Five cruise port ‘debate’ lessons
101 writes: The debate surrounding the proposed new cruise berthing facility is far from over but the experience thus far has taught us more than a few lessons. Most of these lessons suggests the country is not getting the debate it deserves. Here are a few examples:
‘We the people’ have ‘selective’ outrage
Those that do not support the port have every right to oppose it in our democracy. In fact, whether you believe the port will be damaging to the environment or provide more economic benefit than any potential long-term environmental damage, there are many good arguments on both sides of this coin.
But we should also be asking ourselves why THIS project? Why this issue? The Cayman Islands has no shortage of significant and contentious issues to wrestle with and very few of those have been debated as intensely as this proposed infrastructure enhancement.
The country sat idly by as successive governments failed to adequately prepare Caymanians to participate in the economy, resulting in a situation where too many are struggling to make ends meet. We have continued to support, through our inaction, a failed education system that produces far too many Caymanians that are miles away from the level of literacy and competence needed to compete in this world.
Health insurance costs have skyrocketed for everyone and is now one of the most significant contributing factors to our high cost of living. The John Gray site, a failed school project, has been allowed to drag on for years without any true outrage at the mismanagement and waste of public (i.e. our) funds.
And the long list of issues goes on. Where is the march and referendum on some of those issues?
If you support the port, do you think it will suddenly fix any of those problems? And if you are against the port are you saying that protecting one area environmentally is more important than those other issues?
The special treatment of the port cannot be justified on the basis of the cost of the project either: any of the above issues, if quantified over the long term, will be just as costly, if not more costly, when compared to the port.
This isn’t about selling more watches
It’s one of the most simplistic accusations coming out of the port debate that the project is being pushed by a few persons involved in the duty-free business. Irrespective of where you stand on the port, it’s clear to see that this project has potentially huge economic implications involving many businesses outside the duty-free area and impacting many sectors.
In every country, the port is one of the most significant catalysts for economic growth, often causing entire cities and areas to grow. We can argue that we don’t believe the potential economic benefit in the Cayman Islands is greater than the environmental damage, but at least that is a credible position to take. But to push the issue as one which impacts just a few businesses as part of ignorant political opportunism (see further below) is pure nonsense.
We are creative at defining our democracy
One of the most hotly debated sub-topics surrounding the port controversy is the question of whether the current government has a ‘mandate’ to build the port. The government argues that it does because the people put them in power and therefore doesn’t support the idea behind a referendum being needed so the people can now ‘speak’.
Those opposing the port use the recent election results statistics to show that there was no mandate based on the fact that party candidates did not receive more support than independents or that certain candidates that had ‘lukewarm’ support or outright opposition to the project received a lot of support during the last general elections.
But why are we using the port topic so uniquely as a key focal point for voter decisions? Do we really believe that in a society where large segments of persons are known to vote partly based on the colour of party t-shirts, who paid their last electricity bill or were bought Christmas turkeys, that the majority of voters were voting for candidates based on where they stood on the port? What about other issues?
To pretend that there was any semblance of analysis of policy positions during any recent elections in this country (when so many of us have widely criticised the absence of such analysis in the past) is disingenuous at best and a convenient way to support one side of the debate at worse.
Whether you voted for a candidate that supported or was against the port, you should not be surprised to discover that that same candidate has broken several promises made to you in other areas. And to be clear, if all we do is vote based on promises, candidates will simply make the promises that we want to hear. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
More fundamentally, we voted for members of the legislative assembly, not solely to deliver on their promises but to always act in our interest, whatever situation arises. When we vote we are also choosing leaders, not just shiny new cars and a promise of more jobs.
If your individual candidates (party or independent) come together and decide that they want to build a port or oppose the port, then you need to own the fact that you may have misjudged their characters and decision making abilities. But that doesn’t mean democracy has failed us. It just means we did not assess them wisely.
CIG has been opaque and incompetent
The government touts the fact that it has had many public meetings over the years on the port project. But much of that information is now dated and they have failed miserably on the transparency front. After public outrage at the lack of information they eventually offered a bit more information.
Ironically, it’s possible that even if people were not happy with some of the information recently provided they would have in all likelihood been less outraged if some of that information was provided much earlier.
Worse, instead of responding by educating the public and providing the information, the government appears to have taken poor advice and launched what was effectively a ‘campaign’ for the project.
The government’s decision to twist the project in a positive light instead of simply answering some key questions for the public resulted in very well deserved backlash. This was easily one of the worse displays of incompetent advice given and taken in recent years when it comes to any public interest topic in this country.
Political opportunism is rife
By all means let the debate on the port rage on. But let’s not be so naïve as to allow political opportunism to camouflage itself as true debate or advocacy in the public’s interest. Some of the elected leaders, as well as several in political circles, are using the port debate to their advantage.
It’s the oldest political strategy in the book. Find a way to pit the people against something that the government supports and you will have pit the people against the government. Doing this 18 months away from the next election campaign cycle is exactly what is happening right now in relation to some of the political opposition we are seeing.
This should not be interpreted to mean that some of our politicians (both existing and wannabes alike) are not debating in the interests of the people. But you only need to pause for a few minutes to observe the many examples of political opportunism that is rife in this debate.
It’s actually doing a great disservice to the debate as the people who oppose the project are being drowned out by politicians saying what they think their supporters and potential supporters want to hear. This happens enough during our elections and isn’t what we need right now.
Category: development, Local News, Viewpoint
Anyone notice that part of the south sound boardwalk has failed? Over a million dollars spent. A ridiculous venture in the first place in my opinion. Would have made more sense to build a sidewalk on the other side of the road to extend the length of South Sound in memory of that women who was killed while out for an early morning jog a couple of years ago.
It didn’t fail it was driven over. Still way too much money to spend on something like that.
Thanks for the explanation.
I believe if the port was built anywhere on this island it would still be an issue. If we build it in the North Sound, the watersports companies would cry “people will swim from the pier”. If we build it in Spotts or Red bay, too much bad weather like we all have seen for the summer season. We have too much traffic, South sounders don’t want people walking their properties etc. If we build it in West Bay off of Turtle Centre, we won’t need busses and taxis. Any way Turtle centre will be the new GT, so shops would still be there to sell watches. . How about the Central Mangrove? Its already becoming the new industrial zone. We have a lot of marl pits there, they have permission to go down 50 feet. That is deep enough for any of these ships. No-no we need the swamp to protect us from the sea in the next hurricane in 60 years. Well, where do you suggest to place the bunker fuel storage? We want to build another useless high school that all of the children are all going to become Lawyers, Doctors and Accountants. All of them,right? Why in God’s name do we need to have a vocational school? We have noone who wants to make CI$100 per hour being a plummer or an electrician.
Always good to see opinions on other potential options . Of all the ideas OTHER than G.T. for a cruise facility , the idea of North Sound might be worth a consideration. [ Prepares for back-lash] .. Barkers comes to immediate attention for the following reasons. While I would hate to see N.S. dredging , something’s gotta give at some stage. 1. A relatively short length widened/deepening channel through the old stingray city reef cut would be needed to get to the tip of Barkers, where an approximately 30 acre turning basin could be built , & dredged , to accommodate 2 to 4 ships. 2. A new cruise ship centre could be built at Barkers, which at this point in time is un-inhabited mangrove. The necessary services would be needed to implement such a new location , but as you are starting from scratch, new ideas could be included. 3. Of these new ideas , a North Sound terminal for boat excursions could augment the cruise facility , allowing passengers to go directly to their tour, without taxis and buses. Traffic alleviated in central G.T. and Seven Mile Beach? A myriad of other potential ideas at this location could be implemented , if one was to look ahead with adequate planning.
Instead of expending energy serving as an apologist for this administration’s wanton destruction of the environment why not apply your intellect to persuade them to spend 200 mil on a creating a sustainable economy that does not rely upon the mass importation of labour. Don’t rationialise the piers by trotting out the old patronising economic growth pony. Not discussing the type of economic growth required to improve Caymanian society is pure nonsense. Cayman cannot maintain this current rapid pace of physical development unless you are happy with turning our natural resources into shadows of what once was and relegating your people to becoming totally irrelevant in their own country. The piers are simply more of the same in this regard. Time to put on the brakes and take stock. It is clear far too many have been left behind. Perhaps think about the tremendous potential of a marijuana industry – this country deserves at least a modicum of creativity from its civil servants and elected politicians.
what you are calling current rapid pace, in a little while wont be current !
Sounds great, What do you suggest? You know we cannot stop people from coming here and getting a job. I hear medical tourism, silicon valley wantabe in the caribbean? Anything else? Do you or anybody know how many would qualify? We have people that can’t qualify as hotel staff. High school graduates, college and university up to Master of science degrees. So everybody is still living in hope as more and more children can’t step up to the plate. You can’t force employers to hire, simple.So what’s plan B?
The only project that Caymanians should be throwing their support behind is improving public education. YOUR money will be used to build those piers. Meanwhile, YOUR children are being pushed out of the public school system completely unprepared to compete! Those pro-pier ads on the radio say that more cruise passengers will create jobs. But what KIND of jobs?? Why build cruise ship piers with public funds, just so under educated Caymanians can compete for low paying retail jobs and drive taxis and shuttle buses?? Caymanians won’t be able to compete for those jobs anyway, because retailers will just hire foreigners that will work for less wages! Why not use that money to improve public education, create more scholarships and grants, and prepare our people for high paying CAREERS?? That is the ONLY WAY to build REAL long term prosperity!
AMEN BROTHER! Just read this morning’s news!!! From the Office of Education Standards report just released this week…”Clifton Hunter High School students are performing WELL BELOW INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS”!
Caymanians, do you understand what that means?? That means that the education that our children are receiving, the education that YOUR public funds is paying for, is NOT GOOD ENOUGH to prepare YOUR children to work in their OWN COUNTRY!! Whether you like it or not, YOUR children will have to compete with foreign labor for jobs in Cayman. That foreign labor is arriving BETTER EDUCATED than your children. Even the people coming here for low paying jobs will have a better education than your own children will have!!! How can we compete against foreign labor, when our children can’t even speak English better than the foreign laborer can?
Should you not insist that your government focus on better educating your children, rather than putting hundreds of millions or dollars of YOUR public funds in building cruise ship piers??
Take back your country Cayman. Sign that petition to hold a referendum! At the very least, have a say in what happens to YOUR MONEY!!
But that’s what CIG wants.. an ignorant uneducated population that will follow blindly and not question them while the sell the island out from under us.
Yes, it has been being sold out from under us for years. Soon all of our banks will be foreign owned. WAIT!!! They already are!
the children that want to learn will learn!
those that want to be by the way side will be!
even if the teacher came from above!
If you all want to help education make people pay for their own children. Give the money to private church schools. The public school system can’t work. You really think we need to have spent 10 million dollars on a gym? For what? We going to pay foreigners money when they get all of this coaching for free so that they can go to another country and be their star? We don’t need a 100 million dollar school to improve education we need discipline and trade schools. Lets have a referendum on education!!
8:22 at the same time you are saying their should not be jobs for under educated Caymanians !
This quote taken from another comment@ 11.17am 18/10 just about sums up what is the driving force behind the ‘port opposition’…”.It is not the port. It is how the cayman islands politicians that got together in May 2017 and made-up the numbers of politicians to form the now government..”. People who are unhappy with the ruling Coalition are the main architects of this movement.
4:17 every thing points that direction 100%
Great read, I’m against the port in the current proposal, not because I think we don’t need a port or because I think only a few families will gain. I’m against it because I don’t have confidence in this government being able to manage this project, because they haven’t been transparent which makes me think they are hiding something and I just don’t know if this is the right way to do it. Should the port really be in GT? Have they considered impacts on traffic and thought about how to remedy these infrastructure issues? So many questions, so little answers, I can’t endorse the project how it stands.
sir, to know if this is the right or wrong way to build a dock, you would have had to spend sometime in a civil engineering school simple.
Excellent commentary 101!. I think most of us are so caught up with both sides talking out of both sides of their mouth we are missing the big picture. My personal beef is that the dump is just a big an issue as the potential damage of the port. But so much silence….
The dump is already under contract to be handled
Such an important issue for you but you arent aware no one is talking about it because now we are waiting to see what the DART ends up doing
This commentary while well written has a myriad of issues and is clearly framed in a pro port perspective, along with short sighted points
Wait until members of public learn about how the contractors are going to handle the Dump.
Only one waste to energy plant was built in the USA since 1975. There’s a reason for that. All proposed Incinerators were rejected by people.
Besides, who would you trust to run the plant when they can’t even run parking meters?
Read a comment to Compass editorial about the current state of Incinerators.
The crime is being committed against public health. For some weird reason Grand Cayman residents don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the matter. But they will.
So the Dump issue is far from being solved.
So you know….YOU HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS! and what is behind the solutions you are being offered…Garbage In, Garbage Out
The Trash Incinerator Industry Is Trying To Tank A Massive Renewable-Energy Effort
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trash-incinerator-renewable-energy_us_594d7fede4b05c37bb767c15
Garbage in, garbage out: Incinerating trash is not an effective way to protect the climate or reduce waste
https://theconversation.com/garbage-in-garbage-out-incinerating-trash-is-not-an-effective-way-to-protect-the-climate-or-reduce-waste-84182
“But we should also be asking ourselves why THIS project? Why this issue?”
Because it is a tangible, visible and easily-defined issue with easily defined outcomes for both sides. If one side is successful, the port will be built. If the other side is successful the port will not be built. Basically it is a yes or no proposition. Of course there is a lot more nuance to the arguments for and against, and there are various possible outcomes that can arise from the port being built or not built, but it can be easily boiled down to this yes or no outcome.
The other issues are more vaguely defined. It is not easy to measure whether the education system is successful. Do you measure it by number of jobs Caymanians receive after school? By the quality of those jobs? By the longevity of those jobs?
Everyone wants lower health insurance costs, why would there be a referendum on that?
The John Gray school situation is disturbing, but not a case where a whole segment of the population is against it being done at all. The broad consensus is that the project needs to be completed. The devil is more in the details.
In none of these issues are there two easily defined sides. Instead there is general agreement on the desired outcome, and more questions about the best way to get there.
As another poster on the same issue mentioned , the Elephant in the room : The Dump…While you can argue about the port environmental issue at large, the land-fill has the potential to be far more reaching in environmental harm over a much longer period. I don’t support the cruise pier project, but if given a choice over which one I’d have to pick , the land-fill would be the one to pursue , as a priority.
Very valid points. I would like to offer a partial explanation of why the port has invoked such interest and debate versus the many other issues you rightly raise.
The primary reason is that we can’t undo environmental destruction in a short timescale and that environmental destruction may actually destroy Cayman’s tourist industry, given that our environment is the primary attraction to Cayman. The point is that this is an issue that literally holds the future of Cayman in the balance. If building it proves to be the wrong decision, there’s no coming back. If tourism stays flat – because some more come on big boats but also some choose not to come because Cayman has lost something – then we have simply handed over 20+ years of port revenue to a consortium and thus created a 20-year hole in the economy for generations to lament.
Schools can be changed, political parties can be changed, new economic strategies can be developed, all within a few years. These just don’t carry the same future risk.
Because of that, we should all be extremely suspicious of a Government that wants to proceed without adequate debate and definitely where they clearly do not hold the support of the people. It would break a country!
you may be missing the posters point here. I am not a finance person but my take on this is there are hundreds of millions of dollars being taken home by expat individuals in our banking industry. compare that the amount that caymanians could get if we had prepared them to be the owners in that industry instead of working for a few bucks. the amount would dwarf the port cost. agree with you that environment is key to tourism so I’ll give you another one. the cost of the dump in 15 years is that we could lose a large portion of the cruise industry if that issue is not solved. now add healthcare cost as a result of the health issues relating to the dump. Just because we can’t see a figure in the newspapers doesn’t mean things are not costing us greatly.
BRAVO very well put!
Anonymous 11 :24 am, in your comment , you have summed up the view point and the debate on the pier project . Those points you made is what the person who wrote the viewpoint failed to express . I fully agree with you , and that’s what the government is failing to acknowledge and see that will happen .
yup plenty of BS on both sides.
It is not the port. It is how the cayman islands politicians that got together in May 2017 and made-up the numbers of politicians to form the now government. Went about doing the business for the port. By not notifying the people then did one or two meetings about the port after they had already went about the business of the port. Supposely had those meetings too try and pretty-up things and cover-up things. And they are still going about doing things their way in a real dictatorship style. The public will like to find out if money is in the envelopes?.
…which is why this regime refuses to enact the Standards in Public Life Law (2014), which was actually part of the Constitution 2009, if you can feature it.
google what GOVERNMENT means so that the next time at the polls you will know what you are doing!
Leaving out the missing EIA, obscured business case, etc….the cruise lines and this regime are both preying on the gullibility, naiveté, and lack of critical industry understanding by Caymanian voters, and feeding conflicted stakeholders. Portraying the Port as a do-or-die “necessity”, end-of-days scenario rather than a “convenient preference” is disingenuous. Even the purported “home originating bases” in Florida aren’t fully equipped to clean, service, re-equip, load passengers and handle the very few contemplated and yet-to-be built/launched vessels of this description – all multi-Billion-dollar purpose-built and destined for other waters. Port Everglades has a home port facility for Oasis of the Seas, and they do sail by every other Thursday during high season, with maybe 2000 passengers more than current vessels. We forgo a max 2000 passengers twice a month for 6 mos…24,000 passengers a year x KYD$2.46 Port fee = $59,040 we miss out on. Is that a do-or-die scenario? I think there are more expensive wrist-watches at Kirk Freeport, so that can’t be it. Port of Miami is yet to finish purpose-built home complexes for RCL and NCL for bulk tourism Eastern Caribbean itineraries. CCL is still picking final bidders for their Port Canaveral Terminal. To suggest that there is an immanent threat, or a multitude of “better” Western Caribbean competitor ports is still an aspirational fantasy, unless we are talking about the wholly-owned Haitian island complexes were liners control the entire experience and own 100% of the upland.
so you saying this is about selling watches then? I don’t disagree too much with what the article says but I will never support the port for environmental reasons. But I do think the project is important for the economy and the cruise lines seem to want it too. it may not be a do or die thing as you say but it might be needed soon. I just don’t think its worth it for us to do it right now when we have other things to sort out. first.
@girl power – this country needs more WOKE young people like you to spread the word to your peers. Talk to your friends and people your age and tell them how UNIMPORTANT cruise piers are, when compared to providing first class educations for your fellow young Caymanians. Improve public education FIRST, provide MORE university scholarships and grants, educate the populace so that they can COMPETE and control their own destiny! Cruise piers will only provide more LOW WAGE JOBS for Asian foreigners (I have nothing against our Asian expats, I’m only highlighting the TRUTH!). Better public education for CAYMANIANS will provide long term high paying jobs and secure a FUTURE for US!!!
2:02 you said its not worth to do it now, pick the year you think will be ideal!
can’t really disagree with any of this. I don’t oppose the port but I am definitely pissed at the government in the way they have screwed up this thing.
explain