"Your Free National Movement government will engage and execute a real sale of Baha Mar to a qualified and respectable purchaser who believes in Bahamians; a purchaser who will utilize only Bahamian labor to complete the resort, and will put Bahamians back to work with real jobs as quickly as possible." This statement by Dr. Hubert Minnis, leader of the Free National Movement (FNM), was, simply put, terribly unfortunate and contradicts the FNM chairman's statement that "the leader has never mentioned or hinted at nationalizing" Baha Mar. Minnis' statement was, at best, a terrible attempt to pander and, at worst, an awful policy miscalculation.
The government of The Bahamas does not own Baha Mar Limited; it never did. Sarkis Izmirlian owned Baha Mar Limited. When it went into liquidation, he continued to own it, though the liquidators stood in his stead to make decisions on behalf of the company, subject to court supervision. The liquidators, not the government, sold all the assets of Baha Mar Limited to Perfect Luck Holdings Limited, a privately owned company registered in Hong Kong. So, all those glorious buildings dotting the skyline of Cable Beach that we all associated with Baha Mar were bought by Perfect Luck, and Baha Mar Limited became merely a shell of itself - a company without those assets.
The government - i.e., the Christie administration - merely approved the sale of the assets of Baha Mar to Perfect Luck. It did so as the approver of inward foreign direct investment to the country and not as the owner of Baha Mar. Very likely, the government's approval was subject to certain, now undisclosed, conditions.
Perfect Luck Holdings Limited, in turn, has agreed to sell the assets bought from Baha Mar Limited to Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, which is a Hong Kong conglomerate that recorded revenues of some $8.2 billion in 2015. The government has approved that agreement for the sale, and the sale is now being consummated subject to necessary legal due diligence and execution.
Surely these easily verifiable facts must have been known to the leader of the Free National Movement, a sitting member of Parliament and the former leader of the opposition for most of the last five years. If he does not know these things, it would be an indictment on his execution of his duties these past several years. Knowing these facts, there is no way that Minnis would have or could have said what he said. Why? First, because if he were referring to Baha Mar, the company, he would be engaging someone to buy a worthless shell company that the government did not own. Secondly, if he were referring to those properties owned by Baha Mar, he would be seeking a buyer for properties now owned by a private concern, which he would have to nationalize first in order to sell or direct the sale of. The first point would make him look ridiculous and the second point, if he were taken seriously, would make him look scary.
Any Bahamian or foreign holder of assets in The Bahamas would be frightened by the prospect that a would-be prime minister of The Bahamas could adopt a policy of nationalizing assets so thoughtlessly or, alternatively, unknowingly speaking to the same thoughtlessly. The chairman of the FNM, Sidney Collie, did make an attempt to clean up this mess, which means that the party does understand the seriousness of the blunder made by its leader. Was the chairman's effort sufficient? No, because the chairman further convoluted the matter by suggesting that the leader never "mentioned or hinted at nationalizing". That is simply not so. All that the leader said at the very least hinted at nationalizing. As noted earlier, to sell or direct the sale of any asset of the former Baha Mar would require nationalizing as a first step. That is more than a hint. That is a holler.
It would be wise for the leader of the FNM to come out and expressly say to the country, and to the world, that nationalizing private assets is not a policy of the Free National Movement. It would be wise for him to point out, in fact, that the FNM's history, from which he seems to divorce himself as a "non-career" politician, is quite the opposite; that rather than nationalizing private assets, the party while in office privatized public assets, be they hotels, the telecommunications company, flight services or the airwaves. He needs to be unequivocal on this point, for the damage his statement threatens to do to confidence in governance in this country should he win is profound.
While he is at it, the leader must also divorce himself from the fact that there are people out there who believe that his willingness to make such a reckless statement has something to do with pandering to Sarkis Izmirlian. The notion being touted is that he made the statement to curry favor with Izmirlian, who might stand a chance to regain ownership of the development if once again made available by an FNM administration. As such, the thought is, Izmirlian might be willing to help fund the FNM's bid to win the next election. Rightly or wrongly, this notion is out there, and Minnis would be wise to dispel it. While a policy miscalculation is problematic in itself, the hint of this type of scenario is even more so.
There is a lesson here for the leader of the FNM and all political leaders. That lesson is: People preparing to govern should recognize that thoughtful policy, not pandering, is where you show true leadership. Pandering might be cute. It might even be a winning strategy; but if it is based upon ignorance, folly or lies, it will not win for the people one leads. The people of this country need leadership, sound leadership. That type of leadership knows that if you are going to tweet or post on Facebook, you better be thoughtful. If that leadership is going to bring change, it knows that it better be change that counts and change you can actually make. This is true for the career politician as well as politicians who have now made politics a career. It is true for the would-be prime minister who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and the one who had someone else pull him up by the bootstraps.

o Zhivargo Laing is a Bahamian economic consultant and former Cabinet minister who represented the Marco City constituency in the House of Assembly.

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