By *Guevara Leacock
On A View from the Outside this week, we turn our attention to the sale of Chatham Bay on Union Island, with the view being that the government handled the communications around the sale badly, and that the ULP, after 24 years of selling off pieces of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, is the last party with any business lecturing Vincentians about it.
Last week, Vincentians found out that the government sold roughly 100 acres at Chatham Bay to a company called AHRA LLC, a registered company in SVG. The price was EC$54 million, and EC$52.7 million of it has already been deposited in the Treasury as capital revenue.
According to the government, the land was sold for conservation. The deed, Vincentians are told, carries binding covenants that rule out any construction of a resort, and the state has kept a right to buy the land back within two years, at the same price. The prime minister said that the proceeds of the sale are going towards reducing the national debt, establishing the National Development Bank, and funding the new Ministry of Fisheries, Land and Sea Conservation and Climate Resilience.
The leadership of the opposition party in St Vincent and the Grenadines, the Unity Labour Party (ULP) calls it a fire sale of the crown jewel. Some residents of Union Island call it a betrayal, and understandably so, since all reports are that they were not consulted. The Monday after the story broke, the prime minister was on the radio telling critics that they had missed two fundamental aspects of the Chatham Bay deal: the covenants and the buyback.
So for a week now the whole argument has been about one thing, the price. We on A View from the Outside think that is the wrong place to start.
Consider how the news of the sale of lands at Chatham Bay first reached Vincentians. It did not reach Vincentians from a press conference or a ministerial statement in Parliament. It reached most people as a number, EC$52.7 million, sitting quietly in the government’s own figures, which then triggered a question from the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament on Aug. 27.
By the weekend, out came a statement from the New Democratic Party (NDP) as a party, not an official statement from the government. Two days after that, the prime minister went on air to explain what everybody had supposedly got wrong. That is backwards.
When a government sells the single most argued-over piece of state land in the country, they announce it themselves, name the buyer, put the terms on the table and take and answer questions about it themselves. They do not leave Vincentians to find out from government accounts or a question from the opposition and then spend a week playing catch-up. If this is a good deal, and it may well be, the government has done it no favours in the way it was handled.
The NDP and Vincentians have been asking for accountability and transparency for years. Now is the time for such accountability and transparency.
Both political parties in SVG tell the story of Chatham Bay selectively, so we on A View from the Outside will tell it straight. Years ago, under an earlier NDP government, American investors bought the land under an alien landholding licence for just under US$200,000. The condition of sale was that they would develop the land within five to seven years. They never did.
Fifteen years or so went by and nothing was built. The ULP government took them to court for forfeiture and won, first in the High Court and then again in the Court of Appeal. The land came back under the ownership of SVG for less than EC$700,000. That was not a price anybody negotiated; it was the return of the original purchase price plus 5% interest. In 2006, the investors offered US$20 million, about EC$54 million, to make the whole thing go away. The ULP government refused.
So you can see the ULP’s argument. SVG fought for eight years to bring Chatham Bay home, said no to EC$54 million in 2006, and now the government has sold it for the very same EC$54 million, 20 years on. The ULP leadership also says the chief surveyor put a value of over EC$110 million on the land some 15 years ago. EC$54 million in 2006 bought a great deal more than it buys today.
To be fair to the ULP, they did win back the lands at Chatham Bay for Vincentians. That is an undeniable fact. However, that is about as far as the fairness goes for them. What did they do with Chatham Bay once they had it? Nothing. Close to 20 years, and the land just sat there undeveloped. No conservation park was ever declared and nothing was built. The ULP leadership now says the plan was always to build a park run by the state, but a plan that is never written down and never paid for is not really a plan. It is aspirational. Remember that?
And while we are remembering things, do you remember what else the ULP did with land in SVG over the 24 years it spent in office? They sold it. The ULP leadership boasts that the 30 acres of land it sold off to foreigners at Mt Wynne brought in more than EC$40 million, as though that ends the discussion. It does not. What it does is remind Vincentians that the ULP spent years selling off the country’s land, at Mt Wynne and elsewhere, and that in more than one of those deals ordinary Vincentians were never properly told who was buying, what was promised, or what became of the promises afterwards. You cannot spend 24 years selling land with the door shut and then stand outside that same door demanding it be opened. The ULP is entitled to ask questions about Chatham Bay. What it is not entitled to do is pretend its own hands are clean.
Regarding the EC$110 million valuation of the lands at Chatham Bay by the chief surveyor some 15 years ago, the government makes a good point that it was valued as a resort site. Once a covenant is written into the deed saying no resort can ever go there, the government is selling something different. The prime minister is also right that SVG is carrying debt of 113% of everything the economy produces in a year. Land sitting idle does not reduce any of that debt. SVG is on an economic precipice, unlike the economic take-off we have heard about for 24 years.
Here is where we on A View from the Outside part company with the government. If conservation is really the goal, the state does not need to sell the land to anyone, especially foreigners. The cheapest way to protect the land is to keep it and declare it protected by law. So the real issue here is debt burden reduction and that is fine, just be honest about it.
When a private company hands over EC$54 million for land it has promised never to build anything on, Vincentians want to know what the company expects in return. There may be a perfectly good answer. We just have not heard it. Who are the people behind AHRA LLC? What do these covenants actually say, who has the power to enforce them, and do they follow the land if the company sells it on?
Lawyers will tell you that a covenant is only as strong as the person willing to go to court over it. What about the buyback? Let’s be honest, where is a government with debt bigger than the size of the whole economy going to find EC$54 million in the next two years to buy this land back? If it cannot, then the buyback is not really protection. It is a talking point.
We on A View from the Outside say that a government elected on a promise to do things differently cannot sell state land behind a closed door and then look surprised when people ask exactly the questions we spent 24 years asking the ULP.
The government should publish the agreement of sale, the covenants and the buyback clause, all of it, and lay them before Parliament. If the deal is as good as the government says, the documents will show it. They should tell Vincentians who owns AHRA LLC. Not who the registered agent is but who the actual people are who will benefit from holding Chatham Bay.
If they are conservationists with a good record, say so, and let them take the credit they deserve. They should pass a law on how state land is sold. Above a certain value, there should be an independent valuation that is published, a public tender or a published reason for not holding one. There should also be a notice to Parliament before any deed is signed. That would bind this government and everyone that follows it, and it would take the politics out of the next government land sale.
In the coming days, when somebody tells you the government has given away the crown jewel, ask them who bought Mt Wynne and what the country got for it. When others tell you the government has pulled off a great conservation triumph, ask them whether they have read the agreement. They have not, because it has not been published. Until it is, both sides are asking you to take their word for it. On a prime piece of land SVG spent eight years of expensive litigation to get back, nobody’s word should be good enough.
*Guevara Leacock is a barrister at law of Lincoln’s Inn in England and an attorney at law in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He has a keen interest in history and politics and is a social commentator.
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