by Simon
•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com
Following generations of struggle and sacrifice, you and your husband inherit a treasury of prime real estate. You retain most of the estate, cherishing its highly appraised value and, as importantly, its price-tag resistant worth as a symbol of pride and hope.
Its value includes its current worth, potential for extraordinarily lucrative development as well as a wellspring of opportunity for your children, their offspring and unborn generations.
Suddenly you hear that your husband has sold to foreign developers most of the land at fire sale prices complete with promissory notes, artists’ drawings and a sophisticated public relations machine.
The injury of the first blow -- the property being sold out from underneath you -- is followed by an insulting below the belt punch: troubling details of the sell-off are hidden from you in secret agreements.
Worse still, hubby intends to raid the consolidated funds in your joint checking and savings accounts to subsidize extensive and expensive infrastructure costs – for the development of land you no longer own!
Your side-kick role in this fantasy island scheme: make sure the new owners have their cake (the land) and can eat it too (unprecedented concessions and cash payments).
Your husband and his new suitors respond to your questions, fears and anger with a display of arrogance and patronization, slide-shows and side-shows, bluster and obfuscation.
The analogy is not perfect, but welcome to Baha Mar – a cautionary tale filled with historic irony.
At the twilight of the 15th century, Columbus planted a conquering flag on our shores, grabbing these islands from the Arawaks. For good measure, the Spanish re-branded their newest possession: Baja Mar.
Half a millennium later, at the dawn of the 21st century, misguided natives sprinted to greet a new Columbus at the beach -- Cable Beach. They lowered the Bahamian flag -- gleefully relinquishing ownership, in perpetuity, of some of the most prestigious real estate in the region.
Like Columbus, an adventurous foreign coalition, after taking possession of native land, also re-branded their new conquest: Baha Mar.
In remarkably twisted logic, those who bragged about their historic memory – and billed themselves as a modern progressive government – rubber-stamped one of the more regressive strategic blunders in an independent Bahamas?
Land and independence that natives fought five long centuries to repatriate from Columbus and his ancestors were re-alienated in five short years to speculative prospectors with shiny mock-ups of dubious value -- just like the beads and baubles offered the natives by Columbus.
Columbus never found any Bahamian gold mines, but these newest prospectors discovered their Bahamian El Dorado. Their greed was rewarded by a government anxious to the point of panic for any sort of development, a government duped about the actual resources Baha Mar could bring to the table.
Baha Mar first struck gold by purchasing expensive Crown Land at discount prices and receiving of extraordinarily generous concessions and commitments of cash payments, conditioned on their meeting a variety of benchmarks.
By October 2006 Baha Mar spectacularly failed to deliver the cash, financing, detailed plans and other promises they made as a part of their proposed $1 billion investment.
After failing to satisfy these conditions, a little humility would have been in order. Instead, Baha Mar, now quite confident they had the natives hooked, reacted with quite a bit of hubris and bluff. They now proposed to increase their “investment” to $2.6 billion!
In return for their newest mirage of promises they demanded even more bullion from the Bahamian people in the form of additional land, greater concessions and over a quarter billion dollars of cash from the people’s Treasury.
Then a funny thing happened as Baha Mar chuckled on their way to the Public Treasury’s ATM. Their negotiating partner got a pink slip from the Bahamian people. The incoming administration now had to perform a careful balancing act.
First, it had to honour, in good faith, previous government commitments. Second, it had to take account of public outrage at a number of concessions already granted Baha Mar. Third, it had to conclude a Supplemental Heads of Agreement.
The nine months it took for these renegotiations have been well spent. Most of those decrying the length of these discussions were the ones who foisted such a bad deal on us in the first place. They fooled us once -- shame on them. They have no shame in trying to fool us again.
The Supplemental Heads of Agreement saves Bahamians many loaves and fishes of dollars, retains certain public lands, better protects wetlands, improves various terms for the Government, and pushes the developers to live up to their commitments.
Unlike Atlantis, Baha Mar never brought significant collateral to the negotiating table. Atlantis purchased most of their land from private sources, had an established track record as a resort developer, and had immediate access to the cash needed to launch and sustain its mega-resort.
Is Baha Mar a house of cards bound to fail? The devil is not only in the details. It is also in how the entire deal was conceived in the first place.
The reworking of the initial Baha Mar deal, though frustrating in the short run, is, in the long run, a godsend for the Bahamian people. It is better to have a revised deal than a bad deal.
If Baha Mar lives up to its commitments, the country will enjoy a variety of economic benefits. But if Baha Mar proves incapable of fulfilling its promises, it was never a good deal in the first instance.
At that point various lands will revert to the Bahamian people. Then we can get back to an independent drawing board and stop some of this colonial nonsense. Bahamianization does not simplistically mean getting Bahamians to fill various jobs.
More profoundly, it means that the conceptualization and ownership of our tourism product must increasingly flow from our collective Bahamian imagination.
In league with countries like Singapore, this is the wave of the future we should be mastering, rather than drifting aimlessly on outdated colonial currents.
If there is a next time, rather than just waiting for developers to show up, we should actively seek partners who will help, but not monopolize, the concept for the re-development of Cable Beach.
We should insist on maintaining an equity stake in developments where considerable public collateral is included, enabling ordinary Bahamians to have greater benefit and ownership in their future.
The Baha Mar deal negotiated by the PLP was extraordinarily flawed. The FNM’s renegotiation is a welcome relief. The PLP must acknowledge and move beyond its mistakes. The FNM cannot rest on its laurels.
The urgent task now is the formulation of sustainable development principles and policies that will not only reward our investment partners but, primarily, serve the short- and long-term interests of the Bahamian people.
at the time the PLP gave Cable Beach to this group - "The Hard Rock Resort Group" also wanted it and they have a good track record.
Another f--- up.
do you need more info on this?
Posted by: confidential | April 23, 2008 at 10:36 PM