The Tribune

By THE OBSERVER

ON MANY occasions Hubert Alexander Ingraham stated publicly that Mr Sarkis Izmirlian would never get financing for Baha Mar. He was wrong. He was wrong, because when it comes to high risk, bound to fail ventures there is always a loan shark lurking. It is seldom the objective of the loan shark to get the money back. They know they won’t and they don’t need the money. It is the ulterior objective, it is the big fish they seek and they are ruthless in their pursuit.

It should not be a mystery to us what the Chinese want: it is what all powerful countries want. It’s not about interest earned on a loan or making profits from operating a hotel. They want resources for the mother land. Whether it is the provision of employment for their endless supply of labourers or coal for their power plants, the Chinese need resources. They are the seekers of the dilithium crystals as the Romulans were on Star Trek and they will be ruthless in their quest.

They have a four thousand year history of ruthlessness, and as evidenced in their position on human rights, the trait has not diminished over time. For their population of 1.3 billion to thrive and survive, they need an almost infinite supply of resources that can sustain the needs of that population and if other “lesser” or “inferior” civilisations must be vanquished, then so be it. Darwinian truth does not limit itself to the Galapagos, and from the perspective of the Chinese we are “a weak link”.

If you have not yet ascertained what the above allusions to loan sharks, Star Trek and Darwin all add up to, let me put it in abundantly clear terms.

After 43 years of Independence, The Bahamas is perhaps on the cusp of becoming a colony to a power far greater that the slew of European conquerors that came ashore in their low tech vessels in the 15th and 16th centuries in search of mythical gold and the fountain of youth.

And what you ask is Baha Mar’s role in all of this? Unknowingly, the global supplier of peanuts turned hotelier, may have inadvertently removed, or at best, weakened the barrier of sovereignty, and allowed the conquerors a foot in the door, perhaps reluctantly abetted by the Ingraham administration and zealously promoted by the Christie administration to a people that lay waiting anxiously for economic salvation.

21st century Bahamas has real and retrievable resources; an abundant fishery, arable land, sand, and oil, and the degradation of our environment to access those resources are irrelevant to the invader. The Chinese care about tourism and the effect of turning turquoise waters to black, fished out oil slicks as much they do about the impact on mountain climbers that scaled the summits that have been flattened so that copper and other minerals could be extracted. Along with the debauchment of our land and sea, the modern breed of Bahamian people could possibly go the way of the folks we now ironically revere and remember with the handing out of the Duho for our tourism awards.

Why would the Chinese government be interested in a “small 4 billion dollar” venture in The Bahamas or giving a gift of a poorly constructed stadium and cheap loans for roads? What possible interest would they have in a place that is as removed culturally from them as oxygen is from the moon? Is it a coincidence they are excitedly building docking facilities in Abaco and Andros? Was it in preparation for the fishing deals that got politically skewered (for now)?

Almost every financial expert in hospitality and gaming will tell you – a 4 billion dollar Baha Mar can never make money. So why do it? The opening of Baha Mar will lead to a spiraling down of average room rates and a reduction in capital investment for upgrading and maintaining facilities that will result in the decline in the quality of experience that will render the Bahamian tourism product akin to two stars at best and our standard of living to the status of an undeveloped country. And in that state of desperation, we will give way our fisheries and arable land and sand and oil for crumbs so that we may put food on the table where, as we seek to fill our bellies, one generation will reminisce about when there was an abundance and the younger generation will only imagine those times, as we now repeat tales of when bread was five cents a loaf.

Only when we are desperately trying to under cover of night, seek to migrate on raft or unsafe watercraft to a US whose borders will be more tightly controlled, will we all realise that Baha Mar was maybe much ado about our undoing.

We don’t have to look very far to see the evidence of this possibility. Look to Freeport, Grand Bahama. The loan sharks in that instance were the Hutchinson Whampoa Group. The eye was on the container transshipment business. In exchange they also managed to control the entity (Port Authority) that would control what went on in Freeport and ultimately its business. The nail in the coffin was the hurricanes and voilà, you are left with an island economy in critical demise.

Could the hurricane in the instance of New Providence be Baha Mar and the CAT 5 impact it will have on tourism and therefore our national well being? Freeporters are evacuating to Nassau, Abaco and even Bimini in droves. Where will the destitute from the capital seek economic refuge?

What may appear to some as the gift on Cable Beach from the Far East may indeed be the Trojan Horse that leads to our going the way of both the Trojans and Lucayans.