PM Says HIA Project Ready to Take Off Early Next Year!

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or Tuesday’s House session, I fully anticipated a massive turnout (to borrow the jargon of carnival-time’s double-visioned, soused color commentators), with standing room only in adjacent Constitution Park. Mindful of the spittle-soaked hoopla spewed day and night over the past month by at least three call-in TV shows, I expected the Labour Party’s No-Confidence vote against Prime Minister Allen Chastanet to bring out in droves the usual overzealous placard bearers with blood in their eyes, eager to carry out, no matter the cost, whatever their leaders determined would deliver a “new prime minister by December.”

Instead there were the usual killers of time, superfluous people, some might say, scattered around adjacent Constitution Park like dried-up leaves, doing what they’ve done for at least two generations outside the House, whether or not in session. Inside, thirty or so bodies sat in the gallery, the majority well known UWP frontliners, others dressed-up Red Zoners.

As has been the custom since the country exchanged white rule for black power, the people’s business got underway more than an hour behind schedule. The first item on the agenda was a motion in the name of the prime minister that sought parliament’s guarantee of a US$100 million loan on behalf of the Saint Lucia Air and Sea Ports Authority from the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan), to cover the cost of modernizing Hewanorra International Airport. For decades different administrations had marked the project urgent.

Said the prime minister in his introduction: “The redevelopment of HIA will alleviate the many challenges that plague the airport and ensure the facility can cater for the anticipated growth in the tourism industry.” He said his government had reintroduced, effective January 2018, the Airport Development Charge, removed when the Labour Party returned to office in 2011. “The intention is for these funds to be used by SLASPA to repay its loan for the redevelopment of HIA.” He identified multitudinous shortcomings that rendered the airport in its current circumstances relatively primitive.

As for agreed terms: loan payments to start after a grace period of five years; interest to be paid twice a year during the grace period in the amount of US$2,195,000 and thereafter at the six month London Inter-Bank Offered Rate plus 1.5 percent annually; loan to be repayable over a period of 20 years from the date of the first disbursement on the loan inclusive of a five-year grace period.

The prime minister’s nether regions had barely touched his padded leather chair at the end of his delivery when the House opposition leader and author of the earlier mentioned No-Confidence Motion jumped up to say that despite his acknowledgement of the project’s urgency, he would vote against the loan guarantee on which its establishment depended. His ambivalence centered on the current government’s rejection of earlier arrangements between the International Finance Corporation (the financing arm of the World Bank) and the previous administration that would’ve given a bank-appointed concessionaire full control of the refurbished airport for thirty years. The bank’s agent would collect all fees and have unquestionable authority to choose how the airport operated, even down to choosing who operates newsstands, restaurants, stores and other facilities at Hewanorra Airport.

A successful local entrepreneur offered me this scenario. “You have two choices. The first instance allows you can borrow from a bank to fund a well-researched, potentially lucrative undertaking under your control. You collect your money, pay your agreed commitments to your bank and keep whatever is left over. Your second choice: You permit someone else full control of your company. He pockets every cent of the proceeds and out of the goodness of his heart hands you a monthly stipend. You’re expected to be satisfied with the arrangement because it saved you from taking a loan in your name.”

With a wicked glint in his eye and smiling from ear to there, my friend asked: “Which position would you choose?” He wastes no time waiting for a reply. He says: “Bank loans are just part of doing business. While investment decisions must be well thought out, still it is a fact that too many Saint Lucians continue to believe there’s such a thing as a free lunch.”

The leader of the opposition was at Tuesday’s House session his usual articulate and measured self as he questioned the government’s decision to burden taxpayers of this country with a US$100 million loan repayment “when they found the same arrangement that could have done the exact same thing at no cost to the taxpayer and would have been completed or would have been at a high state of processing at this time.”

By the opposition leader’s measure, the government had given the impression “the loan is coming from the government of Taiwan but the loan is from the Export-Import Bank.” He claimed not to know the relationship between the bank and the government of Taiwan, but was “open to instruction.” Actually, the prime minister had stated quite clearly while presenting his motion that he was seeking parliament’s guarantee for a loan from the Export-Import Bank on behalf of SLASPA.

Perhaps taking his cue from the opposition leader, the Southeast Castries MP, Mr. Guy Joseph, announced from the get-go his full support of the motion. He also thanked the government and people of Taiwan for their “intervention” that had resulted in the loan “at concessionary rates.” For the most part the MP took every opportunity to underscore the opposition’s seeming inability or reluctance when in government to implement its uninvited and unwelcome recommendations to the new administration. (Was the MP Guy Joseph preemptively dismantling the opposition’s upcoming Motion of No Confidence against his prime minister?)

He noted that as far back as 2009 Stephenson King’s UWP administration had begun negotiations in relation to the improvement of Hewanorra. Alas, Hurricane Tomas had in 2010 redirected the government’s attention. One year later the Labour Party, under Kenny Anthony’s leadership, took over responsibility for Saint Lucia’s development. Four years limped by with barely a mention of HIA.

By MP Joseph’s inimitable telling: “They inherited a project well on its way. Hansard will show I encouraged the then prime minister to move on with the airport. I told him: ‘You can get rid of the contractor, you can throw out everything we did. But this is a good project for Saint Lucia. I don’t care about whom you choose to see it through.’ What did he do? He removed the airport development tax that would’ve realized in excess of $130 million. His government gave up close to $200 million that could’ve paid for maybe half the cost of the project. Yet members on the other side expect this government to follow their business advice when clearly they haven’t clue how they handle such things?”

As if further to gaslight Kenny Anthony’s mercurial nature, the Southeast Castries MP read from an official document: “The following Cabinet conclusion is submitted for your attention: Increased service charge to facilitate the Hewanorra International Airport public-private partnership transaction.” He added: “The same government that zeroed the US$35 we were collecting does a complete about turn in 2015 and not only returns the airport service charge but also increases it   from US$35 to US$55.”

While accusing the opposition of engaging in scare tactics for selfish purpose, the MP addressed the matter of guarantees, about which, he suggested, the opposition knew quite a lot. From a copy of the 2009 Ramsahoye Report, he read out the following: “The [Kenny Anthony] government agreed to a guarantee and indemnified the agreement with the Royal Merchant Bank of Trinidad of Tobago under the laws of Trinidad and Tobago.”

Taking his eyes off the document, the MP underscored the last line he’d just read out loud: “Under the laws of Trinidad and Tobago—not under the laws of Saint Lucia. Some people cannot learn from their own past mistakes. We are not submitting to any jurisdiction outside of Saint Lucia.” He also referred to the Ramsahoye commission’s finding that the company for whom the Anthony government had guaranteed loans had absolutely no assets and was “formed at the request of the government of Saint Lucia as a device” to deal with the payment of the amount guaranteed.

He went on, pointedly: “Mr. Speaker some people need to learn that even when they no longer hold the highest positions in the land they still are duty-bound to respect the integrity of the offices they once held. It’s not good enough to turn around when you are no longer in office, to turn around and spit on every principle you earlier esteemed just for the sake of selfish convenience.”

The motion passed with every single member of the 6-man opposition predictably voting against it. Work on the airport is scheduled to begin in January next year. Meanwhile it remains unclear why the Kenny Anthony administration, having signed an agreement with the IFC, never started modernization work on the acknowledged wholly inadequate Hewanorra International Airport.