Dwayne Seymour

| 26/07/2020

Dwayne Seymour (IND): Bodden Town East MLA,
Minister of Health, Environment, Culture and Housing.

Biography:

Seymour was first elected to the Legislative Assembly in 2009 as a member of the United Democratic Party to a Bodden Town seat. However, after the arrest of UDP leader and then premier McKeeva Bush in December 2012, he joined with a splinter group of UDP members, including Juliana O’Connor-Connolly, who split from the party to support a ‘no confidence’ motion against Bush filed by the opposition in the Legislative Assembly, which resulted in the downfall of the UDP administration.

The PPM, then in opposition, agreed to support the minority government by offering to ensure that there would be a quorum in the Legislative Assembly. The governor agreed to appoint O’Connor-Connolly, then deputy premier, as the new premier to head government until the general election on 22 May 2013. During this time, from December 2012 to the elections in May 2013, Seymour served as Minister for Community Affairs, Gender and Housing.

The splinter group, comprising Seymour, O’Connor-Connolly, Rolston Anglin, Mark Scotland and Cline Glidden, ran as a newly formed party, the People’s National Alliance, in the 2013 elections. All of them except O’Connor-Connolly lost.

However, Seymour ran again in May 2017 as an Independent for the Bodden Town East constituency and won. He then aligned himself with the PPM to form the Party of National Unity, headed by Alden McLaughlin, and was rewarded with a Cabinet position as Health Minister.

Under Seymour the ministry has been plagued by scandal and failure, including financial irregularities at the HSA surrounding security staff overtime, a regular failure by the Department of Environmental Health to pick up garbage and a massive out of control fire at the George Town dump.

Seymour has been on almost every panel at the COVID-10 press briefings, famously asking CNS reporter Wendy Ledger if she was “brave” or “stupid” for asking a question about social media images of his current wife that appeared to indicate that she was breaking curfew rules.

In 2011 Seymour was charged with perverting the course of justice when he allegedly implied to a security guard not to tell the authorities that he had been involved in a fight with a man at the Grand Cayman Beach Suites. The incident took place on 1 May, when Seymour went to the hotel looking for his wife at the time, believing she was there with a man she was having an affair with. He was acquitted of all charges.

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