Ryan had input in speech
(CNS): Premier McKeeva Bush has admitted that the developer and former owner of the Ritz Carlton-Grand Cayman had input into a statement he had made on the government’s new television channel last week about the resort, the duty debt and the recent sale. Following the revelations on CNS this week about the electronically stamped properties of the document released by the premier’s office, which indicated the statement made by Bush had been ’authored’ by Michael Ryan on a computer at the offices of Stingray Construction, the premier said Wednesday that it was merely sent to Ryan for details on the valuation. Bush said Ryan then returned the Word document with the information and the statement was “crafted using the same document".
In a short statement released by his office before he left for the UK and this year’s annual meeting with the FCO, Bush accused the opposition leader of playing politics, as it was Alden McLaughlin who had raised the issue in the public domain and questioned if Bush was speaking on behalf of the Cayman people or Michael Ryan when he made his statement.
The premier said he supported the Ritz Carlton property and that government was prepared to be partners with the new owners but it was intent on pursuing the collection of revenue owed to the government.
The duty concessions were given to Ryan when the hotel was built, which he eventually began to pay back as obligated once the hotel opened. However, Ryan ceased making payments to government after the UDP took office in 2009, leaving a debt of some $6 million. Ryan now states that he no longer owes the money since the company which is believed to owe the debt was seized by the new owners when they moved to take control of the Ritz and protect their asset as the owners of Ryan’s allegedly defaulted mortgage.
Since the hotel was sold last month at auction to RC Cayman, which is owned by Five Mile Capital, the holders of the debt on the property of some $250 million, the premier has begun publicly disputing the sale price, which played a key part in Bush’s statement and which he says was crafted around information from Ryan.
Bush continued to press the issue regarding the duty and the sale in this latest comment from his office but said it was not his office but the government’s valuation office which is dealing with the matter.
See the full latest statement below.
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Category: Politics
Mark my words;
THIS simple letter is the CONVERGENCE POINT for the political situaiton in Cayman!!
Change will come people…
This unfortunate thing called transparency is going to ruin Cayman's politicians who are used to doing things on the quiet and then saying what they did or did not do after the fact. I think Cayman needs to be told what Mr Bush's paid out of the public purse advisors/speechwriters – Leonard Dilbert ($130,000 +), Richard Parchment ($?) and Charles Glidden ($?) -actually do for their money if people like Ryan write Bush's speeches.
It's not merely that Ryan is his speechwriter but that Ryan is directly involved in the matter of the deferred stamp duty and so this has all the appearances of Bush acting, not on behalf of Cayman and in its best interests, but on behalf of Ryan and in his best interests.
Yeah, right McKeeva. Jeez you must think that everyone is drinking the kool aid that you pour out. If I was the goverment employee that was writing your speech, I would have cut and paste from Ryan's doc and add to the government doc. Not the other way around. That makes no sense the way you said it happened.
Caymanians! Wouldn't it be nice to have a leader that actually worked for you and earned his pay? You should try it some time.
With all the highly paid government staff at his disposal, speechwriters, assistants, researchers, public relations staff, members of his own party, attorneys on government payroll, etc., this "prime government leader" had to ask his best buddy private investor Mike Ryan to have an "input" and write part of his speech for him? The same investor who defaulted paying his duties to government with the tacit approval of the same government leader who also serves as minister of finance, who did nothing to enforce payment by Mike Ryan? So are now like a "band of brothers" they working together to bully the new investors? What a cozy relationship these two seem to have. HHHMMM. If this doesn't smack of a highly improper relationship between an elected government official and a private investor and is sufficient grounds to investigate this relationship and see what further breach of protocols have taken place, then I am a chinaman. Governor, please launch an investigation into this relationship, including all emails between the parties, to see what other "influence" or "input" this private investor has had with ourleader and what effect it may have had on his stewardship of our country's affairs.
Ryan's input = Bush's output!
CNS, in fairness, your article seems to be inconsistent with the actual statement:
You say: "the premier said Wednesday that it was merely sent TO Ryan for details on the valuation. Bush said Ryan then returned the Word document with the information and the statement was “crafted using the same document".
The actual statement says "this information was sent BY Ryan in a Word document via e-mail. The statement was then crafted using this same Word document with the Premier dictating the statement to his Senior Political Assistant".
Of course if Ryan contributed only say 5% to this very long statement it does not seem plausible that Bush would have waited for that small input and then add the remaining 95% to that document.
I take it the senior political assistant is Richard Parchment. Again.
Yes it was the past manager of Wendy's guy Richard. And Richard P looking to run in West Bay with that weak and wounded dog call the UDP and to fullfill the sleeping captain seat.
Of all the days to be off Island our "disHonorable Premier" is off today ! every one of you politicians should be on island and attending the very important lecture at the UCCI this afternoon on the topic of corrupted politicians !!!! what a bunch of liars and deceivers !!!
Why would they attend? What is left for them to learn?
Been reading some international papers. Headline
Toronto Mayor removed from office for conflict of interest.
The courts ordered the Mayor of Toronto removed for an amount of approximately $3,000 which he received by using his position and then refusing to pay it back under the laws of Ontario. We should have strict anti corruption and conflict of interest rules to ensure politicians do not assume they can step over the limits
This is very good anti corruption law and conflict of interest rules for politicians in Toronto Canada. I hope the same will apply to our politicians and their citizens, it would be a very wonderful day in Cayman.
So why are we paying for someone to write Mac's speeches if Mike Ryan will do it for free?
Wait a minute, 6 million dollars isn't free, sorry……..
Even if what Honourable Premier Sir McKeever says is true XXXX, how is that any better?!? Ryan didn't author it entirely, he was just able to edit it to his full satisfaction? As if that is going to give the public more comfort and hope that McKeever is actually doing his job.
We are being too hard on Mac…
We all know that he was never any good at readin, riten and rifmetic – but that does not mean that he did not read the script that Mike prepared for him while acting it out like it was his own brilliant idea…
By the way did anyone notice Stevo's expression while he was standing by Rolly while he made the 'Sorry I drove drunk, sorry I crashed while turning around to get dog food, sorry I lied to everybody' speech?
Stevo was standing there with an expression that said: 'Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you – the innocent baby Jesus'…
mac…. it doesn't matter what you say….you have no credibility at this stage
I have stated in many post before that Ryan is the Puppeteer and is the one running the Government. It is now clear that my thoughts are correct.
If you believe Richard wrote the letter to Stan Thomas, then this one is much easier to believe.
Saving in PDF format before emailing?
Don’t give them a get out of jail free card!
If the document had been generated by premier it would say so. Even if that document was then sent and opened on another computer, modified and sent back. It is simple ….the document started on Ryan’s machine. Try it yourself. Starta word document on your computer send it to 2 or 3 friends to modify. When you get it back it will still have your stamp on it. Please mr premier you are now lying. We are not that silly. Take a line from Rolstan’s book. Come clean …nobody believes this latest story.
It shows they lack the most basic computer skills. I wonder if they send out emails without all the other recipients hidden? It is always interesting to see who else is on a guestlist, for example.
The clue is in the writing, there are some quite long words in there, some quite precise grammar, and some thought given to meaning of the words. In other words, it isnt Mac, but it IS someone protecting their position!
Question, as ever, is WHY does Mac pretend he is the author?
He is a disgrace for Cayman.
Tired of your excuses….
Where is the UK in all this? please His Excellency do something about this, thank you.
And your pathitic lying. and having the term "honorable' associated with your name. Your done. Stay home and live off of your spoils.
Why did such a short statement take so long to be produced?
What we have is an admission that Ryan was involved in drafting the statement. Whatever Mac says we just don't know to what degree. The problem still remains that Ryan is an interested party and the implication is that they are colluding to attack and harass the new owners on behalf of Ryan – the man who actually incurred the deferred duty and who Mac has let off the hook from paying it.
Why don't we allow the gentleman to run for office? Love or hate him he is a very skilled negotiator he is the best that I have ever seen. Mr. Ryan is the kind of person that tCayman should have on its side to negotiate any deal. These islands would be in a much better position, as the man knows the fine art of negotations. I am not being facetious as a matter of fact I am very serious, Mr. Ryan should be the lead negotiator for these islands.
That would be like asking the fox to guard the hen house. I do hope that you were being facetious.
Not to mention that the current cash flow situation would be helped tremendously by an infusion of $6,000,000! Remember that civil servants when the government cannot pay you before Xmas!
You're still talking to a character who stiffed the government for six million dollars?? Won't even consider suing him. That is a mighty Christian thing to do Mr. Premier! What a big heart… forgive and forget, that's what you've always done. Now perhaps while you're at you can forgive CNS?
So why did the document properties change? If it was authored by Mackeeva it would say so. Why would Ryan edit the dociument properties inserting his company name and his name? Try again Mac
To be fair the statement says that Ryan started the document – so the properties did not change, and author and company would have been inserted automatically. Then whatever he produced was edited by Mac's staff – that wouldnt change the authorship.
However, the credibility hurdle – quite apart from asking the man behind the original failure to pay to have any input into a document complaining about the new owners not wanting to pay for former owners debts – is to believe that Ryan is asked to produce a document only containing details about property values and then, instead of simply cutting and pasting what you need into a speech you have separately written on CIG letterhead , you edit the Ryan document, supposedly only containing the limited amount of material, to add in your speech. When you add the fact that Mac claims to have dictated the speech it becomes even more incredible. He could of course remove our concerns by producing the e mails and version authored by Ryan prior to his "dictation" but I suspect that is not goingto happen.
It clearly doesn't say the document was started by Ryan. It says it was sent to him for insertion of information and then returned to McKeeva. Therefore the statement is saying the document started with McKeeva. This is clearly not possible given the explanations in this blog concerning word documents.
XXXX May 2013 can't come soon enough.
Sorry, you are worng. Read the statement. I quote:
"This information was sent by Mr. Ryan in a Word document via email. The statement was then crafted using this same Word document with the Premier dictating the statement to his Senior Political Assistant."
Incorrect: Mac claims HE started doc and sent it to Ryan for input…. If this were true, the document properties would be from McKeeva or CIG rather than Ryan
Aha. Yea. I see. Ummh, yup. Say Wha?
Input? Did you say INPUT?
Hold on here a cotton pickin second!! INPUT!!!
Mr. Bush the last time I checked and correct me if I am wrong, the people elected you to look after the affairs of the PEOPLE not pick fights for an investor, the same investor mine you who DID NOT PAY THE 6 MILLION OWED TO THE PEOPLE…
You are now a ways beyond PATHETIC.
Are you saying that you PARTY was incapable of writing your own speeches and you now were OUTSOURCING them to investors to write for you?
People if you can not see the writing on the wall YOU NEVER WILL.
"Bush accused the opposition leader of playing politics"… Isn't that a compliment, coming from a politician?
Well Mr. Bush what do you want to play? Checkers, Monopoly…..no I dont think so you probably are not playing fair there also. You probably would not get go to jail cards and when you cross go they probably want to give you $750K for consulting fees.
Here is an idea, lets cover those lies with more lies and lets say we were prepared to be partners with the new owners but they did not want anything to do with us, I wonder why? My hands are clean and heart is pure, did they not hear me when I said so? And you BFF Ryan, how could they not trust you? I mean you are the bestest buddy of the clean handed pure hearted one with a squeeky clean history all over the world AND we have conducted ourselves in an eternally honorable way. We need to figure out a way to get a payday out of this.
Damage Control….
And the band played on.
Hit it, John-John……………
As history has shown, the cover-up of the conspiracy is more damaging than the original event.