Liberalizing the Telecommunications Market in The Bahamas

Liberalizing Telecommunications
by Simon



If those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it, those who conveniently forget or pimp history for self-serving purposes are condemned to irrelevance and being made into a running joke.

During the debate on the sale of a majority stake of BTC to Cable and Wireless, the Opposition PLP and various leaders of unions representing telecommunications workers joined forces to promote a specious reading of history, which will not look kindly on their studied amnesia and purposeful forgetfulness.

One union leader brazenly, shamelessly and wrongly compared the current debate to the struggle for majority rule, adding insult by suggesting that we are now engaged in a racial battle. More on that laughable assertion later.

Meanwhile, the formerly progressive and liberal Opposition has reinforced its reactionary, regressive and illiberal bona fides even as it pretended to be greatly concerned about “the workers” and the “national interest”.

There was something amusing if not outlandishly hypocritical as one listened to Opposition members critique the Government’s plans to privatize BTC, especially as much of the critique was broadcast via a communications landscape liberalized by successive Ingraham administrations.

ABYSMAL

The Opposition’s fevered attempt to ignore its abysmal record on telecoms and rewrite history via the broadcast media was made possible by the FNM’s progressive communications policies.

These liberalizing policies have provided considerably more democratic space and freedom for opposition parties and others to freely express their views on a more open ZNS, and on the Cable 12 and the JCN TV nightly newscasts which now compete with ZNS, and over private radio stations from Grand Bahama to Inagua.

To borrow a catchphrase, when it came to liberalizing the telecommunications sector the PLP has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Over the 25 years of the Pindling era and the singular undistinguished Christie term, the PLP failed to liberalize the broadcast media, failed to introduce cable, now a potential competitor to BTC, failed to privatize BTC, and failed to prepare ZNS to get out of the business of competing with the private sector.

For all of the Opposition’s noise in the telecommunications market and the marketplace of progressive ideas, they have demonstrated an aversion to the market and private enterprise, except if they have a chunk or controlling interest in such enterprise.

The thread running through the PLP’s multiple failures regarding the privatization and liberalization of the telecommunications sector is more than incompetence and a late-again style, though such a slack style of governance is partly to blame.

There is a much greater force at work here that runs through many other policy disasters by the Opposition. The master culprit is an absolute need for the Opposition and its oligarchs to maintain as much control as possible on state and economic power.

The sense of entitlement to power and the nation’s economic goods, entrenched during Sir Lynden’s rule, is alive and well in an Opposition that often views governance of The Bahamas by others as illegitimate.

PARALLEL

This is why over a quarter century in government the PLP maintained the draconian state monopoly on the broadcast media. It is also the story of Bahamas Airways which is in significant ways an eerie parallel with the attempt by the Christie administration to sell BTC to the phantom company Bluewater.

The full story of Bahamas Airways must wait for another day. Still, its demise is instructive. It is a tale of a partnership with Cathay Pacific, a well-established airline with deep pockets and proven expertise that could have made The Bahamas a vibrant regional hub, provided competitive airline service to our tourist market and saved taxpayers nearly half a billion in subsidies to Bahamasair.

Yet, almost overnight, Sir Lynden wrecked Bahamas Airways by giving promised routes to one of his cronies with no expertise in the airline business. The idea was to feather the nests of PLP oligarchs while sacrificing the national interest on the altar of their greed.

Sounds familiar? Again, there are those who want Bahamians to contract historical amnesia in order to repeat their windfall profits from various assets, including those of the state.

But back to the telecoms sector. Curiously, one of the PLP’s earliest potential scandals involved a lawyer close to Sir Lynden who attempted to overcharge the then Batelco for various legal services.

Many years later, after the end of the Pindling era, Hubert Ingraham set out a vision for the liberalization and privatization of the telecommunications sector based on various principles.

Those principles included a commitment to deepening democracy by dismantling the state’s autocratic control of various media. There was also a determination to foster greater private enterprise and ownership instead of continued state monopoly.

Mr. Ingraham’s long term vision and Messrs Pindling’s and Christie’s lack of foresight and planning have surfaced in the BTC debate. That the debate may be coming to a head soon after the 44th anniversary of Majority Rule offers a useful framework for a fact-based debate on the liberalization of BTC within the context of the issue of Bahamian ownership.

REALITY

It’s not just history some vested interests want us to ignore. They are also intent on conveniently ignoring current realities. Some of that reality, rather than spin, was recently highlighted in an interview The Tribune had with Deloitte & Touche (Bahamas) managing partner Raymond Winder.

Mr. Winder noted that as a result of last year’s Columbus Communications buyout that Cable Bahamas, which is 100 percent Bahamian-owned, would be at least one fully-owned Bahamian competitor for BTC. He further noted that the main issue in the current debate should be about liberalization and not simply privatization.

In his Tribune interview, Mr. Winder advised: “Cable Bahamas has demonstrated that it’s very competitive with BTC. Since Internet came to the Bahamas, there has been upward of 20-plus companies that have tried to enter that market, and in competition between BTC and Cable, Cable probably has more than 50 per cent of that Internet market.”

Mr. Winder, the chief negotiator for the country’s accession to full membership to the World Trade Organization continued: “We’re not losing Bahamian assets, and the challenge for any investor coming into BTC is how they’re going to compete with Cable Bahamas and any other Bahamian entity in the marketplace.

The noted accountant also advised that the sale of 51 percent of BTC did not mean that the sky was falling as some Henny Pennies would have the public believe: “The fact that a foreign company owns 51 per cent is not a magic number. You can have a company holding far less than 51 per cent that still has considerable control over directors and management.”

He further advised: “What the Government is attempting to do is get out of any involvement in the telecommunications decision-making process and allow BTC to compete.”

Of course, this is a frightening idea for an Opposition that has demonstrated in the past the need for the state, in the guise of the PLP, to absolutely control ZNS, the broadcast media as well as BTC.

This divide over providing more democratic space and freedom within the PLP and indeed the country was one of the main reasons for the split of the first ever majority rule government. It pitted more than personalities. Most of the debate was over core values and a vision of greatly expanding political and economic opportunities for all Bahamians regardless of race or class.

In failing to liberalize the telecommunications sector during 30 nonconsecutive years in office, the PLP abandoned the goals of the movement for majority rule in this vital sector.

It is the FNM that has succeeded in making the progressive and liberal dream of a liberalized telecommunications sector a reality. In turn this has resulted in greater freedom of speech and expression.

It has put BTC on the path to better serving the Bahamian people with cheaper, better and quicker service as well as enabling Bahamians to own for the first time shares in the company. And, the FNM’s vision and polices have resulted in Cable Bahamas as a fully privatized telecommunications company, in which Bahamians may also own shares.

The union leader who got his racial history mixed up, as well as those who keep pimping majority rule for their own self-serving purposes are on the losing side of the debate, because the past does not accord with their checkered version of history. Moreover, the future will not reward their outdated ideas and fear of embracing a new world which is leaving them sadly behind.

bahamapundit

Bahamas Blog International