Archive for May 21st, 2009
“Action Man” holds on
(CNS): Voters in East End at least opted not to “Stop the Progress” after all and they have sent Arden McLean back to the Legislative Assembly. The People’s Progressive Movement candidate received more than 59% of the vote compared with his namesake John McLean, who polled just over 40%. The second full result of the evening confirms the trend that has now begun to emerge across the islands that Cayman looks to be returning party candidates and rejecting the independents.
North Side may well be the only district to return an independent candidate. So far the UDP are holding on to the first four places in the counts that have been completed in West Bay. In George Town, while incumbent PPM members Kurt Tibbetts and Alden McLaughlin are holding 1st and 2nd place, 3rd and 4th are currently taken by Mike Adam and Ellio Solomon. Meanwhile in Bodden Town Anthony Eden is out in front but being trailed by Mark Scotland which will prove a controversial result if things stay that way, with Osbourne Bodden sitting in third.
North Side returns Ezzard
(CNS): The first result of the Cayman Islands General Election came from North Side where the voters elected independent candidate and former Ex Co Member Ezzard Miller with more than 50% of the vote. Although an independent candidate he has said that he will help the United Democratic Party UDP for a government. The former Health Minister who is no stranger to controversy has said that he does not expect a ministerial post as he intends to work for the people of his district.
Miller beat out Joey Ebanks the PPM candidate who replaced Edna Moyle who announced she was retiring from politics earlier this year. Ebanks polled just over 37% of the votes in what was during Moyle’s tenure a safe seat. However, Ebanks’ campaign got off to a rocky start after it was revealed he had taken a substantial salary advance in his former position as Director of the Turtle. Oswell Rankine came in third with around 12%.
Continuing with its success of returning results within a few hours of the polls closing, the Elections Office said it remains on target to have all results in by midnight.
Polls close after 80% turnout
(CNS): The polling stations closed at 6:00 pm this evening after 12,362 Caymanians cast their vote in the country’s General Election on 20 May representing 80.56% of the entire electorate. Meanwhile, not all of those voters chose to take part in the referendum with less than 70% of people (10,677) casting their vote in that ballot. Supervisor of Elections Kearney Gomez confirmed that, aside from the incidents at two polling station of undue influence which are being investigated (See CNS story), the day was ”hectic” but the dual polling went very well.
With 78 stations now involved in counting the ballots, Gomez said that he expected the first results should be in from East End and North Side by around 8:30 pm, followed by Cayman Brac and Little Cayman around 9:00pm, then Bodden Town at approximately 10:00pm, and ending at around 12.00 am with the results from West Bay and George Town.
“I have challenged our counters and returning officers to have the full General Election Result by midnight,” he added.
Gomez then explained that the referendum ballot boxes are being moved under security to the Election Command Centre from the six district, were they will be watched overnight before that count starts at around 10:00am tomorrow morning at the Command Centre.
With 10,677 voters in the referendum, in order for the new constitution to pass it will need to receive at least 5,339 ‘yes’ votes.
On the preliminary turn out statistics from the Elections Office, the highest voter turn out was in East End where 86.26% of the electorate cast their vote in the General Election and 71.02% of people took part in the referendum. The lowest voter turn out for the General Election was in George Town, where only 77% of the 5,968 voters came out but almost 70% did take part in the referendum.
The lost percentage of the vote in the referendum was on the Sister Islands where only 64.34% voted in the referendum but almost 84% took part in the General Election.