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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM |
 Dear Editor,
Allow me space in your newspaper and your columns to comment on the following:
One of the inherent and calculated dangers of dying first is that erstwhile survivors get to twist the facts, spin a fable and deceive with their cowardly concoction of the easily verifiable facts. If left unanswered, their unfiltered skewer of the events is allowed to ferment through time and by attrition become fact.
Editor, I am referring to opinion of Simon Front Porch; the faceless, nameless coward whose exhale in the Nassau Guardian is yet another attempt to rewrite history. When one reads the melancholy drift into revisionism penned by the “Front Porch Simon” on Thursday April 17th 2014 and headlined, “the numbers game: PLP repeating Bahamas Airways tragedy,” one can only suspect what rascality so called honourable persons would conjure up after a few cocktails.
The plea in mitigation by Simon can best be summed up in the limerick of Edward Lear:-
“There was an old man who said, Well!
Will nobody answer this bell?
I have pulled day and night,
Till my hair has turned white
But nobody answers this bell.”
Simon apparently hails from the peculiarly distinguished school of pseudo Bahamian elites, whose singular claim and qualification to their standard of merit is that firstly, they fully endorse any foreign concept, foreign hatched or foreign based plan foisted on The Bahamian people. Secondly, people of the ilk of Simon strongly believe that the foreigners should then partner with these snooty Bahamian elites who feel that it is their divine lot to lord and master over the lumpen proletariat. Together, they will rule the proverbial plantation under the dishonest guise of a “share offering society.”
So it is that Simon, confusing oranges with bananas, draws an analogy between the PLP Government’s decision to move ahead with regularizing Web Shop style gaming in this country with a distorted and laughable argument about Bahamas Airways; a foray into a world so long forgotten that its history is insignificant.
Simon must have been chilling out with Rip Van Winkle during the age of Airline deregulation and obviously did not wake up during the folding up of Pan Am, the world’s oldest airline, or the gentle push into that good night of Eastern Airlines, and any other number of international air carriers that a generation removed once thought would last well into eternity.
In making this reprehensible argument, Simon preens all “her” character personification and inherent genetic flaws:
1. Simon is opposed to “the Numbers Men” becoming wealthier under a regularized web shop industry. Of course this is because these so called Numbers Men are in Simon’s own words supporters of the PLP. Certainly we can’t tolerate that in The Bahamas.
2. Simon is in hog heaven over what wonderful economic opportunities would have accrued to the Bahamian people if a 1967 deal with an Asian airline would have come to fruition under the former Lynden Pindling led government to partner with Bahamas Airways. How Simon is able to even relate these two separate and distinct issues into “her” argument is commendable but still foolhardy.
3. Simon is aghast and horrified that a Bahamian, Everette Bannister, who happened to support the PLP, would have been given air line routes into Europe for his Bahamas World Airlines carrier as these were the choice routes that this Asian Airline consortium wanted.
4. Simon opines that Pindling did a deal and double crossed the Asian group in favour of Bannister.
5. Simon says two PLP Cabinet Ministers Arthur Foulkes and Warren Levarity were onboard with the Asian deal.
Now any first year student of the history of Majority Rule is more than aware of the short lived political life in the Cabinet of Lynden Pindling or Ministers Foulkes and Levarity.
As we said earlier, there is a disadvantage in dying early.
What a pity that Sir Freddie Laker, Richard Branson and other pioneers of low fare intercontinental travel are hailed and respected by their countrymen and the world over, but Mr. Bannister is demonized because he supported the PLP.
Here was an entrepreneur in Bannister, who long before Sol Kerzner ever conceived Atlantis or the Issas and the Stewarts of this world transformed Sandals or Breezes, pioneered the concept of low cost international jet travel and also owned and managed a West Bay Street hotel property.
The black crab syndrome in The Bahamas did not allow or impede Mr. Bannister’s success. Because he supported the PLP and was the recipient of “affirmative action,” he was demonized by a biased media and turned into a social pariah when all Everette ever did was negotiated and facilitate a number of major investments for this country.
Had he been a Symonette by genetic circumstance or claimed familial ties with the oligarchy of Bay Street and the Eastern Road, not one soul would have raised an eyebrow or lifted a pen in opposition to his business interests. The Chamber of Commerce would have heaped its annual Businessman of the Year award on him and he would sit on the Board of any number of Insurance Companies and Banks. But he was Everette Bannister. And the side opposite needed a “bogeyman” and “whipping boy” on the back of Sir Lynden specifically and the PLP by extension.
What Simon Front Porch misses is that when Hubert Ingraham came to power on the coat tails of the FNM in 1992, he promptly put the then Balmoral Beach Hotel and the Ambassador Beach Hotels on a fire sale fast track. They were quickly gobbled up by Mr. Issa and Mr. Stewart and today are hallmarks in their brands.
What Simon Front Porch should have opined is that long before Mr. Issa and Mr. Stewart knew where Goodman’s Bay was located, Everette Bannister, a Bahamian was operating a major West Bay Street hotel and an international jet service to Europe.
But this snooty elite crew will never give Bannister his “g’s” because it is in their interest to tear him down and sully his name because out of this comes their attack on Pindling, Majority Rule and the economic empowerment of the Bahamian masses.
This is why Simon Front Porch is so proud to pontificate on how if this fictional deal with this Asian air carrier and Bahamas Airways had been allowed that the ordinary Bahamian would have been able to come along later and buy shares in this thriving business. I guess the era and casualties of airline deregulation were all lost on Simon.
Wait a minute. Simon’s pontification sounds eerily like a page out of the Ingraham economic empowerment Play Book that he affectionately called “share offering society.”
I offer a few examples that sound very familiar:
Find an investment group led by a penniless unheard of Canadian Businessman and give them exclusive rights to Cable Television and other internet services for the entire Bahamas. If the Broadcasting Corporation of The Bahamas (ZNS) has the agreement with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for satellite feed – no problem, just tap into the infrastructure of ZNS free of charge and charge Bahamian subscribers for the cable feed complete with a fourteen year monopoly. Problem solved.
Further, reject all bids from any Bahamian entity wanting to secure this lucrative concession.
But in the convoluted rationale of Simon Front Porch, ordinary Bahamians can buy shares and have an opportunity to own something.
This business model is conceptually similar to Ingraham’s deal with the owners of the Arawak Cay Shipping Port where the Bahamas government pumped some $26 million into this enterprise and civil servants were allowed to invest via salary deduction. And who could forget the liquor company the government invested in to ensure that the IPO was 100% subscribed.
When will we as a people get it that this is our country and we must own its economy?
Simon’s argument is that notwithstanding the obvious - that the “Numbers Men” are Bahamians - if and when their businesses become regularized under a PLP regime, this policy decision would somehow be wrong and will set a dangerous precedent. Never mind the easily verifiable facts that these enterprises thrived under the Ingraham administration and a 2010 draft of an online gaming bill together with the cabinet conclusion clearly outlined the intent of the FNM government to regularize the very web shops Simon now finds so convenient to demonize. The PLP is advancing this policy initiative and I suspect this is the problem in Simon’s head. That cannot be good. This policy must be demonized at all costs.
This narrative is Everette Bannister and Sir Lynden Pindling all over again, only in the 2014 version of this story Pindling is replaced by Christie and Bannister is replaced by the so called “Numbers Men.”
Says Simon Front Porch, this sort of behavior must be in the PLP’s DNA. Well, using the financial resources of the poor to enrich foreign “messiahs” and FNM donors must be in the DNA of the FNM.
If empowering young Bahamians to lead and own an entire industry is in the DNA of the PLP, then I say more power to the PLP. We need more of this type of policy.
It is time we consign the back water anti-establishment thinking of Simon Front Porch to the trash bins of history.
Let the Bahamian John Issas, Butch Stewarts, Sol Kerzners, Peter Nygards, Joe Lewis’, and Izmaralin’s emerge and take their rightful place in this economy.
I urge Bahamians to leave Simon Front Porch booked on a Bahamas Airways Flight to a bygone era; tantamount to a pile of Manure on which no flowers will grow.
Yours etc.;
Alexander Laroda
Disclaimer:
The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his/her
private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of
TheBahamasWeekly.com
© Copyright 2014 by thebahamasweekly.com
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