Bahamian voters ousted incumbent Prime Minister Perry Christie in the May 10 national election, a result that some have speculated could have negative effects on the new .2 billion Baha Mar casino resort, a project revived by Christie after its original owner was forced out.
The new prime minister will be physician Hubert Minnis, who heads the Free National Movement (FNM), the opposition party to Christie’s Progressive Liberal Party (PLP). The FNM achieved a clean sweep at the polls, a result that will leave the PLP just five seats in the 39-seat House of Assembly.
Minnis was a vocal critic of Christie’s government throughout the Baha Mar saga, beginning with Christie’s forcing the project into receivership after founder and owner Sarkis Izmirlian stopped paying the Chinese state-owned contractor. Christie’s government subsequently forced a sale of the project—which sat idle for two years, about 97 percent complete—to Hong Kong conglomerate Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, which completed construction in time for a sot opening in late April.
Baha Mar is slated to begin accepting paying guests to its first hotel, Grand Hyatt Bahama, on May 29.
Minnis has complained that the sale Chow Tai Fook was a sweetheart deal for the operator at the expense of Bahamian citizens.
On the last night of what was a contentious election campaign, Christie warned voters that Minnis’ FNM will “try to sell Baha Mar, which would mean court cases, which would mean delays and thousands of jobs at risk.”
Minnis, in fact, pledged in a March Facebook statement that he would, if elected, “execute a real sale of Baha Mar to a qualified and respectable purchaser.” Many have speculated that purchaser could even be Izmirlian, who invested nearly $1 billion of his family’s money in the project’s construction costs, and who made several appeals to Christie’s government—all rejected—to re-establish his ownership.
