UDP blamed for Skyline and Nazar mess

OUSTED Prime Minister, Manasseh Sogavare, has blasted his accusers yesterday, revealing the United Democratic Party (UDP) as behind the recent Skyline and Nasser investment controversy.

Skyline and Nazar are the epitome of DCCG’s failed investment policies and undertakings.

The Skyline group of companies had claimed to be a Chinese-based brand which was interested in expanding in the South Pacific, and had proposed rehabilitating the Honiara international airport and the road from the airport to Honiara city.

The now-deposed Democratic Coalition for Change Government (DCCG) had entered an MOU with Skyline over a proposed 5,000 affordable homes in Honiara in 2015.

Likewise, the Nazar group of companies had lured the DCCG into an MOU in 2015 with the promise of a new Kilu’ufi hospital, five star hotel, housing estate, poultry farming, feed production and value added poultry products, mini cannery in Tatamba and Tulagi and value-added fresh and dried fruit processing.

However, these two deals turned out to be a farce which has left an endless cycle of blame-game.

Caretaker Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, while replying to the Motion of No Confidence yesterday, put to rest public confusion when he said the two investors had been introduced to the DCCG by the highly paid political appointees of the UDP.

The deal, he said, had led to government spending money in the form of incentives.

Meanwhile, winding up the motion, Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Guadalcanal, Dr Derek Sikua, rebuffed Sogavare’s revelations, indicating that the three individuals, who he claims had brought in Skyline, were not UDP affiliated political appointees.

He furthers that Sogavare had benefited from the ‘deals’, listing – paid medical expense for his wife, allowance during the 2015 UNGA, and the renting of his house.

Sogavare interrupted Sikua with a ‘point of order’, preventing Sikua from continuing with his lists of alleged benefits belonging to Sogavare.

Speaking to Island Sun yesterday in parliament, a local political analyst stresses the importance of Sogavare’s revelations, saying, “It is not news, for it has been echoing in the corridors of the government offices. However, the significant thing is hearing a public declaration from the horse’s mouth that the UDP was behind these failed investments.”

The analyst adds it is an interesting turn of events to note that UDP, which held the majority of MPs in the DCCG then, had a hand in the Nazar-Skyline mess.

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