The Tribune

BEFORE we comment on yesterday’s press conference by Peter Nygard, we want to first clear the decks. Mr Nygard seems to have a few operatives in his employ whose business it is to spread vicious lies and false rumours.

It has been rumoured that not only are we great friends of Mr Louis Bacon of Moore Capital Management, who is also a noted environmentalist living at Lyford Cay, but that on occasions he has even written this column for us.

This rumour was so ridiculous that we never bothered to dignify it with comment, particularly as we had no respect for the source. Not only have we never met Mr Bacon, but he would not have come to our attention if Mr Nygard had not started his vicious campaign against him.

The so-called dispute between the two men flared up again around the time that Mr Bacon was recognised by the Audubon Society for his environmental contributions to the Bahamas.

This award seemed to send the Nygard camp into a tail spin, so much so that it again sparked our curiosity about Mr Bacon. We looked up a photo of Mr Bacon on the internet to discover whether in the functions we have attended at Lyford Cay, we might have seen him among the guests, but not known who he was. We can now confirm that not only have we never met him, but we have never even seen him.

As for his writing our editorials … that ridiculous tale was manufactured in the feeble brain of one of the hired hacks.

Now with that out of the way we move to yesterday’s press conference called by Mr Nygard to announce his donation of $10,000 to the Acklins regatta.

However, the fashion designer spent more time attacking Mr Bacon than talking about the regatta.

Of course, the news reporters also questioned him about his support of the PLP party, before and after it became the government, and his more than generous financial backing of the party during last year’s election.

Mr Nygard seems determined to create racial discontent in this country by stirring emotions that have lain dormant for many years. But racial division seems to have become his new whipping boy — and whenever possible he hauls it from the cupboard to stir things up.

He told reporters that Mr Bacon’s attitude against blacks was in the Bacon family’s blood line.

In fact, he said, it stemmed from a great grandfather — one Colonel Roger Moore – who, he claimed, was a high ranking Klu Klux Klan member.

Although no one can be held responsible for his ancestors, the story told by Mr Nygard is not the same as the one we have heard. However, we shan’t repeat our story until we have done further research and know the historic facts.

However, we have also heard that Mr Bacon has bought a plantation that was once owned by his great-grandfather eleven times removed. The plantation was founded in 1725. There was no such organisation as the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) in those days. The KKK and the lynch mob came centuries later — in fact after the American civil war in the nineteenth century. But more on this after more research has been done — although no matter which way it turns out, Mr Bacon cannot be held responsible because he was not around.

Although at yesterday’s press conference Mr Nygard refused to comment on whether he had any influence on Prime Minister Perry Christie, in a sworn affidavit in the Magistrate’s Court last year he said that he was one of the “major backers of opposition leader Perry Christie and his PLP party”.

He said as an election was soon to be called, he believed that Mr Bacon wanted to discredit the PLP party by arranging false charges against him since he is “a major PLP financial contributor who is associated by the public with the PLP”.

At the press conference yesterday Mr Nygard claimed that both parties — PLP and FNM— were the recipients of his political generosity.

Repeating for emphasis he exclaimed – “Both, both, both, yes!”

Last night, former prime minister Hubert Ingraham, now retired from politics, emphatically denied the Nygard allegation. He said that Nygard made no donation to the FNM.

Said Mr Ingraham: “I didn’t want any donation from him or the likes of him. That is why in all of my 15 years in office I never met him.

“I got to know who he was and what he represented before I was elected to office in 1992,” said Mr Ingraham, “and I wanted no part of him.”

Mr Nygard said that this year has been “pretty difficult” for him, because he had to continue to “defend” his own “goodness”.

If his “goodness” has been besmirched, he can only look in the mirror for the culprit. We don’t think he will see Mr Bacon there.

Mr Nygard has been so boldly in the public eye that his background can easily be researched.

An article, done by Forbes a while back, has been resurrected and is now making the rounds. This is not the only report, there are many others that — true or false — tell the Nygard story.

Unfortunately, Mr Nygard, a foreigner, originally from a part of the world that does not grasp our system of government, cannot understand why his behaviour could — and should — be an embarrassment to Mr Christie.

Mr Nygard has been more than generous to the government, now he wants to continue his reclamation at Nygard Cay and build a stem cell centre. For this, he needs government permission.

If our principles of Cabinet government are observed, whenever the matter comes before the cabinet for consideration, every chair should be pulled from the table.

All of them — from Nygard’s own mouth — seem to have too much of a vested interest in the enterprise to put the interests of Bahamians first in their deliberations.

We do not expect Mr Nygard to understand this, but Mr Christie certainly does.