What Cayman needs but won’t get from the PPM Alliance

Donovan Ebanks writes: After four years of pure PPM and then four more years of the PPM-led Government of National Unity, we should all know what to expect from the rebranded version, the PPM Alliance. While the new flavour is ‘McKeeva-free’, no one should be surprised if he’s an add-on after the election, as Alden McLaughlinAlden McLaughlin (PPM): Red Bay MP, Premier, Minister of International Trade, Investment, Aviation and Maritime Affairs (MITIAMA). Biography: McLaughlin has been a member of the... More embarks on his ‘rule-at-any-cost’ offensive to form a government.

Of great concern should be the things that we desperately need but the PPM has shown we will not get from them. Here are a few:

Concessions and waivers

We need:

A forensic audit, under the control of the auditor general, of all of the concessions granted over the past 10 years showing what we gave up, to whom and projecting what remains to be given up in future years;

Revocation of the provisions in the Development and Planning Law, Immigration Law and any other law which allow the Cabinet to grant concessions and waivers;

A clear and public policy for the issuing of grants to attract, assist or incentivize specific categories of investments in different areas of the islands;

A budgetary provision appropriated by the Parliament from which grants are paid;

A quarterly reporting by the Cabinet to the Parliament and the public of any grants made, to whom, in what amount and under what provision of the grants policy; and

Reporting in each budget submission by the Cabinet to the Parliament of the revenues forgone by earlier concessions and waivers coming due during the budget period based on the forensic audit.

We wont get it from the PPM Alliance.

Non-disclosure Agreements

We need an amendment to the Public Management and Finance Law prescribing that any payment to any entity — individual or corporation — is subject to public disclosure, period.

There is far too much reason to suspect that that non-disclosure agreements are being used to shield the inadequate or inappropriate performance of persons or offices that in turn bear no consequences. The matter of Doctors Express and more recently CTMH Doctors Hospital are the next two cases where a non-disclosure provision will likely be included in any settlement.

We won’t get it from the PPM Alliance.

Reduction in Fuel Prices

CUC reported publicly 10 years ago and stated publicly before the Public Accounts Committee in July last year that it costs 20-25c per gallon to get fuel from the US gulf coast to CUC’s plant on North Sound Rd. But neither OfReg nor the Cabinet (the Premier is responsible for OfReg) can figure out how much profit Rubis and Sol are making and that we are getting fleeced.

Equally outrageous is the fact that neither OfReg nor the PPM have accepted that Caymanians can own gas stations. In December 2019, the Cabinet sought the rezoning of property on Batabano Rd in West Bay to allow Rubis to apply to the CPA for permission to build another gas station there. The property was rezoned and naturally Rubis got the approval from the CPA. Sol also has approval to build a gas station off the Esterley Tibbetts Highway north of Cost-U-Less, it seems based on the tanks sitting on the site.

Rubis, Sol and the PPM are content for Caymanian entrepreneurs to be tenants of Rubis and Sol, paying exorbitant rents of the order of $25,000 per month to be able to operate a gas station and having to recoup that cost from consumers.

Fuel prices will not come down until the wholesalers, Rubis and Sol, are required to get out of the retail business and gas stations are owned by Caymanians who are free to purchase from whichever wholesaler gives them the best price – just like building contractors are free to purchase from ALT, COX or Kirkconnell.

It won’t happen with the PPM Alliance.

Development Plan

After more than 20 years, we all know that no government led by Alden or McKeeva BushMcKeeva Bush (CDP), West Bay West MLA Speaker of the LA, Leader of the Cayman Democratic Party. Biography: Bush is the longest serving member and... More will produce a new development plan prescribing land use and essential infrastructure development.

It is patently clear that the PPM has developed an addiction to growth, regardless of how much pain and suffering it causes ordinary Caymanians. They remain fully committed to helping developers do whatever they want, wherever they want and as soon as they want – simple.

The recent increase in the allowable building heights for areas around George Town is a classic example. They merely want to keep milking the cow and relying on the overpowered CPA to allow developers to do what they want.

We need a new development plan developed under the oversight of representatives of democratically elected district councils to ensure it reflects the aspirations and concerns of the people.

We also need leaders who will acknowledge the destruction of the Seven Mile Beach by inappropriate development and that will insist on the re-establishment of a natural vegetation strip to protect the sand. Investors manage their risks but we do not manage our assets. Have you seen Moses, Joey or Alden on Seven Mile Beach even looking at the situation?

The good Lord knows we won’t get it from the PPM Alliance.

Traffic Congestion

Traffic is a function of where individuals live or reside vs where they work, where their children attend school, where they seek goods, services, recreation, etc. In other words, how we develop and use our land.

The PPM is totally oblivious to this.

According to the latest statistics from the the Economics and Statistics Office, from 2013 to 2019 there have been increases in vehicle imports of 18% per year (used cars increased by 25%per year!) and in population of 3.8% per year. Monaco, where Alden and his entourage like to jet off to and hang out with their Dart buddies, has been growing its population at less than 1% per year for the past 20 years.

No one can build roads fast enough to keep up with our growth rates. And there will not be another Esterley Tibbetts Highway or another Linford Pierson Highway. Nor will those roads be widened beyond six lanes because development is already being allowed within 20 feet of them.

The only sure way to address our traffic woes is the better distribution of our development — the things that attract drivers for work, school, goods, services and entertainment. Developments in the Eastern Districts should be incentivized; development between Red Bay and Camana Bay should be regulated.

Property owners have a right to develop but government has a responsibility to regulate development in the interest of the public. We need a government that has vision, leads by example and incentivizes the private sector to follow.

No one — no one — starved to death when the government of Mr Norman, Mr Benson, Linford and Ezzard put a moratorium on hotel development on Seven Mile Beach back in the early ‘80s.

Our current political leadership has shown that they have absolutely no clue or vision. If they did, they would have used the relocation of one of the largest hardware outlets, COX Lumber, from congested Eastern Ave to Bodden Town East as a poster case to promote more businesses to do the same.

What is even more amazing is that the government has over 10 acres of land a quarter of a mile away on the Bodden Town Bypass which has been filled and ready for development for over 10 years, but they can’t find any use for it.

Meanwhile, the Central Police Station in George Town continues to fall apart, and the government continues to rent space in Elizabethan Square to accommodate the police. The George Town site should become a district police station for George Town and all of the other police administration and specialist functions should be moved out to Bodden Town.

Similarly, the government has been renting space in Citrus Grove on Goring Ave for 15 years or more for 911 or Department of Public Safety, as it’s called. This does not need to be in George Town; it could be moved to Bodden Town also. There are other government entities that could be moved out of George Town.

We won’t get it from the PPM Alliance.

Referendum Law

It is clear after almost 12 years of Alden and McKeeva led governments that neither is committed to empowering the people to freely exercise the referendum provisions of the Constitution.

We need a referendum law that provides the framework and requirements for the people to initiate a referendum. We also need an amendment to the Constitution to provide for an independent individual or body to determine the wording of any referendum. The Cabinet will always be conflicted and unsuitable for this role.

After Alden’s bid to discourage people from voting in the then-proposed cruise port referendum, it is clear that we need to also amend the threshold for a people-initiated referendum to be binding from more than 50% of registered voters to more than 50% of votes cast.

We won’t get it from the PPM Alliance.

Access to Information

While the PPM enacted the Freedom of Information Law 14 years ago, they have never embraced the concept of the law.

In 2015, Alden told legislators in Finance Committee that “dealing with FoI (requests) quite frankly and realistically from a country standpoint, is an unproductive use of time”. That’s what he thinks of providing us with information that by law we are entitled to obtain.

In the same vein, the PPM in 2018 amended the FOI law to exempt advice to ministers from disclosure. Public access to such advice is a fundamental element of any FOI regime; it places the onus on ministers to ensure that they seek proper advice before taking decisions because we are entitled to know eventually what and whose advice they relied on.

It is embarrassing that Turks and Caicos, which doesn’t even have legislation like us, shows the respect for their people by publishing each week a summary of the matters that their Cabinet dealt with. Not our rulers.

The PPM has been slowly drawing the curtains to ensure that we don’t know what they are doing and at whose bequest. We need better access to the deliberations of our Cabinet.

We won’t get it from the PPM Alliance.

Housing

Caymanians went to sea, worked hard, sent their money home and used it to build their homes and in many cases launch their after-sea careers. Today, Cayman has become the ‘ship’ that foreign workers come to to do for themselves what Caymanians had to ply the oceans to do.

Caymanians are unable to provide for themselves ‘in Cayman’ as they could 50 years ago when they were seamen.

We do not need ‘affordable housing’; we need to be able to ‘afford housing’. There is a huge difference.

It won’t happen with the PPM Alliance.

In summary, we didn’t need a $200M cruise berthing facility like the PPM said. We don’t need a 50 or 100 storey tower; we could do with far less than 10 storey buildings in George Town and West Bay Rd. We don’t need all of the high-rise multi-family development you see taking place in Grand Harbour right now.

What we need are persons who see themselves as representatives of the people, not rulers of the people; persons who put the interest of Cayman and Caymanians at the centre of their decisions, not the interest of some wealthy person seeking to make more wealth.

We won’t get what we need from the PPM Alliance.