To anyone bashing their MP for going AWOL the past four years
Change writes: Every constituency has the same issue when their MP becomes a minister. It is not that they stop caring about their area, but Cabinet members have no choice but to tackle issues at national level, and that takes budget, meetings, reports, travel, conference calls, sitting with lawyers to streamline bills and laws — all that between parliament sessions.
Why do you think the Constitution calls for district councils? It is just not humanly possible for an MP to deal with everything that comes with Cabinet PLUS constituency issues, PLUS people calling and texting them or coming to their house to ask them for help, for money, for a job, for a scholarship for their child, for CINICO assistance for their senior citizen, for help burying a love one, or giving them advice because the bank is out to to repossess their home, or their child has developed an addiction or is being sexually abused, or a million other issues.
Voters want their MP to become a minister, thinking that at that point their MP can pick up a phone and magically fix their road or put in cameras or decrease speeding or stop flooding or create a road or whatever. Well, that simply does not happen.
To fix problems in your constituency requires your minister chasing someone else’s minister, and guess what? The other minister is swamped too, and his/her own constituents do not see them either! So your constituency is not the only one with an MP that seems to be AWOL.
Voters need to wake up and start seeing the problems past their gate or their street. We have 34-year-olds who have voted since they were 18, and yet things are worse. They see fellow Caymanians living out of their cars! Drug addiction (including pain meds), suicides and clinical depression are on the rise.
The national budget for seniors and indigents’ healthcare has been a red flag for at least 18 years, in part because agencies like CINICO and others fail to do thorough due diligence. (That is a conversation for another day.)
We are spending a couple of million annually, for our young people to go overseas and get degrees in a number of fields, but then they come back and can’t get a job in their field, which pays them enough to at least be self-reliant. Who is enforcing the many business staffing plans? (Enforcement is another issue for another day.) Is planning following up on all the reports of private homes that have become tenements for all ten, twelve minimum wage workers?!
I could go on listing problems the country is facing, which many are blissfully unaware of. Suffice it to say, we have many, and they are several million-dollars serious and your candidate, who you would want to become an MP and then minister so he can hurry up and fix the potholes in your road (or so you think) will have to sit with others and explore ways to address them.
I said all the above to say that we voters cannot continue to think at constituency level. That is short-term thinking. We need to discuss the national issues openly with our MPs. It’s urgent! These problems have been brewing for 20-25 years, and cannot be solved by any Cabinet alone. We all need to get involved. Whatever our capacities are, our MPs need them. National solutions will trickle down to constituencies and down to households.
What can we do?
We can volunteer our skills, our training, our passion. Are you an economist, a banker, an investment professional, a sociologist?
We can vote more objectively — it is not a matter of who you like, but who is qualified to tackle these huge challenges.
We can retire MPs who watched the problems grow for years.
Let us be part of the solution. Together, we can build ourselves a better Cayman for all of us, but we need to vote for people who have the skills, training, knowledge and humanity to brainstorm tangible, real and sustainable solutions without pressure from special interests — and sorry, Mr Manderson, but the solution includes deep civil service reform as well.
Check out the CNS Election Section interactive map to see who is running in each constituency.
See the list of candidates and their party affiliations here.
Category: Viewpoint
I think you’re setting the bar miserably low for politicians in a country of 80,000 paid well into the six figures to do their job. Most towns and cities our size have a fraction of the politicians we have, and are paid considerably less if anything at all.
Look at the issues at the national level that they’re “dealing with”. What are they? What have they done or dealt with in the last four years? The answer: almost nothing.
And you want to let them off the hook for all their work of national importance, and let them use not doing their job as the excuse to not do the other part of their job?!
What are you on?