PPM to reveal candidates in six weeks

(CNS Elections): The Progressives will not be unveiling the slate of candidates it will field in the forthcoming general election and the constituencies they will stand in until Saturday 18 March — just 11 days before Nomination Day. The ruling party’s pre-election conference will take place at the Family Life Centre, where the PPM membership will also elect party officials, including the general secretary and treasurer, and introduce its campaign team. The party leader’s role is also up for a vote, and while Alden McLaughlinPremier of the Cayman Islands More will be seeking re-election, there is no indication of any potential challengers.

If McLaughlin remains at the helm of the party, he will be giving a speech setting out the Progressives’ vision after revealing the team that will be contesting at least 15 of the 19 seats in single-member constituencies.

CNS understands that the PPM may not run any candidates in West Bay but will instead give their support to some independent candidates, such as Tara Rivers, the current education minister. Of the three MLA who successfully ran on the C4C ticket in the 2013 elections and afterwards joined the PPM administration, Rivers is the only one who has remained on the government benches but has not join the party, despite being a Cabinet member.

In the notice to the members, the general secretary for the Progressives, Barbara Connolly, said that the conference would be at the heart of a weekend of activities relating to the launch of the PPM’s election campaign, as well as various administrative issues relating to the party.

While there is considerable speculation about which incumbents will be running where and which new faces will be contesting the remaining seats, candidates that are not running on the PPM ticket will not know for certain who they will be up against from the Progressives team until just ten weeks before the election, which could influence their own announcements.

Given the change to the voting system to ‘one man, one vote’, the election becomes a straight race between the candidates in each constituency. That means that candidates who feel they are popular in more than one constituency may want to wait and see who declares where before making the decision.

The PPM is the only political party in Cayman that has a formal written constitution that requires all of its candidates to be confirmed by branch officials in the various districts. This means that all of the candidates, even the incumbents, will have to go through a formal selection process for the seats they hope to contest.

Provided there are no other party members wanting to run in the constituency, the premierPremier of the Cayman Islands More has made it clear he wants to run in George Town Central. Although the premierPremier of the Cayman Islands More polled well in the heart of the capital during the 2013 election, with the second best numbers from the various polling stations in the area, the premierPremier of the Cayman Islands More also did very well in George Town East.

At present, only two candidates have declared for the capital: one time UDP minister Dr Frank McField, now running as an independent, who was ousted from office in the 2009 election, and Kenneth Bryan, a former PPM member and the premier’s one-time political assistant. Bryan was sacked by McLaughlin after he was arrested outside a nightclub following an altercation with police, when he tried to assist an off-duty police woman who was being threatened by a violent ex-lover.

Other than the PPM members, Winston Connolly is the only sitting MLA that has not yet indicated where he will run. Connolly, who ran on the C4C platform in 2013, came in fifth in George Town with over 2,000 votes. Aside from collecting the second highest number of postal votes in the capital (147), beaten only by his then C4C colleague Roy McTaggart (181), he polled best in the areas of George Town East and Prospect.

Connolly joined the government benches after the 2013 election and worked with Rivers, his C4C colleague, as a councillor in the education ministry. But he crossed the floor in January 2016 after the two PPM Bodden Town back-benchers, Alva Suckoo and Anthony Eden, resigned over their objections to the government’s position on allowing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender dependents on permits following a court ruling on the matter.

Connolly claimed he crossed the floor because he could no longer depend on the remaining PPM non-Cabinet members to support his motions, including McTaggart, who had joined the PPM in December 2015.

Tags: PPM, Progressives

Category: Campaigns