The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

AXED Bahamas Telecommunications Company CEO Leon Williams has been appointed as a BTC board director for the government, Prime Minister Perry Christie said yesterday.

Mr Williams has been in the position for the past month despite some opposition to the decision, Mr Christie said yesterday.

Mr Williams was fired as BTC’s chief executive in 2008. A short time later, he filed suit against the company. Both parties reached a settlement in 2011.

Mr Christie said: “I always wanted to name Leon Williams because (he) was the defining leader when the PLP was in power.”

Williams is also a member of the government’s ‘take back’ negotiation team led by Franklin Wilson.

While Mr Wilson has only hinted that the sale of BTC under the former Ingraham administration was a bad deal, it has been said that the efforts to regain the majority stake in the company have failed to gain leverage.

Mr Christie said a meeting was expected to take place soon with executives of Cable and Wireless, BTC’s parent company. He said: “Sometime in the future, in the immediate future, I will meet the Chairman and a very senior person in Cable and Wireless. That is something that has been organised and I look forward to that.

“It is a meeting we must have concerning everything. I have no doubt this is a meeting that we will have where they will come to the Bahamas and discuss what we need to discuss,” he said.

In 2012, while on the campaign trail, the PLP vowed to gain an additional two per cent shares in BTC. Cable and Wireless owns 51 per cent of BTC’s shares. The Bahamian people own the remaining 49 per cent.

Last month, Mr Christie announced that his administration will not, this year, be able to follow through with the take back.

He said Bahamians will have to wait until around 2015/2016 to see if those plans will bear fruit.