By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

WHILE defending Prime Minister Perry Christie’s leadership on Baha Mar, MICAL MP V Alfred Gray stressed yesterday that the government is not “responsible for the catastrophe presently ongoing” at the resort.

He also hit out at the “stupidity” of critics of the government’s handling of the matter, such as Free National Movement Senator Carl Bethel.

Mr Gray also said he did not think the Baha Mar debacle will be a hot-button election issue in 2017, suggesting that information Mr Christie has given to his Cabinet colleagues has filled them with “hope” the matter will be resolved soon.

His statements came a week after Baha Mar’s court appointed joint provisional liquidators got approval from the Supreme Court to layoff 2,020 workers due to the resort’s insolvency. This came after months of stagnation over a dispute with the developer and other parties.

“Contractual arrangements are between parties, between the construction company, the bank and Baha Mar’s owner,” Mr Gray said. “The government was invited to get involved in it and the prime minister is again working overtime to get Baha Mar opened in the shortest possible time and those who are pessimistic about his optimism, well just wait and see.”

Mr Gray said he has reason to believe that Baha Mar will be ready to open in a few months, although when asked to elaborate on this he declined to do so, suggesting that Mr Christie had shared information about Baha Mar with some Cabinet members in confidence.

“He is negotiating with these players and I think the things that he has said to us (in private) give us the same hope that he has,” he said.

Asked how a failure to open Baha Mar would affect the governing party’s chances of winning the next general election, Mr Gray said: “Everything that affects Bahamians is important to elections, but I don’t know that by the time elections come around in 2017 this will be an issue. I think it will be resolved and as soon as it is resolved people will be re-employed. If this continues until 2017, I don’t know what I’ll say but certainly it would be totally disappointing. But we have a plan. We’re working that plan and I believe Baha Mar will be resolved in the next few months. Don’t worry about (it taking) years. We know what (critics) don’t know and so I can say the prime minister is not talking out his head (when he expresses optimism). He’s talking out of the confidence he has in those who have the capacity to make things happen. Those pundits and armchair people who just sit around and hope bad things happen to this country, they ought to think before they speak because if the Bahamas goes down everybody suffers. If the Bahamas succeeds, everyone wins, so people who are hoping for a failure, I don’t know where they live and who they think about when they hope things don’t go good. Everybody ought to be on the same page with a view that this opens in the shortest possible time.”

Mr Gray also defended Mr Christie’s decision to mediate the dispute between the various sides.

“Obviously he must get involved,” he said.

“The country is going to be affected by the result of Baha Mar’s position and as leader of the country it is my view that he, having been invited, he must stay involved until some resolution is had. But I don’t think he should take responsibility for what’s going on and I think that’s an unfair criticism of him because he’s not a party of the thing and people talk about if the winding up had taken place overseas we would be better off; what stupidity. What stupidity, coming from a man like the Carl Bethels of our society. I’m very surprised because if the Bahamas had no jurisdiction over what is happening, you think things are bad now, they would’ve been extremely worse, so at least we are in control of the contractual situation in the Bahamas as we ought to be.”