The Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union (BCPOU) once again is playing hardball with the government, in a blatant attempt to force it to change its negotiating strategy for the pending privatization of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC).

Despite the fact that the Government has included representatives of the union on a very important committee involved in the negotiation process, BCPOU President Robert Farquharson is still insisting that the union is being left out of the privatization negotiations.

As Minister of State for Finance Zhivargo Laing noted back in June following a nationwide demonstration staged by BTC employees, the Government has established two committees in relation to privatization.

"One of those committees is a smaller committee that will do the actual discussing with the potential purchasers of shares of BTC and make recommendations to the Government arising out of the same," Laing said. "The other committee, which is an advisory committee, will be chaired by myself. It includes two other Cabinet Ministers, along with other experts, and it is on that committee where we have put the representatives of the union."

Laing added that the advisory committee will provide the framework for the smaller committee to operate and also vet any outcome or recommendations expeditiously before they actually go to the Government. By any yardstick this clearly suggests that a very meaningful role has been provided for the BCPOU to make a major contribution to the negotiations.

But Farquharson apparently is not satisfied with this, and is convinced that he should be on the "smaller committee" negotiating with the potential purchasers of BTC shares. Can you imagine someone like Farquharson, with his bull-in-the-China-shop mentality, sitting around the table holding serious negotiations with representatives of whomever the Government decides to sell BTC to? Clearly, the odds will be heavily against those negotiations reaching a successful conclusion.

It now appears, however, that unless the BCPOU President can have it his way, he is prepared to shut down telecommunications operations in this country. That's essentially what he threatened to do when he told hundreds of union members at a rally following a massive demonstration in New Providence on Monday, "Anytime we want to shut them down, we will shut them down."

That's probably true. This is a union that has a history of irresponsible militancy, as was demonstrated convincingly back in 1999 when they were agitating for separating packages for workers who were involved in the downsizing of BaTelCo in preparation for its privatization. At one demonstration staged outside the House of Assembly, objects were hurled at Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, and the appalling behaviour of the demonstrators came eerily close to precipitating out-of-control carnage and violence. Indeed, a serious confrontation with the police was only avoided because of the professionalism displayed by the police in their response to outright provocation from the demonstrators.

Prime Minister Ingraham did, in the minds of many, give in to the union's demands when he agreed to pay some outrageous sums of money to those workers who were being downsized. It is probably this success that now has the union thinking that it can bully the Government into again acceding to their outrageous demands.

They obviously timed their current demonstrations to coincide with the Prime Minister being on a well-deserved vacation until August 18. He should not allow these demonstrations to cause him to cut short his vacation, but on his return he should let BCPOU President Farquharson know in no uncertain terms that no one elected him to run this country and the BCPOU will not dictate to the Government what process should be used for the privatization of BTC.

This is where the Government must draw the line in the sand, so to speak. It must not be intimidated by the irresponsible threat to shut down BTC; nor should it allow Monday's demonstration that totally disrupted traffic in downtown Nassau and a follow-up demonstration of a similar nature in Freeport on Tuesday that had virtually the same effect to force it to give in to the union's unreasonable demands. If the Government takes a stand on this issue, what it will discover is that it has the full support of the vast majority of the Bahamian people.

The fact is that BTC should have been privatized a long time ago, and the sooner the better.