The Tribune

THE ANGRY words being exchanged in the House last week have been building up from the last Christie administration over a six-acre piece of property owned by fashion designer Peter Nygard. But that is the problem — Mr Nygard bought three acres of property at Simms Point. Now known as Nygard Cay, the property has over the years grown into six acres of land — it is said by accretion, which seems to have had an incredible amount of human assistance.

The problem is that it sits on Crown land, which cannot be sold, but which Mr Nygard is fighting to purchase, obviously believing that the Christie government is indebted to him for his financial generosity to his government, which helped the PLP win the 2002 and 2012 and possibly even the Elizabeth by elections.

On September 12, 2012, the permanent secretary, wrote to the Prime Minister informing him in a Minute Paper that “very clearly Mr Peter Nygard has abused the town planning provisions of our laws, but since no steps have been taken by the various government agencies to stop such abuse we cannot at this late date seek to enforce the law”. Mr Nygard points to a 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,” the permanent secretary explained, ”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 government previously sought to cause Mr Nygard to reinstate the coastline to its former dimensions,” wrote the permanent secretary. “This is now impractical. Mr Nygard’s development essentially sits on the Crown seabed and the previous beach on the southern side has been destroyed. Reinstatement would mean the wholesale demolition of the Nygard Cay development.

Obviously, the Save the Bays environmental group joined the battle to preserve the remaining beach area and seabed, much to the growing anger of Mr Nygard. Hate, and racist-fill placards at rowdy rallies threatened the Save the Bays group. Members of the group were frightened for their safety.

It then broke out in public mushrooming into a full-scale debate in the House last week.

From the hate-filled rallies, it developed into threats of death or harm against members of the group — in fact certain violent acts were carried out. Save the Bay members turned to the police for help. Apparently, the police said “yes, yes,” but did nothing. The threats became worse. Our Business Editor, for example, who has no connection with Save the Bays or Mr Nygard, but only writes about their activities as it affects business, was targeted. He and his family were threatened with death if he did not stop writing. We were surprised when the Commissioner of Police expressed his annoyance that the group had turned to American investigators and proceeded to do their own investigation. What did the Commissioner expect? They were certainly not going to sit down and wait for something serious to happen before they acted.

Save the Bays did their own investigations with the help of experienced foreign investigators. It resulted in them bringing an action in the Supreme Court against Mr Nygard and his lawyer, Keod Smith. They interviewed two criminals who seemed happy to give them information and take a video of Mr Nygard recording his words of contempt for Mr Christie, who, according to Mr Nygard had not delivered on his perceived promises.

Marathon MP Jerome Fitzgerald then stood up in the House to accuse Save The Bays of being nothing more than a “political organisation” that is seeking to “overthrow” the Progressive Liberal Party government “under the guise of an environmental group”.

This is not true, and Mr Fitzgerald should know that it is not true. But one thing it will certainly do is hang out the dirty political linen for all to see. Something that should have been done long ago.

It is Mr Fitzgerald and his party who have turned this into a political football.

Everyone is wondering why if the government has a cast iron case they don’t bring it on. They have prepared a case for litigation, for some reason they have failed to file it.

Is it because they don’t want to file it as originally drafted? Dr Andre Rollins tried to lay it on the table of the House - it was laid on the table, but the Speaker wants to go over it first before it is released.

Many Bahamians must wonder why. The reason is that Mr Fitzgerald was presenting a sanitised version to the House. The original version, which showed many paragraphs and pages had been deleted, was the one Dr Rollins wanted to get on the table. All references in the original documents to Deputy Prime Minister “Brave” Davis were eliminated in the document that Mr Fitzgerald was presenting to the House.

Mr Davis has said that by publishing from affidavits that purport he had a close relationship with hired criminals, The Tribune was conducting a “shameful” smear campaign against him.

This is not true. Government has tried to make Mr Pintard out as having a close relationship with the same two criminals. He probably had no more of a relationship than had Mr Davis, but it seems it’s all right to trash Mr Pintard’s reputation.

We believe in fairness. As they say, “what is good for the goose is good for the gander”.

Mr Pintard has as much right to a good reputation as does Mr Davis. If we leave Mr Davis’ name out — as the Fitzgerald document tried to do — then Mr Pintard’s name should have also been left out.

The Tribune is not trying to pillory anyone, it — like everyone else — is just trying to get to the truth.