Legislative Assembly faces tight agenda
Cayman Islands Legislative Assembly
(CNS): The Legislative Assembly is due to begin proceedings today in the last meeting for 2018. Facing a packed agenda, MLAs will be debating around 18 bills and dealing with a number of other pieces of government and opposition business in what is planned to be a short three-day session.
From the Customs and Border Control Bill and the Immigration (Transition) Bill, which will pave the way for major changes in how government manages border control, to a clampdown on illegal gambling, MLAs will have much to wrestle with.
The proceedings will be broadcast on CIGTV through cable providers, the government YouTube channel, as well as on Radio Cayman.
Check back to CNS later for more details on the proceedings.
I have said this before and it’s worth repeating. Attendance records of our MLA’ s should be published for all to see, it should make for interesting reading. Even better we should be privy to their expense claims, in the UK these are closely vetted and any transgressions made public. This has never happened here.
You are safer when they are not in session.
I suspect that this is a combination of Alden thinking LA meetings are a waste of time when he has the numbers, and LA meetings actually BEING a comparatively poor use of time for him and for ministers, who do have demanding day jobs. Work on key priorities always grinds when the LA is in session. The days of every minister being able to spend a stretch of weeks listening to their colleagues talk are just over. If people want the LA to sit more often, then it needs to have more members on both sides, so that a proper debate can take place even though most of the ministers are not there.
Alden really could have created a better schedule though- why don’t they meet every month for a week(5days)- there would not be this constant backlog and they would have time to really discuss matters. Cmon Alden, you can do better!
Many of these were already passed by Cabinet and Dr Speaker, behind closed doors, without consultation, discussion, or debate, months ago!
By definition Cabinet has to approve of legislation prior to the sitting for it to end up on the floor of the house
The real issue in Cayman is there is no substantive debate of the issues, no real alternative proposals from a viable opposition and no overarching sense of ideals and goals
The house meets so infrequently that PMMs and Questions are pushed back from meeting to meeting , and by the time they are asked or discussed they are already months too late and irrelevant
House meetings go late into the night because they start at 10 or 11 take lunch, and then have to extend the sitting at 4:30 in order to actually get anything done in one day
(remembering that each member is allocated 2 hours to speak)
7 of the members are part of Cabinet meaning they are bound to the decision made behind closed doors, 1 member is the speaker meaning out of the 13 only 5 government MLAs are really allowed to have their own opinions on issues on the floor of the house
Once you take their party affiliations into account that number shrinks even further
The Cabinet needs to be shrunk back down to 5 or 6 members
The LA needs to hold sittings weekly or bi-weekly for a day or two with a rolling agenda, to ensure that questions can be posed, along with motions, amendments and new legislation so that there is time for actual discussion debate and alterations if necessary
The PAC needs to meet monthly
And yes… A rubber stamp session. My guess for the top three people to actually read every page of all the bills presented:
1/ Ezzard… Its what he does
2/ Alden… He needs to know most of what he is proposing
3/ Kenny… He wants to be viable
The rest will just raise their hands in unison yay or nay as directed.
What an awesome job it must be to be a back bencher or even better, a member of the opposition.
Why can they not meet three days a week, instead of three days a quarter. They might actually be able to get along and come up with actual solutions to some of the pressing issues of the day.
Even when they try to address pressing issue of the day
They have to let the legal drafters create the bills and motions for them which takes weeks and months to do
Even their quickest response to an issue is usually at least months if not years later
Debate usually comprises of 1 or 2 people trading shots across the chamber and then sitting down to rubber stamp the proposals
Legal drafting is by no means an easy job, taking an idea, crafting the language and checking for conflicts between relevant laws takes an inordinate amount of time especially here where the office responsible is likely just a handful of persons
But it is not as if our current system which takes months and years to produce laws and bills produces perfect results
Many of these month long endeavors by the government are then swiftly followed up year after year with amendments to fix simple mistakes, oversights and inconveniences that might have been discovered initially had real debate and review occurred
Yes, it is disgusting! If you added up the hours that our elected MLA people actually are working you would find they are some of the highest paid “public servants” on record.
Not just on record, but in the world!
Tight Agenda my left foot. It’s only “tight” because they are squeezing a year of parliamentary proceedings into 3 days. C’mon man.
Tight agenda aka Rubber stamp conference
Tight Agenda = Nothing “meeting” except for Govt self serving and for the greedy interest of those that are propping them up. How shameful with those outrageous $$$$$ salaries and the most they can muster is three 1/2 days= 18hours in total after lunch breaks in the LA. No surprise though look at the bulge of those guts and size of those bloated faces of our MLA says it all???