Re: Response to Baha Mar’s Press Release today

Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Perry G. Christie, said this evening that he was disappointed in both the intemperate tone and incorrect content of Baha Mar’s press statement of today’s date. “It is particularly regrettable”, the Prime Minister said “that at a time when rationality and cool heads are required to deal with the current crisis at Baha Mar, the company’s leadership appears to be going to pieces under the mounting pressure”.

The Prime Minister said that today’s statement from Baha Mar has given him grave concern for the state of Mr. Izmirilian’s mind. “As recently as yesterday, Mr. Izmirlian was calling me, completely unsolicited, to give me his private assurances and to express confidence in me but now, just one day later, he issues a public statement saying the exact opposite and in tones resonating with gross disrespect for the elected authority of this land. Indeed I am at loss to recall any previous instance of a foreign investor who took it upon himself to publicly excoriate the government of the day in such a shrill and belligerent manner.”

Moreover, the Prime Minister said that Mr. Izmirlian should cease and desist from trying to fool his own workers and the general public. “He must stop playing fast and loose with the facts to serve his own ends. He ought to know full well that the delay in effecting payment to the workers had absolutely nothing to do with any stalling or obstructive action on the Government’s part. Instead, I am advised, that it was the result of normal informational requirements of the Government’s bankers and necessary account information-exchanges between Baha Mar and the Treasury.”

Concluding his response to the Baha Mar statement, the Prime Minister reminded Mr. Izmirlian that the workers and the country at large are only in the present predicament to begin with because of his own unilateral decision to go into Chapter 11 proceedings in a foreign country. “Be that as it may”, the Prime Minister said, “this is no time for Mr. Izmirlian to buckle under the pressure and lose his balance. He needs to keep his nerves steady, stop talking nonsense, and join with the government and all other interested parties in reaching a speedy and definitive resolution of the current crisis. That is where my focus is and that is where Mr. Izmirlian’s focus should be as well”.