Those who buy votes will sell their country
Uncorrupt Voter writes: We are just weeks away from yet another general election that many will perceive as corrupt because of the widely held belief that at least some of the country’s political representatives will be elected or re-elected by bribing voters with gifts and/or cash. Election observers will find, as they always do, that Election Day runs smoothly, a completely sham operation and a waste of time and money because everyone knows that all potential corruption happens in the days and weeks, sometimes years, before the elections.
If everyone living here believes this to be true, it can be assumed that the governor has also heard this, not just the current governor, but a whole line of governors before him. If none of them had any suspicions, this seems to me the height of incompetence or possibly selective deafness or too many martinis.
If the governors past and present suspect, as the rest of us do, that at least some MLAs/MPs bribed or are bribing their way into power, then so does the UK Foreign Office. In that case it may be that somewhere in the Foreign Office, some person or group of people, political appointees or bureaucrats or both, have decided that they are OK with this situation in their overseas territories, even though if this crime happened in the UK, it would result, as it should, in someone ending up in jail.
It’s always tempting to think that the British Foreign Office knows what it’s doing, but this is sadly not true. Assuming that the FCO has reason to suspect that the Cayman Islands elections are corrupt, then it can also be deduced that they are willing to live with the results, perhaps calculating that the cost of actually doing something about it would be high, in treasure and reputation, and the effort would be troublesome, while the risk of just letting potentially corrupt elections take place as they have done for many years is low.
I can’t prove any of this, even though it’s generally considered common knowledge, but a proper investigation by the authorities could surely find evidence of corruption if it exists. It’s clear that the RCIPS, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Anti-Corruption Commission are all staying well away from the sniff of election corruption, which some might see as corruption in itself if, in fact, there was reason to start an investigation and they turned a blind eye.
This means that outside forces would have to be brought in. What would investigators find, for example, if they subpoenaed documents showing the shipments of appliances over the last six months and followed the trail of where they ended up? What would happen if voters who accepted bribes were given the choice of an amnesty with a confession or a hefty fine if they were found out?
But that won’t happen. Those grey faceless decision-makers in the dark recesses of the Foreign Office will wait until the situation gets untenable, as it did in the Turks and Caicos in 2008 and more recently in the BVI. Investigating and if necessary jailing someone to put a stop to this practice appears to be outside the scope of their small imaginations.
In the meantime, many good potential candidates will shy away from putting themselves forward for elections, reluctant to wallow in the dirt, and Cayman runs the risk of electing inadequate, unqualified, unintelligent or just downright dirty representatives who have a lot of cash behind them, voted in by people who think that corrupt elections are normal or don’t care so long as they get a new fridge.
To go off-topic for a minute, around this time every four years, right before elections, the government of the day somehow finds an unexpected wad of cash. A result of underestimating or overestimating outgoing or incoming funds, by some strange coincidence there always seems to be money suddenly available for potholes to be filled, or driveways to be paved, or funding for community projects in certain districts. Funny that!
Anyway, back to the topic of corrupt elections, here’s my personal message to any candidate using their own, their backers’ or public money to buy votes: Anyone who bribes their way into power is a traitor to democracy and a traitor to the Cayman Islands. Let’s hope that if anyone is doing such things, they will one day get caught and punished appropriately.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem to necessarily follow that they will fail at the polls.
Category: Polls, Viewpoints & Analysis, Viewpoint & Analysis
