Planning Minister Joseph said Tan has promised either to finance the plant's expansion or to build his own facility for the resort. He added that the nature-preserve plan was abandoned because there were no takers for the broader development needed to complement it.
"We waited for more than seven years for an investor to come and develop this area, and nobody came," Joseph said.
As for the Buftons, Joseph said, their age and seeming vulnerability have thrust onto center stage what should have been an easily resolved sideshow. The couple, he said, have presented no evidence to back their claim to ownership of all of Guiana Island, and their removal was only a matter of time.
Predictably, the Buftons see the matter differently.
Born Cyril Thomas Bufton in the Welsh village of Brecon, the man known universally here as Taffy moved to Guiana Island 34 years ago with Bonnie, whose real name is Lona Eileen Bufton. When Englishman Alexander Hamilton-Hill offered the couple a job managing a cotton farm on the island, they were fresh from a similar job in Zambia.
Hamilton-Hill, who owned Guiana outright, died in 1972 and left it to his wife in England, although the Buftons' contract gave them exclusive rights to five acres of the island for 99 years at no cost.
The owner's widow died in 1984; several years later, the Buftons filed court papers claiming ownership of the entire island through the British-law equivalent of squatters' rights.
Ownership Question Typical Among Islands
The Buftons' claim was contested by two Antiguan brothers, who insist that they bought the property from Hamilton-Hill's widow. Joseph said he doubts the Buftons' claim will hold up in court. But he added that the government will pay fair-market value to whoever the judge decides owns the island before selling it to Tan.
The twisted ownership case is typical of the former British colonies of the Caribbean, which are awash with colonial-era characters such as the Buftons living on properties whose titles often went unrecorded.
The case was pending in court late last year when Bird's government moved to oust the Buftons. But the Buftons, who refused government orders to leave the island, believed that they had a good lawyer: Vere Bird Jr., a member of Antigua's Parliament and the prime minister's elder brother.
