Prime Minister Philip Davis’s House of Assembly Communication on the Ruling in the Arbitration between the Government of The Bahamas and The Grand Bahama Port Authority and Its Implications for the Governance and Future of Freeport
Mister Deputy Speaker,
I rise today to report to this Honourable House on the ruling in the arbitration between the Government of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas and the Grand Bahama Port Authority.
The ruling is a game-changer.
The Port Authority has significant liabilities that are now enforceable because we took action.
From the first day my Government took office, we were confronted with a status quo in Freeport that was unfair to the people of Grand Bahama and to taxpayers across our islands.
For years, the Port Authority maintained that it had no liability to central government and that successive governments had no rightful place in decisions about licensing, immigration, customs, utilities, land purchases, and development approvals in the Port Area.
My Government was not prepared to live with that arrangement.
The cost was not abstract. It was borne by working families in Grand Bahama who paid their taxes and received declining services while the revenues of the Port Area flowed into private hands.
That is a transfer of wealth from the Bahamian public to a private entity, and it had been tolerated for far too long.
It was also an affront to a deeper principle, that Bahamians in Freeport have the same right as Bahamians anywhere else to shape their own future through the Government they elect.
Mister Deputy Speaker,
I love this country.
I love the people of Grand Bahama.
I have walked those streets, listened in those living rooms, stood in those churches.
I know that the people of Freeport want what every Bahamian wants, the dignity of being heard, the decency of fair treatment, and the right to self-determination within their own borders.
A city of Bahamians should never feel as if its fate is decided in private boardrooms without them.
We began, as any responsible government should, in good faith.
We met with the Port Authority.
We explored compromise.
We sought a collaborative way forward.
In my national address, I said it clearly – I prefer collaboration, but I have never feared confrontation when that is what is necessary to stand up for our people.
When it became clear that the old arrangements would not bend toward fairness, it became necessary to draw the line, to act in the national interest, and to invoke the arbitration mechanism in the Hawksbill Creek Agreement.
We did so because Grand Bahama is part of a sovereign Bahamas, and the people who live there are entitled to the full protection of that sovereignty.
Mister Deputy Speaker,
The Attorney General has already set out the award in careful legal terms. I adopt his analysis, and I wish to emphasise the key findings that matter for our people and for the record of this House.
First, the Tribunal has confirmed that the Grand Bahama Port Authority has an ongoing contractual obligation to make annual payments to the Government, for the benefit of the Bahamian taxpayer, for the remainder of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement, until 2054.
It is correct that the Tribunal did not grant the specific sum of 357 million dollars under the original clause of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement relied on.
Instead, it found that a 1994 agreement, entered into by a previous FNM administration, when it extended the concessions under the Hawksbill Creek Agreement, replaced that clause with a revised payment mechanism.
Under that revised mechanism, GBPA is required to pay an annual sum to the Government, and that sum is subject to a contractual review.
The Tribunal held that this review mechanism remains operative and enforceable.
It described it as self-evident that the Government can invoke this review for future years and confirmed that it remains fully enforceable.
The initial ruling was a victory for us, because it established liability for them.
They have to pay up.
Next, we move to a new phase of arbitration, where we determine how much.
It could be more than the $357 million in our initial claim – or it could be less.
Second, the Tribunal made it clear that questions about what is owed for earlier years are unresolved and alive.
The Tribunal stated that it is able and prepared to determine those sums once the parties put the issue before it.
My Government will do exactly that.
The effect of the award is that liability has been established. What remains is the assessment of that liability.
Third, the Tribunal rejected the Port Authority’s effort to carve Freeport out from the ordinary reach of Bahamian law.
GBPA sought sweeping declarations that it alone controlled licensing of businesses, immigration, customs, utilities, land purchases, and environmental approvals in the Port Area.
It tied those declarations to a damages claim of up to one billion dollars in taxpayer money, money that would otherwise support schools, hospitals, security, and hurricane recovery.
The Tribunal rejected the Port Authority’s claims.
On business licensing, rejected.
On immigration, rejected.
On customs, rejected.
On utilities, rejected.
On foreign land purchases, rejected.
On environmental approvals, rejected.
On the alleged diversion of investment by the Government from the port area, rejected.
The Tribunal expressly held that the Government’s caution about the Weller and Pegasus project could not be criticised, and that the Government was entitled to prefer investment projects for other areas of Grand Bahama outside Freeport.
Seven substantial counterclaims and seven rejections.
Seven findings that confirm that Freeport is part of a sovereign Bahamas and that the people who live there are not subject to a separate private rule above their Parliament.
Only one narrow issue succeeded – the finding that successive governments did not move with sufficient speed on proposed environmental bye-laws.
I accept that finding.
Even there, the Tribunal said it could not immediately see a basis for assessing the damages that might flow. That single point does not disturb the overall legal balance of the award.
The GBPA entered this arbitration demanding a billion dollars and near total authority over Freeport.
They left with a limited finding on bye-laws. The ruling speaks for itself.
Mister Deputy Speaker,
Some have chosen to describe this outcome as if nothing changed.
That is wrong in law and wrong in fact.
Before this award, GBPA insisted there was no enforceable liability and that the Government’s role in Freeport was an intrusion.
Today, an independent tribunal of eminent international jurists has confirmed that a binding payment obligation exists until 2054, that the review provisions remain fully enforceable, and that Freeport remains subject to Bahamian law and the authority of this Parliament.
This is about money, yes, but it is also about something deeper.
It is about whether families in Freeport have the same right as families in Nassau, Inagua, Abaco and Andros to know that the final word over their future rests with a government they elect, not with private shareholders they cannot remove.
The Tribunal has confirmed that Freeport is governed by laws passed in this House, not by private edict.
That is a concrete step toward the self-determination that Grand Bahamians have demanded for generations.
No previous administration ever took this question to arbitration.
No previous administration ever secured a binding, independent ruling that both establishes liability to the Bahamian taxpayer and rejects the notion of a private city beyond the proper reach of our laws.
That is why this moment is historic.
Mister Deputy Speaker,
In the face of this reality, GBPA issued a statement claiming a landmark victory.
That statement is selective.
It is designed to mislead.
The GBPA says it won. I put the question to this House, on what?
On their billion dollar counterclaim? It has been demolished.
On the argument that the Government has no authority in Freeport? It has been rejected on every count that matters.
On the question of payment? The Tribunal has confirmed their liability to pay for the administrative costs of the Port Area, through an enforceable mechanism, until 2054.
Those are not the hallmarks of vindication.
The Bahamian people deserve better than half the story.
That is why my Government has today released the Award in full, without editing and without spin.
I will table the complete award, a plain language guide, and the Attorney General’s statement, so that they form part of the permanent record of this Parliament, for all to see.
Minister Deputy Speaker,
I must address the comments of some who aspire to higher national office yet chose to treat this contest as if they were spectators cheering for the other side.
The Opposition describes the award as a failure.
I ask the Members opposite directly, which finding do you point to?
The payment obligation confirmed until 2054?
The Government’s authority upheld on every principle in dispute?
The billion dollar counterclaim dismissed almost in its entirety?
Which of those is the failure they speak of?
When the GBPA tells the nation it won, and the Leader of the Opposition echoes the Port Department instead of standing with his own Government, the Bahamian people are entitled to ask a simple question, whose side are you on?
Are you on the side of Bahamians in Freeport who want a real voice in their own affairs, or on the side of those who went before an independent tribunal to keep that voice muted?
There is nothing principled about hoping Grand Bahama would lose.
There is nothing courageous about defending an old order that kept Bahamians as bystanders while others enjoyed the benefits.
Those who seek to lead this country can stand with the Bahamian people, or they can stand with private interests who argued that Bahamian law should be pushed aside in one of our major cities.
They cannot do both.
Mister Deputy Speaker,
This award does not end the work. It begins a new phase.
We will invoke the review mechanism for future years.
We will ask the Tribunal to determine what is owed for earlier years.
We will move to regularise and approve the environmental bye-laws.
Our objective is simple. A Grand Bahama where infrastructure works, where services meet modern standards, where investors have certainty, and where the people of Grand Bahama share fully in the opportunities created on their island.
A Grand Bahama where decisions that shape daily life are taken in the open, accountable to the people, and grounded in the laws of this Parliament.
That future cannot be built on an arrangement that treats Freeport as a private enclave.
It must be built on partnership, on respect for our Constitution, and on the basic democratic principle that people have the right to participate in the decisions that govern their lives.
Mister Deputy Speaker,
In 1969, Sir Lynden Pindling stood in Grand Bahama and spoke of an unbending social order which, if it refused to bend, must be broken.
He was speaking of an arrangement that treated Bahamians as secondary in their own country.
That is the principle this Government carried into the arbitration chamber.
We went there to insist that the people of Freeport are not subjects of any private interests.
They are citizens of an independent Bahamas who are entitled to self-determination within their own borders.
History will record that when many said do nothing, this Parliament supported a Government that chose to act.
We acted because Bahamians should not be permanent bystanders in their own country.
We acted because our people should not carry costs that rightfully belong to others.
We acted because no agreement, however old, can silence the voice of the Bahamian people in their own affairs.
Mister Deputy Speaker,
I cannot live with an arrangement in which two families decide the fate of tens of thousands of Bahamians in Freeport, in our own country, without clear rules and without proper accountability.
That might have been tolerated in another age. It will not be tolerated under this administration.
Freeport is not the private estate of any family. It is the home of Bahamians who have the right to determine their own future, through the laws and institutions of this Commonwealth.
History will remember who stood up and who shrank away.
It will remember who was brave, and it will remember who was a coward.
It will remember the tissue leaders and jelly backs who could not bring themselves to stand on the side of the people when it mattered most, who found it easier to echo the talking points of the Port Authority than to defend the right of Bahamians to govern their own affairs.
Some say do not call him Brave, call him Philip. That is all right – I ain’t never been a thin-skinned, insecure, or petty.
I have always answered to Philip.
My name is Philip Brave Edward Davis.
In this moment, on this question, I have shown that I am prepared to confront what others were content to avoid.
I have shown more courage than the man some now put forward to aspire to leadership.
I was willing to face powerful private interests and insist that the Bahamian people come first.
Others had the chance to do the same and chose caution over courage.
Mister Deputy Speaker,
Now is not the time for GBPA apologists.
Now is the time for leaders who will stand with the people of Grand Bahama and with the wider Bahamian family.
The old order in which private interests claimed the right to sit above Bahamian law is coming to an end.
We will break that order.
We will replace it with one in which Bahamian sovereignty is real in Freeport, in which self-determination is a lived reality for the people who call that island home.
Today, the record of an independent tribunal stands alongside the record of this House.
Together they say that the Government of The Bahamas had the right to act, that we were right to challenge an unfair status quo, and that the future of Freeport and Grand Bahama must be written with the Bahamian people at the centre.
Sir Lynden spoke of an order that would bend or break.
Today, Mister Deputy Speaker, it has bent.
It has bent toward justice.
It has bent toward the Bahamian people.
It has bent toward the right of Freeport to move forward under laws made in this Chamber.
And it will not bend back.
I commend this statement, and the documents I now table, to Honourable Members and to the Bahamian people.
