The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

IN 2010, former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham approved a grant of more than 12,000 square feet of Crown land in the Cowpen Road area for Elsworth Johnson.

Mr Johnson, the Free National Movement candidate for Yamacraw, paid $5,602.24 for the land, documents obtained by The Tribune show.

The former president of the Bahamas Bar Association (BBA) said his mother leased the land from the government more than 30 years ago and after years of requesting that it be granted to her, Mr Ingraham approved the grant.

Mr Johnson now has a house on the land.

“My mother had farmed that land for years and was entitled to the whole tract,” he said, adding that piece of the tract was granted in his name at the request of his mother.

“Ingraham took the position that a number of Crown land owners in the Kemp Road area, all Crown land that people who have worked for 30 years, should be granted to them,” he said. “A number of persons therefore got the land.”

Mr Johnson said his mother wrote the Bahamas government as early as the 1980s requesting the Crown land grant and even threatened court action to get it.

“Even for those who qualified, the government did not always give it,” he said. “That’s the reason why over the years I’ve spoken to land reformation.”

Some Progressive Liberal Party supporters have claimed that the Crown land grant now throws new light on Mr Johnson’s outspoken criticism of the Christie administration during his tenure as BBA president.

The supporters, who did not want to be named, alleged that Mr Johnson was always motivated by a loyalty to the FNM because of what he had received from Mr Ingraham.

However, The Tribune has received no information to substantiate this argument.

“They probably never heard me speak about the FNM,” he said in response yesterday.

Last year, Mr Johnson spoke to The Tribune about land reform and decried the lack of a land registry system.

He said political parties too often use Crown land as a political tool, particularly in the run-up to general elections.

“To my mind, the present circumstances allow a select few to make a lot money,” he said. “It’s beneficial to preserve the present regime, allowing successive governments to use land as a pawn in terms of negotiating with the people.

“It has taken power directly from the people. A registered land system (which the Bahamas does not have) would divulge the number of frauds that cause people to be dispossessed of their land.”

During the Ingraham administration, Byron Woodside, then minister of state for lands and local government, led efforts to develop a package of bills that would have overhauled the land system.

The package - the Land Adjudication Bill, the Registered Land Bill and the Law of Property Bill - would have created a Land Registry in the Bahamas and given commercial and residential real estate buyers greater certainty that they had good title to their properties.

The bills were not passed and even though the Christie administration pledged its support for such a system, it made no progress toward seeing it through this term.

Mr Johnson said if Mr Woodside were serious about empowering people, he would have done something about the issue when he was in office.