port city into a wealthy global hub, reacted in shock in 2007 on the announcement that the local Gentling firm had announced that it had tied up with Mr Ho. Gentling was quickly told that its casino licence could be in jeopardy. “We don’t want any of the activities that go on in Macao here,” Lee Kuan Yew warned.

A few years ago friends of ours on a visit to Macau wrote a lurid report of their visit. The following paragraph gives a vivid picture of what they saw and were told.

“ˆIn Macau,” they wrote, “there are hotels, owned and operated by the Ho Family that had prostitutes that would walk in circles in the lobby of the hotel. They were not permitted by law to sit, so their ‘pimps’ had them parading through the hotel like cattle.

“We were also told that in cases where Chinese patrons at the casinos were unable to pay their debts, warning signs were posted on their businesses, to intimidate them into paying.

“Our tour guide also added that this family essentially ‘ran’ Macau, and there was nothing that took place in Macau that they didn’t authorize, or share a part of.”

If any part of this is true, where is our Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell, who was quick to tell Baha Mar’s desirable developer – Sarkis Izmirlian – that he should “consider making the appropriate steps to live elsewhere if he cannot conform with the expected conduct of an ‘economic guest.” Mr Mitchell also told Mr Izmirlian, a permanent resident, that what he had said to Prime Minister Christie was “offensive” and “incompatible with someone who is not a Bahamian citizen.” All Mr Izmirlian had done was to write to government reminding it that it had not paid the employees of the now shuttered Baha Mar on time as promised.

It is now Mr Mitchell’s duty to inform the Chinese government, on behalf of the Bahamian people, that if this indeed is their proposed purchaser — regardless of their wealth —they are undesirable and will not be tolerated in this country. It is also the duty of Prime Minister Christie to tell the Bahamian people what agreements his government has with the Chinese government. Need we remind him of what Sir Lynden, his mentor, advised: “Tell the truth and Bahamians will respect you.” And, according to the Bible “it will also set you free.”