NOTES FOR FRED MITCHELL MP FOX HILL

INTERVENTION HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

DEBATE ON BTC

NASSAU, THE BAHAMAS

21st March 2011

 

 

TOP 5 WAYS THE BTC DEAL STINKS

Check Against Delivery

Today, I want to speak to the future and to posterity.

In doing so, I want start off by reminding the country and those less than 37 years old from whence we have come.

I remind the country that what we are seeing here is yet another assault upon the creation of this great little Bahamian state.

The heirs and inheritors of this state are intent on destroying what we have in the name of expediency and lower prices.  Selling their birth right for a mess of pottage.

 

Between us and those who would do this deed are us in this House of Assembly.  The question therefore today is who will stand…

 

I want to say I intend to vote no… a thousand times no to this deal that stinks to high heaven.  It does not pass the smell test.

 

I call in aid and comfort the literature that many of us studied when we were young; the play by William Shakespeare called Julius Caesar.  The play is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies and that is what we face today is a tragedy.

 

One of the features of a tragedy is the pile up of bodies at the end… the question is whether given what these folk intend to do this week, whether or not it is the Bahamian enterprise that is at stake… And I hang my hat on trying to stop the assassination of the Bahamian state.

We have worked too hard, we have come too far, to do this without the counter argument being put.

 

In doing so, I call in aid and comfort, the words of Mark Anthony in his famous oration:  If you have tears prepare to shed them now…

 

And then there is: “ they have done this deed are honourable… what private griefs they have alas I know not that made them do it… they are wise and honourable and will no doubt with reasons answer you.”

 

And then there is that dramatic part where Caesars slain body is revealed and Mark Anthony says: “Look you here… here is himself marred as you see by traitors.”

 

Yes indeed we are in the midst of a tragedy, a drama

 

Out in the streets as the people… and like Marie Antoinette, when told that the people have no bread, the government says to them let them eat cake.

 

A Minister of the government says so f protestors that amongst them were thieves, rapists and murderer.  Demonize the protestors.  They are the problem, the protestors. 

The government would do well to remember Shakespeare again when Cassius says: The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

 

Then when there was the last protest on 23rd February, I recalled my visit to Birmingham, Alabama and the civil rights museum there.

And one of the most moving, frightening, startling exhibits in and around that museum is the walk through the exhibition of the German shepherd dogs.  During those protests led by the children of Alabama, some often then 14 years old, the police set upon them dogs.  And the designers of the museum have put up a walk outside the museum which has bronze dogs on either side as you walk through the wall to get the feel of what it was like to have dogs baying at you as you tried to protest against an injustice.

And that is what this government authorized to be brought to Bay Street and I am advised have been brought to Bay Street again.  That is what this government wants to be associated with… dogs on protestors.

 

I suppose that is what the Minister of National Security meant when he spoke from the public platform at his rent a rally on Saturday last when he said that the police are prepared for any eventuality.

 

And then the reports circulating that they have brought the Royal Bahama Defence Force to Bay Street… this from the same people who criticized the founding of the RBPF as Pindling's army and said that the late Sir Lynden would use the RBDF to suppress dissent… no look at them. 

 

But none us on this side our surprised at any of this, indeed they are the inheritors of the United Bahamian Party so we would expect nothing less. 

These are the people who get up and say Bahamianization is a failure and see nothing wrong in saying so... when the logical conclusion of that is that you are saying Bahamians are a failure..

That is why it is so easy to simply get rid of BTC for   the lower phone rates.

And will you get lower phone rates.  There is no guarantee… because the true story is that by the stroke of a pen, the government can get lower rates now.  In fact the record shows that the rates could have been lower long ago but for the fact that eh regulators refused to allow BTC to lower the rates.

I have listened carefully to all the arguments about his and all of it is about short term gain, nothing about the national enterprise.

But as I say we are not surprised since these are the same people who opposed independence… not at this time… so they are the reluctant inheritors of the state.

 

When I was foreign minister Leon Williams came to see me about facilitating the spur into Haiti and about the possibility of BTC investing in the Haitian telephone company.  In other words BTC would spread its wings south and put equity into the hands of Bahamians.

Haiti has a huge cell phone market.

And then there is the story of John Issa coming to The Bahamas, no Bahamians in hotels… what’s wrong with this picture… Need for Bahamians to be able to build up equity in their own land.

 

 

Then there is Colina which is a large insurance company preparing itself to go Global to compete around the region and the world… the Prime Minister says they want to buy every damn thing.

And yet they now seek to make us enemies of the state because we dare to say no… a thousands times no to what they propose to do.

The simple alternative position is this, simple, simple, simple:  after building up hundreds of millions of dollars of equity in BTC if you are structuring a deal that is giving a public monopoly to a private company why would you give that to a foreign company.  Why would you not allow a management buy out?

Oh yes, we know why because the leader of our country says that Bahamians can’t run it, even though they have been running it all the while.

Oh, yes we know because a minister of the government says Bahamianization is a failure.

That is our simple argument, if you giving a cash cow to someone one why not give it to Bahamians. 

But the mantra of the government is Bahamian do not apply.  On the web, they call you the Foreign National Movement.

I cannot agree and I do not agree and I will not agree and when the vote comes God willing, I shall be voting no.

The deal stinks to high heaven.

 

(1) 51% to foreign company, C &W, with a history of trouble in the Caribbean.

(2) Too little transparency and too many conflicts of interest.

(3) Government promises lower rates, but C&W is silent.

(4) Fire-sale price: sold for less than what BTC assets are worth.

(5) Bahamians shut out by the government: “Bahamians need not apply”.

 

MPs of the FNM: Do the right thing for The Bahamas – vote against this deal.

For once, show some courage!

 

In Julius Caesar:  the Ides of march are come… aye but not yet gone..

 

Before the end of the day Caesar was gone…

As Mark Anthony said: marred as you see by traitors.

End