Bryan hints at a return to Progressives’ platform

(CNS): Few of the remaining members of the UPM government have confirmed they will be seeking re-election in the upcoming campaign or which of their colleagues, if any, they will be aligning themselves with. However, Deputy Premier Kenneth Bryan has dropped the heaviest hints yet that he may throw his lot in with the Progressives, the party he started his political career with, as he runs again to keep his George Town Central seat. So far, the idea has not been dismissed by the PPM.

During an appearance on Radio Cayman on Monday, Bryan said he believed that the PPM was the only real political party contesting the election and the group with which he was most politically aligned.

Speaking on For The Record on Monday, he made allegations that the members of the TCCP were “extreme environmentalists” and another party due to emerge were “elitists” who had stated they wanted to replace “the inferiors”. He said he felt he shared a mindset most with the Progressives.

“No matter what differences that we’ve had, there is more mindsets with the things that I think about with the Progressives than any one of those other groups… because it was more personalities,” he said as he pointed to his past disagreements with former premier Sir Alden McLaughlin. “But that’s where I came from.”

Bryan suggested that the PPM and the UDP (it was not clear if the minister actually meant the UPM) had many similarities. He suggested that they were never about “big money” or extreme environmentalists but were about the grassroots or the poorer people.

He said he believed the next government would be a coalition between two of the four groups that he thinks will be running in April: the PPM, the leftover UPM government, the “extreme environmentalists” (the TCCP), and the “elitists”, which appears to refer to the newly registered Cayman Islands National Party. Dan Scott has registered the party but has not yet officially launched it or unveiled its candidates.

At the start of the show, Bryan had said that, given the drift towards alignments and parties in this election, he had to make some decisions about how he was going to run, having previously run as an independent. However, he said he would need to consult with his constituents.

Challenging the nature of the newly registered groups, the minister claimed they were not real parties but labels. He said the country was looking for organised, mature politics, and the only group that fit the real definition and had real credibility was the PPM.

Roy Tatum, a long-standing member of the Progressives who will run for office in the former premier’s constituency of Red Bay once the party ratifies this, pointed out that Bryan had never resigned from the PPM.

“Politics is the art of the possible,” he told CNS when we asked where the PPM stood regarding Bryan re-joining forces with the party. “Kenneth Bryan started his political career with the PPM and never resigned as a member,” he noted, leaving the door open for Bryan to buy himself a red tie or two.

See Bryan talk about his potential alignment with the Progressives at 1:04:45, shortly after he joins the show, and again at the end of the show from about 2:29:45 on the Radio Cayman video below.