Guest Writer

The schizophrenia of it all

The proposed payroll tax exposed a serious tear in the fabric of our community which we scramble to conceal — but it is not new. It has sat, insipid and growing, covered by a thin blanket of civility and economic convenience for several years. It is not a product of term limits, nor is it the product of irrational xenophobia on the part of the majority of Caymanians, or even arrogance on the part of most expatriates. It is like most things that are wrong in Cayman, the result of an intentional lack of enforcement (or occasionally ignorance) of laws. 

We already have the cure for the disease. It is found in a matrix of legislation designed and intended to temper extreme views and prevent circumstances that otherwise cause rational persons to start to lose their cool.

The ignorance, real or pretend, is allowed to exist because, absent enforcement, the consequences of breach have no consequence. There is real suffering by both Caymanians and expatriates as a result.

Government always knew the tear was there, and partly of its own making. Slapping numerous coats of "Caymankind" over it was not enough. Attempting to assuage an increasingly angry electorate by slapping taxes on expatriates backfired. It backfired because it was mad, because it was discriminatory, because it would not work, and because Caymanians want to be able to have a fair shot (perhaps including a leg up) in their own land but not to see innocent individual expatriate friends, neighbours and colleagues singled out and punished for trying to live good productive lives amongst them.

For government to call for the private sector to employ more Caymanians even while it contorts the immigration law past breaking in its exuberant extollation of the benefits of unbridled growth is insane. Growing or even maintaining the size of an expatriate population whilst the demands (in terms of jobs incapable of being filled by Caymanians) no longer exist in our economy can and will only result in unemployment. To suggest a 5% fine where there are jobs available for unemployed Caymanians that are filled by expatriates is laughable. If we are enforcing the immigration laws, no such positions can exist.

It is OK though, because when too many of us Caymanians complain about being overtaken in our own land by outsiders, we can have another status gold rush — turning expatriates into Caymanians will solve the problem. Ain't that so Mac? You can always raise work permit fees (again) to make up the fact that the new Caymanians won't have to pay them anymore.

I’ll move to the Brac.

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2nd class Caymanians

I recently heard a local politician on the radio saying that one of the problems with the current Cayman Islands constitution is that it didn't require someone interested in running in the general elections to have both parents born in Cayman. After some research it turns out that the way the constitution is currently written a person who was not born in the Cayman Islands, even with Caymanian Status and naturalised, must have at least one parent or grandparent born in this country to qualify to be a candidate in the general elections.

This seemingly innocent provision, tucked away in section 62 of the constitution, is not right. Some quick research proved it was hard to find countries with such an offensive provision. The United States, United Kingdom and Canada all allow citizens to run for elected office (the only difference in the case of the US is that the president must be born in America).

Closer to home and more comparable, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Bermuda and Turks and Caicos all allow citizens or those with the equivalent of "status" to run for elected office with only a requirement that they be resident from 3 months to 12 months before the general election.

The Cayman Islands approach is unusually aggressive in denying citizens the right to participate as elected officials. It does not allow citizen to qualify with a minimum residence period, as is the case in most countries. It goes a step further: you can be a citizen and resident for decades and still never qualify because if neither of your parents or grandparents were born here, you are not a "qualified citizen" according to our constitution.

It is understandable that non Caymanians do not have the privilege to vote or run for elected office and there may be a case to also limit the participation of Cayman status  holders as political candidates to those that have lived in the country for a lengthy period, for example 15 or 20 years (although I can see why many might even disagree with that last condition since it is so out of sych with the rest of the world).  Most of those who have been Caymanian for that long are likely already naturalised and hold Cayman passports.

But our approach creates two different classes of Caymanians. In this country, for example, you will be Caymanian enough to be naturalized, get a Cayman passport and give your valuable vote to others who run for office, but you are not Caymanian enough to serve as a member of the Legislative Assembly. 

What we have done in this area sounds suspiciously like the work of politicians who want nothing but to protect their turf. 

This rule also limits the pool of persons that Caymanians can vote for. In the current situation the community would benefit from having the choice of a few additional Caymanians who have lived here for a long time and who could contribute to the country as elected officials.

It is likely that there could be anywhere from hundreds to thousands of voters on the list in this position and they will be forgiven for feeling now that they should not even bother voting if their country categorizes them as a lesser form of 'Caymanian'. This may suit the hard liners in Cayman, but it is a recipe for disharmony, and as time goes on and the crop of politicians willing to run for office dwindles, this will only get worse.

Running for office is one of the legitimate ways that people participate in a democracy and limiting this involvement in such a small community cannot be a good thing.

Ironically, the politician I heard was suggesting that the situation needed to be changed so that both parents had to be born here, in other words make the test to qualify to run for office even harder than it already is.

But instead we should make the change so that as long as you are Caymanian and have lived here for a specified number of years (for example 10 or 15 years), you have the right to run for office. We should change this provision to that effect whenever we make minor amendments to the constitution because it is outrageously offensive, bad for democracy and seriously out of sych with the reasonable rights of citizens in most democratic countries.

I guess we were all so busy focusing on issues during the constitutional debates, like whether we would have 18 MLAs and create a new exciting position called 'Premier' among other things that we missed this injustice. It would be interesting to hear what both classes of "Caymanians" think about the current situation.

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One solution to two problems

We are at this time in our history faced with multiple economic problems but they are all solvable. Aside from the financial tribulations being experienced by our government, the majority of us in this country are faced with what I will describe as a ‘pension dilemma’. Most of us are aware of the current financial problems faced by government, so there is no need to elaborate on this issue at this point in my article.

By the term ‘pension dilemma’ I mean that our pension system is flawed in several ways.

Firstly we are forced by law to pay pensions but there is no guarantee that upon retirement we will have more than we paid in to our pensions, or even the full amount that we paid.

The second flaw in our pension system is the fact that the pension providers are themselves faced with the issue of generating a return for their clients. This means investing in overseas financial markets and in some cases having to add a second layer of money managers, thereby increasing management fees. Additionally those financial markets are very unstable with the world going from one financial crisis to the other.

The third pension problem is that those of us who are at the lower income scale will not in our lifetime accumulate enough through our pension to ever sustain ourselves later in life and many of us will become dependent on government funded social services for assistance.

So how can we find an alternative that will solve our pension dilemma and at the same time have a positive impact on our economy and be beneficial to government’s financial position?

In relation to the government’s financial position this includes substantial debt and a significant amount of interest per year.

The obvious solution for government is to do a phased 5-year disposal of all of the public authorities, including the Water Authority, the sewerage system, the Port Authority, CINICO and Cayman Airways.

The major concern in their disposal is – to whom will we sell these essential components of our infrastructure?  Certainly I would not recommend that we allow any single company or person to have this kind of control over our country. Furthermore these utilities should not be controlled by any foreign entity.

So here is an alternative that might solve all of the problems that I have set out above:

We need the pensions law amended so that it stipulates that at least 80% of the assets now held by our pension funds must be returned to Cayman and invested in specified local investment vehicles and the transfer of funds should be scheduled over the next five years.

We need the specified investment vehicles to be secure and to bring a guaranteed return on investment to our pensions and a fixed amount of management fees to all of the pension providers.

We need the pension contribution for everyone to be set at a minimum amount of $300 per month. If the salary is less than $3,000 per month then the employee should continue to pay 5% of salary and the employer make up the difference to bring it to $300.

For those who have not already put one and two together, I am suggesting that government should sell our public owned companies to our own pension fund providers.

The best way to accomplish all of the above is for government to retain 20% interest in each of these entities and to have a proportional role in their management. We all know that the private sector generally provides more efficient management than government, so this enables the private sector, in this case the pension fund appointed management systems, to have control and this thereby will improve efficiency.

I believe that our current utility company, CUC, is guaranteed a return on investment of somewhere between 10% and 15%, so these entities that will be owned by our pension funds and thereby ourselves will need the same arrangement.

There are many future benefits that will flow from what I am proposing here.

For example in five years time when the government has divested 80% of all of these assets, government will have earned enough to pay off the total public debt and have a surplus.

The civil service will have a significant reduction in employees because those employees previously working for the government-owned authorities will by that time be privately employed in the then private enterprises. This will bring the civil service and thereby government expenditure down to a manageable size.

The pension funds will have a stable and sufficient return on investment and will be in a better position to keep their management fees to a minimum.

The cost to consumers should not increase because more efficient management brings with it lower operating costs. And even if we complain about high utility costs at least we would know that in the long run our pensions will be substantially more than we contributed because we are the ultimate beneficiaries of the profit from our utilities.

This brings me back to the reason why I recommended a minimum pension amount of $300. A compound interest calculator shows that if we invested $3,600 annually for 21 years, with annual interest of 9% we would have more than $200,000 accumulated in our pension.

I don’t have to add that this will significantly reduce social services expenditure on those of us whose pensions would otherwise be insufficient to cover our living expenses in our later years.

If our pension fund has a return of 9% to 12%, we would all be in a much better financial position when retirement time comes around.

Finally, the biggest windfall of all will come in five years time, if we chose to take these companies public by having them listed on the NASDAQ or other exchange.

This public offering through a US or other international exchange will bring in substantial new investment, which can then be applied to green energy such as solar energy, wind-driven energy, the purchase of CUC, the purchase of our fuel depots (or the creation of our own), or other similar investments.

We would however need to structure any public offering so that control is maintained locally.

Admittedly, it will be almost impossible to guarantee fixed earnings for Cayman Airways and the two public attractions, but that does not mean that they cannot be made profitable by privatization and by the increased efficiency that privatization will bring.

To those critics who will say that this is not a viable solution, I say to you that this is a basic idea that can be revised, improved and amended. Our current system of sending our hard earned dollars to be lost in the US stock market is, in my opinion, much more risky than the solutions which I have outlined here.

The sale of our public authorities to any entity other than our pension funds might help government finances in a similar way, but we will then be left with the same pension dilemma and the additional scenario where the profit from our utilities might not be re-invested in Cayman.

My conclusion therefore is that a phased transfer of the assets of our pension funds back to Cayman to purchase our own infrastructure combined with a coordinated infrastructure disposal by government will go a long way to solving two of our major problems between now and the next five years.

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Solutions vs politics

I write to discuss the acute political, financial and reputational issues facing our country and the need for our collective behavior and decisions to reflect the seriousness of the situation. The focus must be on solutions. I will deal first with the political issues. When I resigned as a member of the PPM in 2010 I said that we had made a mistake in embracing the Caribbean model of party politics and encouraged other party members, from both parties, to admit our collective mistake and to change course.

It is important for us to recognize and acknowledge when our country started on this pronounced downward trajectory. It was in 2001. It is no coincidence that 2001 was also the year that we embraced and introduced party politics in Cayman.

Since 2001 both parties have been focused on remaining in power and winning the next election. Prior to 2001, when there were no political parties, governments were traditionally given two terms to implement their agenda. Since party politics came into being good governance and effective policy making have taken a nosedive and voter frustration has grown exponentially, which has resulted in each government being given one term only. Our society has become more divided and the unity between Caymanians and expatriates, which was hitherto the cornerstone of our success as a country, has all but disappeared. There is widespread political victimization as well as politicization of our civil service. Our continued denial of these glaring realities is the reason why the downward trajectory continues.

The solution to our political problems must therefore be to vote in the 2013 general elections to  elect a coalition government consisting of a good mixture of candidates and begin the process of disbanding political parties. This will force the 18 MLAs, irrespective of their political views, to work together to form a government. You would still have the all important check and balance of an opposition to government when members, unrestrained by party rules, feel the need to oppose government policy.

I now turn to the current budget crisis. We all know how we got here and both the PPM and the UDP must share in the responsibility. As citizens we must also acknowledge some responsibility as our demands on government for services and favours are very hard for the party in power to resist. It is important that we all acknowledge that nothing is for free and every service and favour provided by government must ultimately be paid for by all of us. Government does not automatically generate money by its mere existence. So nothing is free and we must all pay, one way or the other, directly or indirectly, for government to operate.

Tinkering with our  revenue and expenditure, such as was last proposed by government, will do nothing to balance our budget in the medium term. If we continue this band aid approach the UK will never approve our budget and could ultimately assume absolute control of our finances by suspending section 54(1) of our 2009 Constitution which mandates that a Minister “shallbe charged with responsibility for finance.”

The government must focus on expenditure and implement a medium term plan to bring it in line with what is considered sustainable for a country with our tax regime and GDP.

Let us look at some significant spending that could be eliminated from our budget during the next two financial years. It is important to note that I do not have access to the government’s draft budget so I can only make recommendations about what I have personal knowledge of.

The size of the civil service must be reduced but that can only be done over time and on a phased basis through collaboration with the private sector but planning and execution must commence now. It would be wrong, for many reasons, to convert a large number of civil servants to ‘unemployed status’. This would result in unnecessary hardships on our families and cause a further downturn in our economy as those salaries are removed from circulation locally. At the same time it would increase government’s expenditure as more and more people seek government assistance to survive.

Therefore, an integral part of the programme must be to transition some civil servants to the private sector so as to ensure that their income is protected while simultaneously reducing government’s expenditure and providing labour for the private sector. The aim should be to reduce government’s expenditure on salaries by $10M annually over 5 years, which would represent a total reduction of $50M in expenditure. On the basis of an average annual salary of $39,000, this equates to the migration of approximately 256 civil servants to the private sector annually over a 5 year period for a total reduction of 1,280 civil servants. With an average of 19,000 work permits in existence annually, this is easily achievable.

The following additional actions could be taken to reduce expenditure :

1. Cayman Turtle Farm Island Wildlife Encounter –  Close all components of this attraction except the Turtle Farm related operations. This would allow for the subsidy to be reduced from $9M to $1M, an annual savings of CI$8M;
2. Tourism Attractions Board – Privatize its operations, including Pedro Castle, the Botanic Park, Hell and the Craft Market and save approximately CI$1.4M in annual subsidy;
3. Cayman Airways – The Panama and Dallas routes should not have been launched in the middle of a budget crisis and a global recession. Immediately discontinue these routes and eliminate the approximately $1.5M marketing and operational budget associated with them. Reinstate the implementation plan for the Lufthansa Consultants Report which was commenced in 2008 and this will save the airline approximately $2M annually. This should convert into a $2M reduction in government’s annual subsidy to Cayman Airways;
4. The Nation Building Fund – This has been justified on the basis that our children need money for scholarships and our churches need money for ‘nation building’. Yet we have properly functioning Education Council and Ministry of Tourism Scholarship programmes with properly established criterion awarding record numbers of scholarships annually. Our churches have an obligation to act as a moral compass for our society rather than inadvertently promoting greed through accepting government’s patronage. Any money given to churches for infrastructure projects, such as hurricane shelter space, is easily justified but must be properly funded through government’s capital development programme and not through this illusive creature called a “Nation Building Fund”. Eliminate it and save $4M annually;
5. Government Administration Building – Mandate all remaining government agencies that were slated to move into the new Government Administration Building to do so withoutfurther delay. This could save the government approximately $2.5M in lease costs annually; and
6. Health Services Authority – Implement and enforce more prudent policies and eliminate the significant waste by mandating the HSA to deliver its services within the $8M annual subsidy. This would save on average $12M annually by eliminating the need to provide large allocations of supplementary funding. Health care subsidies to the HSA have continued to increase to unsustainable levels growing from a total of $17M in 2009/10 to $19M in 2010/11 to $27M in 2011/12.

On the revenue side, if sufficient resources were made available to the right agencies the proposed revenue measures for this year would be unnecessary.

I am advised that if sufficient resources were deployed to enforce the Proceeds of Crime Law, $60M – $70M could be deposited into the government's treasury in this financial year alone. Why is this being ignored ?

My recommendations, if pursued, could potentially save the government $41.4M annually and much more over time. Revenue in this 2012/13 financial year could improve by $60M – $70M.

Finally we must look at what must be done about the significant reputational damage that has been caused to our country in recent times when good governance issues have arisen and when announcements about direct taxation sent shockwaves throughout our local economy. This presented yet another platform for negative international media coverage about the Cayman Islands.

Much damage has already been done to our economy but there is no point is crying over spilled milk. Let’s clean it up! There is an urgent need for the private and public sectors to collaborate and to launch a robust and cogent international public relations damage control campaign.

Premier McKeeva Bush’s insistence on remaining in office pending the outcome of the three police investigations must be addressed decisively. It is obvious that both political parties are impotent in addressing the issues. We should not expect our situation to improve absent leaders who do not have the courage to tell our country the truth and to do what needs to be done to fix our problems.

It is wrong to try to rush police investigations for reasons which are well known to law enforcement professionals. The only alternative, therefore, is for the business sector to call for the premier’s removal from office. The business sector is in a position to facilitate this and to prevent further reputational damage to our country. I call upon them to do so as a matter of urgency.

I sincerely hope that my recommended solutions will be objectively considered and that anyone who may feel personally offended by anything I’ve said will understand that this is bigger than any one of us. This is first and foremost about Cayman.

Charles Clifford is a former minister of tourism, environment, investment & commerce.

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All done?

It's a mere 10 months before the 2013 elections and you would be forgiven for thinking that the UDP was elected to office just last month and the PPM opposition party has gone away to restructure. An effective opposition is not just about politicking; it's a key aspect of having a good democracy in any country because at any point in time the incumbents know that if they fail to perform, the people will grant the privilege of leading the country to the opposition.

But the PPM has done little to instill faith among the people that they are a viable alternative and its leader, Mr Alden McLaughlin, needs to address that.

Worse yet, they have had no less than three years to establish themselves as the only viable way forward and instead they seem to have collapsed slowly but surely. This back of the envelope assessment goes far beyond the recent announcement that Mr Arden McLean has resigned. Rather it speaks directly to the way this party has been led and its activities (or rather inactivity) since 2009.

The general strategy of the PPM seems to be to leave the UDP alone because, as the saying goes, if you give them enough rope we know what to expect. To a certain extent this has occurred in the sense that the UDP have failed so miserably that all that's left is for the ministers to put all their personal belongings in a small box in one corner of their respective ministries.

But a successful strategy for the PPM is about much more than letting the UDP self-destruct; it must be about demonstrating to the people that a new vision and leadership is a must for the good ship Cayman to steer away from the rocks.

The PPM's appearance on the radio to criticise the premier's most recent blunder without offering solutions, a failed attempt at a no confidence vote and the staging of its own parliamentary session under a tree outside the LA are not sufficient to demonstrate an effective opposition.

What is required is a clear articulation of the alternative approach, the solutions, and the vision for the country that the PPM brings to the table. Instead there is over reliance on highlighting the tendency of the UDP to attract allegations on corruption, and just pointing fingers at incidences of incompetence that we are already aware of.

Alden, we get it. The PPM are not susceptible to allegations of corruption. You are far more statesmanlike. You have more integrity, etc. But your political strategy must ride on much more than that. The country is facing difficult economic times and needs real solutions. We need a proper assessment and, just as important, an articulation of it from you as the country's alternative political leader, that you understand the causes of our problems and know how to start addressing them.

The PPM won convincingly on the basis of integrity in 2005. But the country has now had a chance to see its record on economic and fiscal management and, as most are aware by now, that performance was far from great. That is all the more reason for the opposition leader to speak to those issues, not avoid them for fear of facing criticism.

If the party is still, or intends to continue, taking political advice from "H squared", it must at least consider the following in these discussions:

A) You cannot win with fresh faces if they cannot demonstrate leadership experience. Whatever opinion one has about Arden McLean, he is a strong leader and that loss needs to be made up with serious candidates.

B) You need candidates who can show economic leadership, notjust a concern for social issues. You can sing "pro Cayman" and "anti Dart" until the cows come home, but if people don't see how food will make it to the table or jobs created, that singing will be for nought.

C) Alden must work harder to remove the perceptions of being arrogant, disconnected and unapproachable to too many, aside from the PPM hard liners.

D) Alden must relax a little (a lot?) and be open to speaking with independents as well as those persons whom he may even consider as UDP supporters. In short, the man must be open and connect, because the cocoon that is the PPM is a lonely and ineffective shell from which to launch a successful political campaign.

The leader of the PPM must now rise to the challenge with far more conviction and direction or step aside. The country's democracy deserves better.

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Cayman’s economic conundrum

As an independent candidate in the 1984 elections I had a vision that Cayman was heading for great prosperity and proposed the following: reduce the size and cost of government; work hard to create a vibrant private sector and establish by law a “lock box fund”, which would be funded with 10% of the total government revenue on an annual basis.

This fund would only be used for serious emergencies and if not needed would simply be carried forward as a savings account for the next generation.

At the time, many of the other candidates in the race denounced the idea as infeasible and instead criticized me for not knowing what I was talking about. I never once had a moment of disappointment about not getting elected and treated it as simply a good lesson in the learning curve of life. However, what has saddened me over the years is the inability of some of those whom we did elect (and appoint) to even recognize good ideas and do something with them. And the more things change the more they remain the same.

Today, it is estimated the fund would have somewhere in the range of $400-$700 million or more through the magic of compound interest over 28 years. (The actual financial data was not available from either the statistics dept or the financial secretary’s offices.)

Cayman’s financial dilemma did not start this year, last year or five years ago; it started 25-30 years ago when we failed to realize the opportunities this country was starting to enjoy and to heed the advice of the older generation: “Save for the rainy day.” Respective governments failed to plan, which in reality is planning to fail.

Once again we find ourselves scrambling to prepare and balance a budget, while our liabilities keep increasing and the sources of revenue are drying up because the private sector and middle class are shrinking. It does not matter from what angle you examine this; we have serious financial challenges ahead.

In 2007 the world’s economy started on a downward spiral with very few ingovernment, commerce or economics having the foresight to see it coming. Five years later there are many in leadership positions who do not fully understand the causes, effects or implications of this crash. The failure to understand the big picture while focusing on the smaller parts will probably not result in viable solutions.

What we have experienced over the past 5 years is not a normal “down market cycle”, followed by an “up cycle”; instead it is a shift in economic fundamentals, which are evolving and taking us to a new place. But policy makers and many experts are treating this as the former and not the latter, assuming that we are soon on the verge of a recovery.

Cayman is no exception; many believe that all we have to do is wait and hope and things will return to the good old days like 2005-6 when we were rebuilding after Ivan. But this time is different and the sooner we realize this better off we will be.

In the USA there were six interconnected economic bubbles – stocks, housing, private equity, discretionary spending and, more fundamentally, the government debt and the dollar bubbles.

While these bubbles were expanding they created much wealth, opportunities and jobs to millions in the USA and around the world. Since 2008 these bubbles have been bursting one after the next, bringing the overall economy down. The two last big ones, the dollar and debt, have yet to burst.

The US government has injected billions into their economy in an attempt to prevent the latter two major bubbles from bursting; however, it has delayed but will not prevent it. The American annual deficit has increased from $250 billion in 2007 to $1.6 trillion, with a corresponding increase of 200% in the money supply (from $800 billion in 2008 to $2.4 trillion) and a total debt of $16 trillion, the largest in history by any nation; not to mention the record high unemployment across all sectors. There will be no equilibrium until the two final bubbles burst, causing even more turmoil in the world’s economic order. In addition, inflation in commodities (food) and other products along with higher interestrates are on the horizon.

Why is all this important to Cayman? Simple — we are part of the global economy.

The next time you go to the grocery store take note of where our food comes from; look around to see where our tourists come from along with much of our investments. The Cayman Islands financial umbilical cord is tied to the USA and always will be as long as we are located 500 miles from Miami.

There is another very important event taking place in less than 3 months time which will affect the Cayman Islands, perhaps more so than any previous; i.e., the Presidential elections. When was the last time we saw an advert by a sitting president criticizing his opponent with references to the Cayman Islands? In 2013 Caymanians with US citizenships will have start filing and paying the US taxes. If someone had told us this 10 years ago we would have thought they were smoking something.

There is little doubt that the re-election of President Obama will result in a tougher stance towards the Cayman Islands, particularly in relationship to our financial services industry. While on the other hand, a win by Mr Romney could re-energize the free market system on which America was founded and ultimately create better times ahead. While these are events over which we have no control, we should be aware of all external conditions and factor them into our plans.

Cayman has been living in denial for too long. Because things have been so good in recent years, it’s hard for many people to accept that they would not continue to be good. 

But the world has changed and now it’s past time for us to change — our thinking, attitudes, behavior, expectations, and the way we have been managing our affairs and stop squandering our scarce resources. Our mantra now should be “do more with less” and work smarter not just harder, while demanding greater efficiencies and accountability.

Government must be reformed from top to bottom; our debt must be brought under control; privatization and joint ventures should have been embarked on long ago; solicitation of the best ideas should be a way of doing business; instead of panic rescue missions by a few (while they may be helpful).The measures announced so far to remedy our budget deficit are only temporary and we will face this situation again next year, if not earlier, unless the tough decisions are made now. One cannot expect a band aid to cure cancer.

When speaking to businessmen and folks in this country, one gets the feeling that there is finally a realization that this is no ordinary recession and that new thinking and actions are overdue in order to help us position ourselves into a sustainable mode and hopefully chart a better future. Now, if only our government would realize this and make the tough decisions necessary to secure some hope and opportunity for the next generation, instead of hedging their bets for the next election.

I believe there is nothing wrong with Cayman that the people who live on Cayman cannot solve, but a new vision and approach is needed for that to happen. Unfortunately, the scarce ingredient is “time”; we are running out of it. For us to leave a better life for our children and grandchildren we have to become less selfish and be prepared to sacrifice, as our parents and grandparents did for us.

We are running out of options, Cayman.

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Our budgetary crisis

While listening to the premier speak at Mary Miller Hall this past Wednesday I found myself overwhelmed with a feeling of déjà vu. Prior to Mr Bush revealing the proposed revenue measures which are to replace the ‘Community Enhancement Fee’ he spent nearly two hours reminding the public of how the FCO came to be in control of Cayman’s budget, an agendum which has become all too common at public meetings.

The members of Cayman United were extremely disappointed with the way in which last Wednesday’s meeting was conducted. It seems obvious to our group that the sitting government failed to view last week’s meeting as a method of communicating new revenue measures to the public, and addressing any relevant questions which may have arisen; rather it seems our elected officials viewed this meeting as an opportunity to blame previous administrations for allowing the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) to control our budget.

As mentioned in one of our previous public statements, the vision of Cayman United is for the future and we rarely consider past events.  Mr Bush, however, seems to be focused on those events which he claims have led to the crisis in which we now find ourselves.

We therefore feel it necessary to remind the sitting government, as well as the public, that our current budgetary crisis is not simply due to the previous PPM administration, nor is it a direct result of the sitting UDP administration. Rather, we feel that we find ourselves in this crisis due to constant mismanagement of the country’s finances by successive administrations. 

The PPM administration spent outside their means in their final year of service; however, as they failed to require audited accounts from various ministries, overspending should perhaps have been expected.  The deficit which resulted from this led to the FCO taking control of our finances, but the FCO did not simply dictate consequences for this overspending.  Instead, the FCO approved a three year plan for our budget which was presented by the sitting UDP government. The current administration has again failed to require that public accounts be audited and exceeded the budget framework which they agreed with the FCO. 

Both parties are at fault.

The way forward for the Cayman Islands is an administration which recognizes the importance of consistently and reliably audited public accounts.  Without these it will prove impossible to understand where our government will spend more than $600 million which they expect to earn in revenue over the coming year.  After all, one cannot reduce wasteful expenditure without first identifying it.

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