Over half of petition signatures verified
(CNS): One month after campaigners seeking a people-initiated referendum on the government’s plans for cruise berthing facilities handed the petition to the Elections Office, almost 56% of the signatures required to trigger the poll have been verified. As of Saturday 20 July, 2,942 names have been checked, according to the Elections Office website, well past the halfway point of the target number of 5,292 required.
The campaigners have now handed in over 5,600 names, giving the petition a buffer as a small number of people who signed the petition have refused to sign the verification forms.
As the process continues, Elections Office staff are going door-to-door to track down those who signed the petition as well as hosting booths at all of the major supermarkets during the week and at the weekends. The office on Smith Road is now open until 6:30pm during the week and between 10am and 3pm on Saturdays, where people can go and verify their signatures or register to vote.
Cruise Port Referendum Signature Verification Countdown
* 5,438 submitted 12 June + 199 submitted 11 July
** Constitutionally required 25% of the 21,116 registered electors = 5,292
| # of Elector Signatures submitted for Verification* | # of verification forms received | # of signatures remaining to be verified | # of verification forms remaining to reach 5,292** | % of the required 5,292** signatures received | Date & Time of Last Update |
| 5,637 | 2,942 | 2,700 | 2,350 | 55.6% | 20 July, 4pm |
Meanwhile, there is still no news from government about the ongoing tendering process, which it continued to pursue even after enough people signed the petition to trigger the referendum. Speaking at the Chamber of Commerce Economic Forum more than one month ago, Tourism Minister Moses Kirkconnell said the winning bidder would be announced in three weeks, but so far the ministry has not revealed which bidder has been selected.
While nothing has yet been confirmed, sources have told CNS that only two bidders remain: a consortium led by local developer McAlpine and the controversial China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC).
See details below of when and where you can verify your signature to ensure the petition triggers the national poll.
Category: Politics
I say we call for every single elected person in government to be fired and banned from ever holding a position again- We need a fresh start because the rot starts from the top as can be clearly seen from the last 20 + years of politicians and their corruption.
excellent job…i am a local fisherman and love my fresh tuna and snapper i catch on weekends in the port area!!!😯😊😃 too expensive to buy from supermarkets and fresher…and yes i am a native…
So the port fracas continues.
Has anyone ever stopped to think who has the most to gain with the development of this new port?
I can assure you it is not the Cruise Liners or the GT businesses… yes they do have some skin in the game and it may boost their bottom line in the long run, but there is someone else in this circus show that is sitting quietly on the sidelines pushing the politicians and their minions to do their dirty work all under the guise of Cayman Tourism and the Cruise Liners…
As you may or may not have figured out, this silent whisperer is Mr. DART and his group of construction companies… He has the most to gain if this port goes through.
How you may ask? Well at the moment, the Port can only service small cargo loads for construction materials / land fill or supplies etc, but if this new port goes through, cargo loads will likely double and handling times will halve. And just like that, in one foul swoop he will basically halve his import costs to build and supply his metropolis (using the cruise liners to fund it) all the while making us the public think that it was the Cruise Liners and GT businesses pushing for the port all this time.
Just from what we can see and the scarce pieces of information that he’s allowed to be shared with the public, we know that DART:
– is currently upgrading the International School and has plans to build an entire new sports center with Tennis Courts / Rugby Fields (all to replace the current rugby and tennis club in South Sound)
– has plans to build his two 30 storey towers on top of the overpasses
– has plans to build a residential community at the back of Camana Bay which will house most of Dart’s employees (I am not sure how true this is but rumor has it that Dart is offering 100% financing at virtually zero interest to any DART employees that purchase there)
– has three hotels in the pipelines
– needs to upgrade the existing two hotels that he has purchased
– needs to build the waste management system to remove the Dump which sits right next to his little palace
– is rehousing the Humane Society and has agreed to pay costs to prepare the land for construction
– has to upgrade Cayman’s infrastructure to the point that it can sustain the influx of population that is needed to manage his business interests
– has basically bought all of Caymans food and liquor distributors to halve his supply costs at the hotels
This is the classic Rope-a-dope from Mr Dart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope-a-dope
Fear not though, knowledge is power
– Maximus
If they hired the iguana cullers to do the job, they’d verify 100,000 signatures in no time.
Never will we sell our SOVEREIGNity , our rights to move about this land, or to fish in this sea. Drain the swamp
Yet the government is still running wall to wall ads creating a false narrative about about coerced signatures and misinformed signatures
Anyone in the CIG working on the anti-ref campaign or the pro-port propoganda ought to be roundly and soundly thrown out on their asses when this process is over
Along with a public inquiry into which Civil servants and Ministers orchestrated this misinformation campaign so that they can be held to account
Blatantly lying to the people of the Cayman Islands ought to be a bigger issue than it is
The media is letting the CIG get away with this and the average voter simply takes it
It needs to end
Let’s see, next referendum is SOPL, then CIG No confidence, and cannot forget two terms and done period.
I like this. Caymanians actually stepping up and doing something as opposed to waiting on someone else.
Kudos to the individuals spearheading this initiative.
I look forward to the outcome.
Bless!
I was just shown the Pro-Port propaganda page on FB. It’s ALL about how if you sign the referendum it means that you do NOT want the port and how all those that are against the port are involved with the tenders… LMAO. The lengths that people will go to in order to sway peoples opinion.
Trust me when I say that the comments and views on this FB page are actually quite uninformed and ‘simple’, as I would say, written by a Simpleton for other Simpletons. Usually those with the very basic or limited education. Where I’m from we also call it the Small Town Mentality.
The referendum is not only if you are against the port. It is basically to get the secret information up to this point in the process that is meant to be and should be transparent according to our constitution.
But it is ALSO if you are against the port full stop.
I, for one, am against the port FULL STOP.
You won’t get sensitive commercial information, referendum or not. You are wasting your time.
Sensitive as in how much money certain MLA’s got?
They only started on GT voters late last week, that means this is well underway and given that 50% have now been verified, Government needs to say its seen enough and go ahead and call a referendum. No statistician can argue that 50% is not a good indicator that all is well.
They’re learning what they always knew. No one was tricked into signing this petition in any systematic way. Every single person knew they were crossing the government and many eyes would see their names, barring perhaps a few elderly persons who may have been taken advantage of by relatives or friends not by petition organisers and a few cowards, people are all confirming they knew exactly what they were doing and yes they did sign and they do remember signing.
It sames like if it is going too be a smooth sail on my cat boat once more back to the George Town harbour Grand Cayman.
At the second quarter is where I believe that they will be trying to move the Goal Post .
Alden said the Govt was goin ahead with its Port plans as there was no petition in front of them.
Well, if there was no petition in front of you Alden, what are you requiring to be verified 100%??
Also, now that the petition is more than half verified, will u start providing more info on the procurement process now?
I dare him…..double dare him !!!
Alden, Mac and Moses better start worrying. I wonder what new PR propaganda they will come up with next.
Well done Elections Office!! I believe in this process. Had the Constitution carefully laid out the process of a People’s Initiated Referendum, we wouldn’t have to be going through this. However, that was not the case, and Mr. Wesley is doing what he must in order to vet all the signatures.
I am now confident that all the signatures necessary to trigger the PIR will be verified, and that this historic process will happen. It doesn’t matter so much WHICH way you choose to vote, as that you HAVE a vote.
Regardless of how the vote goes, we should push hard for a clarification of the process when a PIR is initiated. There will be many, many more, imo.
yeah like giving the people collecting signatures the forms that the elections office had to go around getting resigned.