Archive for April 9th, 2009

The UDP’s “Holy War”

(CNS): At a UDP political meeting on Cayman Brac Wednesday night, the war of words over what took place during the passing of the Education Law turned into a supposed battle between the UDP, as the party fighting for Christian principles, and the PPM, with criticism aimed mostly at Education Minister Alden Mclaughlin, as the party that is trying to take religion out of schools. “Alden thinks he’s God,” party leader McKeeva Bush said. “He needs a good flogging. He’s nothing but a little fop.”

The Education bill was passed into law Thursday 19 March. During the committee stage, Sister Islands MLA Julianna O’Connor-Connolly raised her concerns that the minister was attempting to remove the mandatory obligation for schools to teach religious instruction by mandating a broad national curriculum in the law but not stipulating that it must include RI. Subsequently, McLaughlin said he was willing to offer an amendment that he hoped would address O’Connor’s concerns. (See Minister achieves ambition)

At the UDP rally on Monday 6 April, O’Connor-Connolly again claimed that the minister had tried to take God out of the schools. In response, at a PPM rally Tuesday night McLaughlin explained that religious education had been enshrined in the curriculum, which is already in use and had never been removed. He further explained that drafts of the bill had been brought to the House for debate in 2006, again in 2007 and again in October 2008, more than four months before the bill came to the House for passage. “I don’t want to call her a liar but she is damn careless with the truth!” the minister said Tuesday. (See Minister calls out Brac MLA)

At the rally on Scotts Dock on the Brac, West Bay MLA Rolston Anglin laid out the UDP version of events, claiming that Education Minister Alden McLaughlin had “rushed through the Education Law at the eleventh hour without the proper consultation.”

“What Julianna O’Connor-Connolly reported on Monday night was 100% accurate and 100% true,” he said. Anglin claimed that during the process of bringing a new bill to replace the old law “a truthful minister will get up on the floor to give all the positives in the new legislation and also a look back on the old law and say, here are some of the crucial changes.” He said that Mclaughlin had “purposely removed from the law the mandatory requirement regarding religious instruction.”

He said the billhad been voted into law by the whole House (when he was the only opposition member present). However, he said there were legitimate reasons why the rest of his colleagues had not been there, including the fact that O’Connor-Connolly had not been able to get a flight from the Brac. “When Julie came it had already been voted on and had gone to the second stage. “It’s a good thing we have a good Christian lawyer who can critique a law like no one else,” he stated, and said she saw “mischief and downright dishonesty” in the law. When she realized it, she went to the minister “in a ladylike fashion” and asked him if the omission was done accidentally or on purpose, Anglin said.

He went to claim that McLaughlin “ruffed her up”. According to Anglin’s version of events, the minster had said, “That’s done on purpose and that’s good enough!” and that O’Connor-Connolly had replied, “No, that’s not good enough.” The West Bay MLA told the Brac crowd that McLaughlin had discussed it with “his technocrats and his colleagues”, including Sister Islands MLA Moses Kirkconnell, “and they were fine with leaving God out of education.”

“Miss Julie went to Holy War with the minister,” Anglin said, describing the minister and his colleagues as “filled with hate that day”.

However, the MLA claimed he “witnessed a miracle” as the amendment was added to the law just before the final stage in the process. “It is now mandated that every school in the Cayman Islands shall shall shall have religious instruction!” Anglin exclaimed.

Weighing in on the topic during her own address to the crowd, O’Connor-Connolly said that the minister had been “caught with his pants down”. She said, “Rather than amend the Education Law, he had chosen to write a new law.” Section 27 in the old law had mandated religious instruction, and she said that if he had amended the old law he would have had to state that section 27 is hereby revoked or repealed, suggesting that “it is not a good idea to throw out the old till you know what the new one is.”

Referring to the proposed Constitution and the expanded powers of the Cayman government, she said, “Imagine what they will do with more power! Thank God we have a governor to keep them in order!”

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Independents stand together

(CNS): With no flags, posters, podiums, t-shirts, campaign songs or cheering masses, Eddie Thompson stripped the campaign trail bare last night as he opened his bid for a seat in the Legislative Assembly, supported by three other independent candidates. The former president of the Chamber of Commerce and successful architect says he is putting aside his commercial interests to do something for his country.

On the corner of School Road and Rock Hole Road, Thompson was introduced by Bernie Bush, an independent candidate for the district of West Bay, who is no stranger to the political battlefield and who polled the highest percentage of the vote in 2005 of any independent candidate in that election. Walling Whittaker and Derrington ‘Bo’Miller also offered their support to Thompson before he took to the mike to begin his bid for election.

With no stage to yell from Eddie spoke directly to the small group of George Town voters and said that the talk of the “not so independents” was misguided and he along with his fellow candidates who were going it alone but planning to work together could get things done outside of the party system.

“I am not saying that I have all the answers but I am prepared to look for them along with my colleagues in George Town, Walling Whittaker and Bo Miller, and with Bernie Bush in West Bay,” said Thompson, adding that they would go to Bodden Town and talk to independents there to see who they could work with as well.

“Recently we have been hearing the term ‘not so independent’ and that if you are an independent candidate you can’t get anything accomplished. Are they telling us that Sir Vassel could not get anything accomplished? Are they telling us that Mr Craddock couldn’t get accomplished that Mr Jim Bodden couldn’t get anything accomplished?" he asked.

Speaking about the political teams of the past, he noted that they did not have to adhere to a particular party line, they were not yes men, but they listened to the needs of the people. He said that’s what was happening with the new teams and alliances the current independents were beginning to form, but they would still go to the LA and do what the people wanted.

Thompson also raised a number of policy issues that he said were of immediate concern, not least the proposed development of the George Town port, and while he acknowledged a need to redevelop the port’s cargo operations, he warned that so far the Minister had only brought part of a plan to the table.

“in doing my research on the best way forward for this project, I discovered the Minister of Tourism had only unveiled a quarter of a plan,” he said, adding that the major issue of the infrastructure to support a new dock development had just not been looked at and no financing plans were in place, and he asked how the rest of the project would be financed.

“The trouble we are facing is that politicians have not been planning for the next forty years but only for the next four,” he said. However, moving on to education, where plans have certainly gone well beyond four years, Thompson criticised the development of the schools and said they may be fantastic from an architectural point of view but they were beyond the country’s means and that there was a greater need to focus on teachers. He said many people had been taught under almond trees in the past and it was the quality of the teaching not the quality of the surroundings that mattered.  “We need to provide properly paid teachers with the right resources,” he added.  In common with other independents in the district, despite criticising the government decision to build the other secondary schools, he lamented that fact that the George Town Primary school was being put on hold.

 Thompson also picked up on another common theme among independents on the campaign trail, which is to bring the money paid by people in Cayman into pension schemes to be invested on the island instead of overseas. He also said there was a pressing need to review the current health care insurance system, which he said was way too expensive for the poor level of coverage offered by the basic policy as the system was based on the failing US model.

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‘Global warming is a fact’

(CNS): As a candidate for the Sister Islands in 2005, Maxine McCoy-Moore had used her two minute spot on Radio Cayman to say that the Cayman Islands must be prepared for an increase in hurricanes, she told supporters at a meeting Tuesday night, and said the three hurricanes that hit the Sister Islands last year – Gustav, Ike and Paloma – proved her right. “Global warming is a fact,” she said. “Six months every year is Hurricane season. Paloma is a drop in the bucket of what can happen.”

Speaking to a small crowd at Scotts Dock in the West End of Cayman Brac, McCoy-Moore warned, “Don’t think that won’t happen again. We need more hurricane shelters and we need a better system for bringing back Brackers living on Grand Cayman that want to come home.”

The independent candidate, who has run three times unsuccessfully, spoke out strongly about environmental issues and the lack of recycling, noting how high the landfill on the south side of Cayman Brac is getting. She said that metal and plastic could be sold to other countries for recycling, and other items such as glass bottles, cans and batteries could also be recycled.

Slamming plans for a new landfill on the Bluff, she noted the disaster around the landfill after Paloma, and asked what would happen if a hurricane came and the garbage dump was on the Bluff – there would be garbage everywhere, she suggested.

“I was told by the head man in Grand Cayman they he could guarantee that the dump would not leak. It would have to be God himself to tell me that before I believe it,” McCoy-Moore said, stressing her fears that having the landfill at that location would destroy the water table.

Turing to Agriculture, she said she would work “hand in hand” with the government to ensure that every farmer, “big or small”, received financial aid. Noting that the Brac was once self-sustaining, she asked why government was only assisting farmers in Grand Cayman and said it should buy more land for agriculture.

“I notice the PWD have no strict supervision. I see 5, 10 12 people with only one working and the rest sitting down getting paid to do nothing when we have a lot of work here that needs to be done,” McCoy-Moore said, adding, “The PWD crew might not like me saying this." But, she said, "It’s not just Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. I also see this in Grand Cayman,” and thought there was a need for opportunities for these workers to advance themselves."

Education was a constant theme in the candidate’s address, and she noted that many of the high school graduates had problems filling out a simple application form on their own. “One of the biggest problems is that some teachers are only here for the money. We need to scrutinize teachers and get dedicated teachers like we had years ago,” she said. “The schools are well-equipped but if students don’t want to study the teachers let them do what they want….We have remarkable children but they need training so they know how to live.”

Also on the subject of opportunities for the young, she said she would not tolerate the practice of retiring civil servants and hiring them back into the system, but said she wanted to increase the retirement age to 70, so long as the worker could get a medical certificate to prove that he or she could do the job. “Why should they be forced to retire at 60?” she asked.

Not everyone was given the opportunity to move on to further education, stated McCoy-Moore and said she wanted to set up a vocational training school on the Brac so that every child who graduated from high school would have no reason to move to Grand cayman unless they wanted to. “Most have to go to Grand Cayman to survive, but they do not know how to exist outside Cayman Brac.” She said students that were given full scholarships to overseas colleges “cannot adjust to life in the US or the UK and end up back on the Brac struggling to find work.”

“Everyone talks about the high cost of living in Grand Cayman,” the candidate said, but noted that on the Brac the amount that people pay for goods is double and on Little Cayman it is triple. “This has to be curtailed. The cost of living should not be so high, and is even worse since Paloma.”

On the Sister Islands economy, she said the stamp duty had been cut on the Brac but that didn’t extend to Cayman Brackers living on Little Cayman, and she also proposed that the cuts should be for Caymanians only. She said foreigners buy land cheaply, build a house themselves and then “put up a for sale sign and go home with a pocketful of money.”

The candidate said she has been asking “since Truman Bodden’s day through McKeeva Bush’s day to Kurt Tibbetts’ day” why overseas banks could be located on Cayman Brac, but had still not received an answer. The Bluff is the perfect place for a small financial services centre, she said and pointed out that after Hurricane Ivan the financial services took a downward turn when a lot of workers in the industry went to other jurisdictions

“Every week I see the barge leave fully loaded with aggregate to go to Grand Cayman. So why are Brackers still driving over potholes?” she asked, and wanted to know why the Lighthouse Road was still not paved.

Turning to immigration, she thought the laws "sell out" the three islands. She said that employers spend a lot of money hiring someone, including work permit fees, and sometimes even travel expenses for them to get here. But then, she said, even if that employer finds that the employee is doing something illegal, immigration still allows them to go and work with another employer. She said foreign workers say they have a lot of qualifications – “some do and some don’t”. There are 1500 foreign people in the Cayman Islands that don’t have a job, she said. This breeds crime and they should be sent home, she believed.

All the international marketing for the Cayman Islands portrays “the Cayman Islands” as Grand Cayman, and McCoy-Moore said it should be emphasized that we are three Cayman Islands. Rock climbing should be promoted for the Brac and she also wants to bring the cruise ship industryto the Brac (which has not been very sucessful so far) by either continuing to build the Scotts Dock or extending the Creek Dock.

She proposed improving the airport – there was no reason why Cayman Airways should be the only airline to fly into the Brac, she said. Furthermore, she noted the high prices of travel to the Sister Islands, which could be almost as much as getting to Grand Cayman, even from far away places such as Alaska.

We know from watching CNN and the BBC that US President Barack Obama will be lifting the US travel embargo on Cuba, she said, saying that it was a beautiful island that offered way more than the Cayman Islands – “cheap accommodation, cheap taxis and crime free”.

On the subject of crime, she said, “I do not know why people in Grand Cayman changed and so hate one another. Hate has taken over the people down there. We do not need to extend that to the people up here.”

The two incumbents cannot work together and one of them needed to be changed, McCoy-Moore said, promising, “You will not be getting a ‘yes’ woman. I will stand up for what is right and what is fair for the Sister Islands.”

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