The Tribune

By KHRSNA VIRGIL

Deputy Chief Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

SENIOR Free National Movement members yesterday insisted that they were not concerned or moved by Prime Minister Perry Christie’s threat to reveal documents detailing the previous FNM administration’s efforts to partner with the Chinese for agriculture and fisheries developments, saying this was a mere deflection away from the failures of the Progressive Liberal Party government.

FNM Deputy Leader Peter Turnquest and Long Island MP Loretta Butler-Turner said the troubling concern for many Bahamians is the Christie administration’s affinity for conducting business in “secret”.

While both MPs acknowledged that Chinese investors were engaged in major projects during FNM terms in office including Baha Mar and Hutchinson Whampoa for the revival of Grand Bahama’s economy in 1992 and 1993, they maintained that these dealings were done in a transparent manner.

This, Mr Turnquest said, was a major difference between the current PLP administration and the then Ingraham led government.

“Not at all,” he said when asked whether there was any concern over Mr Christie’s threat to table the documents in the House of Assembly revealing the FNM efforts to partner with the Chinese in the House of Assembly.

He continued: “They are trying to divert attention from their abysmal leadership to date. Digging up all this information from the past is a diversion. Most Bahamians recognise what they are trying to do.

“They are depending on a foreign government to bail them out of their dismal failure and ceding control of large amounts of land and economic activity reserved for Bahamians.

“I think the thing the government misses is this has nothing to do with xenophobia or disliking investments with the Chinese. What we have concerns about is the amount of investment of a state owned nature or influence by the Chinese state.

“With recurrences of this kind, decisions then become entangled in politics and geophysics. We don’t know how that will develop in 20 to 30 years. You don’t want that kind of ownership to be ceded to any state owned entity.

“But no one can argue that the investments of Hutchinson Whampoa wasn’t an economic driver in Grand Bahama.

“If that is what he is pointing to he is being misleading and engaging in back and forth argument. That doesn’t make sense.

“If you talk about the Baha Mar deal and the financing that was arranged by the Export Import Bank at the beginning of the deal because financing was in jeopardy. So that project wouldn’t have been completed if they didn’t find some source of funding.”

Meanwhile Mrs Butler-Turner, who was a part of the last Ingraham Cabinet, took exception to the government’s lack of transparency.

She said the “proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back” was recent controversy surrounding Agriculture and Marine Resources Minister V Alfred Gray. It involves a $2.1bn agriculture and fisheries proposal for Andros by the Bahamas Embassy in China that would involve Chinese investors.

She said: “I think why we are concerned is that everything the government seems to be doing is almost exclusively with the Chinese government. Now we are talking about something as precious as this country’s fishing industry. That is the one that Gray has said he gave his consent to discuss. That is the proverbial last straw.

“We have no difficulty with Bahamians being able to harvest fish and to be able to export. If they are going to have a discussions this is way advanced and that is frightening.

“Fifteen per cent of the Chinese diet is made up of sea food protein they have over fished in their part of the world. Their mechanisms are alien in the way we fish in this country.

“When we brought the Chinese to this country it was agreed to by an act of Parliament,” she continued.

“The difference between the FNM and the PLP they are making secret deals. I have no fear of what the prime minister threatens to bring. Mr Christie and his administration they have a proclivity for doing things in the dark. That is what is most troubling.”

In the House of Assembly on Monday, Mr Christie revealed that the previous FNM administration held talks with the People’s Republic of China and private Chinese companies through the Bahamas State Investment Administration Bureau for projects and co-operatives, which included Crown land acquisition.

However, he stopped short of tabling the documents, and instead invited FNM Leader Dr Hubert Minnis to review the files so that he could be informed without “having to make it into some ridicule of a nation”.