The Tribune

FORMER Free National Movement Chairman Darron Cash yesterday questioned if it was Prime Minister Perry Christie’s plan all along to “wrestle control” of Baha Mar away from its developer Sarkis Izmirlian.

He added while Mr Christie has said Baha Mar’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the United States is a threat to this nation’s sovereignty, he will be in for a “rude awakening” if the project falls into the hands of an entity controlled by a foreign government.

The Export-Import Bank of China has invested heavily in Baha Mar and some observers fear the resort could end up as the bank’s property.

Mr Cash also said many Bahamians were left “stunned, saddened and filled with great feelings of sadness and doubt” after Mr Christie’s national address on Baha Mar last week.

“Bahamians want to trust their government and believe what its leaders say,” Mr Cash said in a statement. “Regrettably, Mr Christie has such a wide trust deficit, that his own people have come to accept that almost everything he says is subject to proof. That is a national problem at a time of crisis.

“In bringing Baha Mar to completion we have been pulling hard for Prime Minister Perry Christie. Despite our prayers and hopes, Prime Minister Christie has let us down. Quite frankly he has failed us.

“We have to wonder whether the government action announced by the prime minister (on Thursday) was not the result he wanted all along.”

Mr Cash also suggested that the prime minister shirked his responsibility when he allowed Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson to lead a delegation to China last week.

“He outsourced the big job that the nation needed him to do. The fact that the prime minister engaged in open warfare with Sarkis Izmirlian suggests that (he) wanted to wrestle control of the project away from the man who gave it life and brought it to within 97 per cent of completion,” he added. “The prime minister and his ministers had to have known that open warfare with Mr Izmirlian would have given the other parties around the table the distinct impression that the Christie government did not want them to make a deal.”

He also asked if the government is prepared to state unequivocally at this stage that it will not permit Baha Mar to fall under the direct or indirect control of an agency of a foreign government.

He also questioned if Mrs Maynard-Gibson, while in China last week, put any additional incentives or concessions on the table as a means of inducing the warring parties to find common ground.

During his national address last week, Mr Christie said negotiations in China fell through after Baha Mar said it needed increased funding but did not agree to withdraw its bankruptcy filing in the US.

Mr Christie also revealed that Mrs Maynard-Gibson had filed a winding up petition against Baha Mar and its companies that filed for bankruptcy, to bring the project under the control of provisional liquidators overseen by the Bahamian court system.