The Tribune

ON Thursday, October 10, 2014, Prime Minister Perry Christie, speaking at the second annual National Data Protection Symposium, recognised the importance of data protection. It had, he said, become “an international issue of great concern.”

It was important, he emphasised, to recognise the increased need for the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, to ensure that each individual’s personal information is indeed protected and secured.

As a result, he said, his office had formed a special task force, chaired by the Attorney General, and Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald, to oversee this process.

Mr Christie noted “with great interest, that this forum addresses one of my Government’s mandates for the Office of The Data Protection Commissioner and related entities, which is to make The Bahamas a preferred destination for data relocation services.”

A year later Mr Fitzgerald, speaking at the third National Data Protection Symposium, told Bahamians that the Data Protection Act will ensure the protection of personal data. It is designed “to protect people’s fundamental rights and freedoms and in particular their right to privacy with respect to the processing and access of personal data.”

However, four months later, Mr Fitzgerald stood on the floor of the House and as he lay confidential financial information on the table declared that he was doing so because Save the Bays — an environmental organisation locked in a dispute to save Crown land and the seabed at Nygard Cay for the Bahamian people - was just a “political organisation” seeking to “overthrow” the Christie government. Although government had admitted to receiving a political donation from Nygard, Prime Minister Christie denied Nygard was given anything in return.

The environmental battle started several years ago when having bought three acres of land at Simms Point, Nygard claimed that through nature’s accretion an additional three acres had been added to his property for which he wanted title. He reminded the prime minister of the $5 million donation he claims he gave the PLP for the 2012 election.

Mr Christie has denied that any promises were made to Nygard in exchange for the $5 million.

Under the Ingraham administration, Nygard had been ordered to reinstate the coastline to its former dimensions. However, in a Minute Paper to Prime Minister Christie on September 12, 2012, it was the opinion of the permanent secretary “to do this would be impractical as the Nygard development essentially sits on the Crown seabed and the previous beach on the northern side has been destroyed. Reinstatement would mean the wholesale demolition of the Nygard Cay development.”

The permanent secretary also noted that “Mr Nygard points out the number of approvals issued by various agencies of the Government, but, what is conspicuously missing is building approvals from the Ministry of Public Works. The structures that now maintain at Nygard Cay could never have been approved by the Ministry of Public Works. The development is foreign to the Bahamas and has no Bahamian character whatsoever.”

The permanent secretary goes on: “Mr Nygard speaks of accreted land forming the expanded beach on the northern side. The evidence suggests that there was minimal accretion and the beach is man-made, built from the spoils from dredging to clear Mr Nygard’s marina.”

The permanent secretary, among other things, suggested that “a lease be approved for the seabed already encroached upon. There should be no grant of the seabed. Also no further encroachment should be tolerated.” The permanent secretary also pointed out that it is not “the government’s policy to lease or sell beaches and the laws dictate that for the most part beaches are public.” He also suggested that “there be no reclamation in future without government approval.” This in brief is a part of the observations and recommendations by the permanent secretary, to which Sir Baltron Bethel, senior policy adviser to the prime minister, agreed.

This is the background to today’s controversy, which led to Jerome Fitzgerald, the minister appointed to protect data, to stand on the floor of the House, and decide that Save the Bays was not an environmental organisation, but a blind to destabilise the government.

He felt that this was sufficient justification to release private data, including financial statements of each committee member, with promises of more to come.

Of course, the moment he revealed highly sensitive private information all hope that Mr Christie might have had “to make The Bahamas a preferred destination for data relocation services” evaporated into thin air. It was a pipedream that came to a crashing end.

The Data Protection Commissioner Sharmie Farrington-Austin condemned the breach of trust in the House as a “most dangerous trend and leaves society open to chaos.”

“No citizen,” she said, “should be above the law. This office cautions against the practice of obtaining private citizens’ correspondence and tabling them in the House of Assembly. This, in my view is a most dangerous trend and opens up the society to chaos.”

She noted that not one of the complainants had provided her office with any information about what took place in the House.

What she did not know was that instead of showing their hand and hastening further unlawful releases, Save the Bays went straight to the court to get an order to stop the parliamentarians, or any other unknown person, from any further releases of private documents. She also noted that deliberations of Parliament and parliamentary committees are excluded from the jurisdiction of the Data Protection Commissioner.

Of course, Fred Mitchell, who earlier had an interesting opinion on what he would do with foreign investors who insulted his prime minister, by-passed that particular issue.

Instead he and Mr Fitzgerald referred the matter to the House Committee on Privileges. If tradition holds this is the political graveyard for this matter – this committee will probably never report. And so the matter is dead - or so they believe.

Of course, a PLP controversy would not be complete without the final words of wisdom from PLP chairman Bradley Roberts, who suggested that those uncomfortable with leaked information getting into the public domain should “get over it.” To him it was just a “fake furore.”

The public will realise what a “fake furore” this is when investors realise that their private financial data is no longer safe in the Bahamas.

They will start to look for other destinations. The doctors, already concerned about the security of their patients’ personal records under the NHI scheme, now fear this House of Assembly breach further jeopardises patients’ confidentiality.

But what can you expect from a PLP government? Naturally their political interests are far more important than those of the Bahamian people. However, on election day Bahamians will have the last word.