Aiye­goro Ome

I am writ­ing be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley makes a state­ment at the post-cab­i­net press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day how­ev­er, I feel that we may nev­er know if the T&T Gov­ern­ment has been hon­est about the back­ground to the San­dals pull­out.

From the re­cent press con­fer­ence, we know that mega-min­is­ter Mr Stu­art Young and the San­dals CEO, Mr Geb­hard Rainier, blamed neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty which Young at­trib­uted to "a hand­ful of peo­ple, some with agen­das and some with per­son­al agen­das".

But sup­pose the re­al rea­son is that the Gov­ern­ment on its own vo­li­tion and not San­dals de­cid­ed to with­draw from the deal fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tions in the Oc­to­ber 2017 Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and San­dals Re­sorts?

Let us re­mem­ber that Afra Ray­mond had to dig out the MOU via the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, fol­low­ing a rul­ing from the Privy Coun­cil.

Re­mem­ber al­so that im­me­di­ate­ly pri­or to the press con­fer­ence there was a closed-door meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Min­is­ter Young, San­dals CEO Rain­er and San­dals deputy chair­man Adam Stew­art at the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence. What was the re­al agen­da at that meet­ing?

As Ray­mond was re­port­ed to have said in a Jan­u­ary 15, 2019, news­pa­per ar­ti­cle, head­lined "Neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty not re­al rea­son for San­dals pull­out"—"When the MOU was fi­nal­ly re­vealed af­ter my law­suit, the terms were shown to be law­ful with the State mak­ing all the cap­i­tal in­vest­ment, no guar­an­tees or quo­tas as to jobs, sup­pli­ers or ser­vices, Gov­ern­ment agree­ing to prompt­ly pro­vide as many work per­mits; trans­fer pric­ing was be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed via this agree­ment and San­dals was plac­ing no cap­i­tal at risk. None. It was re­al­ly To­ba­go love."

Pri­or to now, there was a De­cem­ber 10, 2018 ar­ti­cle head­lined "San­dals or laced up boots" writ­ten by Mr Regi­nald Du­mas, for­mer diplo­mat and head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

Du­mas wrote, "the priv­i­leges ac­cord­ed San­dals al­most sug­gest that a new state is be­ing cre­at­ed with­in the State of T&T. For in­stance, the Gov­ern­ment is to "ex­tend ap­plic­a­ble ben­e­fits…to be ne­go­ti­at­ed and agreed be­tween the par­ties to 'as­so­ci­at­ed' and/or 'af­fil­i­at­ed' com­pa­nies of San­dals and al­so to named non-res­i­dent con­sul­tants, con­trac­tors (etc) en­gaged by San­dals for all or any pur­pos­es re­lat­ing to the op­er­a­tion, ex­pan­sion…and main­te­nance of the re­sorts…" Is trans­fer mis­pric­ing there­by fa­cil­i­tat­ed?

"Al­so, San­dals "will have the op­tion to ex­tend the terms (of agree­ments en­tered in­to with the Gov­ern­ment) for…15 years (be­yond) the ini­tial 25…" I see no such op­tion for the Gov­ern­ment. Is there one? And if San­dals changes sta­tus from Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny to "own­er of the free­hold to the (ho­tels)", it will en­joy "in­cen­tives and tax re­liefs…no less favourable than those grant­ed (in the MoU)." No ifs, no buts."

If I am right, the state­ments made about the with­draw­al fall with­in the mind­set of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion which treats any crit­i­cism as "un­pa­tri­ot­ic", an­oth­er way of re­buk­ing the pub­lic for be­ing "farse and ou­ta place" when the pub­lic was just "mind­ing their own busi­ness"!

In oth­er words, the PNM is tak­ing up the di­rec­tive of the first prime min­is­ter and founder of the PNM, Dr Er­ic Williams who said words to the ef­fect, "when I speak, let no dog bark".

This Gov­ern­ment takes no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what has hap­pened with the San­dals fi­as­co and we are none the wis­er.