The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government’s failure to disclose how the Baha Mar agreement treats public assets is “a slap in the face of the Bahamian people”, the Democratic National Alliance’s (DNA) leader said yesterday.

Branville McCartney told Tribune Business that details regarding the involvement of Crown and Treasury Land in the project, and the investment incentives granted to the Chinese for the project’s completion, were the bare minimum that should have been revealed.

Emphasising that Bahamians were “no further ahead” in understanding the Baha Mar agreement than they were when it was announced last week, Mr McCartney argued that the Government should not have been shocked at the mixed reactions to it.

He argued that Prime Minister Perry Christie and his administration had nobody to blame but themselves for the seeming lack of public trust in the agreement, suggesting that their problems had started with the early 2013 ‘referendum’ on web shop gaming.

“Because it is the people’s land and the people’s money, those details at least should be made public,” Mr McCartney told Tribune Business, echoing arguments voiced last week by Fred Smith QC.

“They don’t have a buyer [for Baha Mar], as the Prime Minister has reluctantly indicated, and I think this is really a slap in the face of the Bahamian people that they’re saying we don’t have a right to know.”

Given that Crown and Treasury land is held in trust on behalf of the Bahamian people by the Government, and that investment incentives represent tax revenues foregone, both men are arguing that the public is effectively a stakeholder in the deal, and has a right to know what has been negotiated on their behalf.

The Government, though, has backed the Supreme Court’s decision to ‘seal’ its agreement with the China Export-Import Bank, Baha Mar’s $2.45 billion creditor, for reasons of ‘commercial confidentiality’.

Mr Christie argued that the size and complexity of the Baha Mar project, together with the sensitivity of the bank’s negotiations with potential buyers, meant there were valid reasons for keeping the agreement secret.

As a result, few specifics have emerged apart from the appointment of a five-man committee to oversee the payout of Bahamian creditor claims. How much each creditor will get has yet to be confirmed publicly.

Tribune Business’s own investigations have produced some details, including that the sum of money being made available by the China Export-Import Bank to pay Bahamian creditors is “about $100 million”. Those owed $500,000 or less are likely to be ‘made whole’, while larger creditors will recover a significant percentage of their claims.

The Government has made clear its exasperation and frustration that the Baha Mar construction completion agreement has not received a warmer welcome from creditors and the wider Bahamian public.

However, Mr McCartney said this scepticism was justified both by the Christie administration’s previous actions and its failure to disclose details of the Baha Mar agreement.

“We saw the frustrations of the Prime Minister, but the Government has proven they are not trustworthy,” he told Tribune Business.

“It goes back to the beginning of this administration with the gaming referendum, when they frustrated democracy and the will of the Bahamian people.”

Mr McCartney recalled how the Government promised to “abide” by the results, only to perform a complete u-turn when the Bahamian public rejected the legalisation of web shop gaming.

The ‘referendum’ was downgraded to an ‘opinion poll’, and Mr McCartney argued that by riding roughshod over the results and proceeding to legalise web shops, the Government had shown it “had a horse in the race”.

“He can’t be upset that the Bahamian people don’t trust him. He’s brought that all on himself,” the DNA leader said of the Prime Minister.

“Mr Christie, I know, was taken aback by the public reaction to his press conference. He thought it would cause his party to poll better.

“He wanted the people to believe the PLP were working for them, that jobs would be forthcoming. He failed to realise the Bahamian people were smarter than what he thought. They saw there was not a buyer or operator.”

Mr McCartney added that the Prime Minister and the Government were “living a dream” if they believed the Baha Mar project would be completed and open by the end of the 2016-2017 winter tourism season, just in time for the general election.

“I think the Prime Minister has realised he has run out of time,” the DNA leader added. “It’s going to be the next administration that opens Baha Mar or whatever the new entity is called, not this government.

“You’re going to tell me that within six to eight months they’re going to have that resort open? A promise is a comfort to a fool. They say that fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. They can’t fool the Bahamian people any more.”

Mr McCartney also pointed to the contradiction between Mr Christie’s assertion that the China Export-Import Bank that was solely responsible for the agreement’s sealing and comments by Raymond Winder, Baha Mar’s receiver, that the Government had also been involved in pushing for this.

“I was very surprised to hear him [Mr Christie] say that it was quite common to seal documents,” the DNA leader said. “He has changed his tune from the press conference a week ago, when he said the details would be forthcoming in the next few days.”

The issue was further muddied by a release from the New Progressive Institute, a PLP think-tank, which suggested last week that the Baha Mar agreement would only be made public when the project was completed and sold.