Thomas calls out ‘audacity’ of candidates seeking re-election
(CNS): Dawn Thomas, who is running for office on the Cayman Islands National Party ticket in Red Bay, has called out “the audacity” of incumbents and parties who have dominated governments for the last twenty years seeking re-election with “a straight face”, claiming to have a plan to solve the problems they have failed to address over the last four administrations.
Answering the first of ten questions at the Chamber of Commerce Candidate Forum on Thursday night, Thomas said governments are supposed to serve the interests of the people who elected them, but they have served only their own interests.
The CINP, founded by party leader Dan Scott
Dan Scott (CBE candidate) is the leader of the Cayman Islands National Party. He was EY regional manager until his retirement in June 2023. More, is a group of twelve first-time candidates. With the exception of Nickolas DaCosta, who worked as a political appointee during this last administration, the team has no political experience.
The party is made up of business owners and former corporate employees, and while this political inexperience is being criticised by other parties and candidates, the CINP is using that as its trump card. This is because they cannot be linked to the failures of past administrations, as is the case with the other parties and several of the independents campaigning for office in the 2025 election race.
Thomas is competing in a five-way race for the open seat vacated by Sir Alden McLaughlin, a two-time premier and recent speaker of parliament who has been a dominant face of politics in Cayman since he was first elected 25 years ago.
Roy Tatum is the new PPM candidate for Red Bay, while Natasha Whitelock is running with the TCCP. There are also two independent candidates: Phillip Ebanks and Leon Gould.
Like the previous Chamber forums, the candidates faced open-ended questions with no surprises, and none of them were called out by the Chamber moderators for any of the incorrect statements or misinformation during the answers, though on most occasions this appeared to stem from ignorance of the facts and a failure of the candidates to prepare for the now easily anticipated questions.
As has been the case in the previous five forums, the candidates all identified similar priorities and pressing problems, such as the cost of living, immigration and housing. Once again, very few solutions were proposed, and where they were, few candidates were able to say where the funding would come from.
Thomas also argued that while past foreign investment — Cayman’s sacred cow — may have helped, it had also contributed to growing inequality and even poverty. She explained the fundamental problem, which is that the economy may have grown based on foreign investment, but this has not helped most Caymanians.
Instead, it has led to over-development and the subsequent problems of traffic congestion, imported cheap labour, housing problems and social economic issues. Thomas rejected trickle-down economics and said foreign investors must be required to contribute by building affordable homes or funding Caymanian scholarships.
Most of the candidates agreed on the prioritisation of Caymanians, a promise that has been made in election after election, but it is unarguable that local people feel more marginalised in their own country than ever before.
There were few stand-out moments from any of the candidates, but Thomas did set herself apart. She pointed out that CINP has “no legacy” relating to the many issues the country faces and that the team was “a collective force to be reckoned with”.
In an election where the party candidates and affiliated independents are dominating the races, she pointed out that the CINP was not to blame for the increasing public debt or has a history of failed plans and policies; they were just presenting new ideas and “moral fortitude”.
The series of forums continues on Friday evening with the candidates for Bodden Town East: incumbent Dwayne Seymour (PPM) and Robert Bodden (TCCP).
Watch the Red Bay forum below on the Chamber’s YouTube channel below:
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.
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Category: Election News
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 […]
Who exactly does she think she is ? What has she done to earn the right to criticise past leaders? Leaders I may add that many of us support and voted for!!
To 5:50am: “Who is she?” A voter. A tax-payer. What are you implying? That we who pay MPs salaries cannot criticize them? Anyone who chooses to gets elected for office becomes our employee which grants us the right to question them, criticize them and hold them accountable for anything we pay for. They do not pay our salaries; we pay theirs.
The PPM was not in power for the last 4 years – that was Wayne and his so called ‘Independents’ and their utter disfunction. Now Wayne is the puppeteer pulling Andrea’s strings. Sorry people, but any party that pays big money to CMR to bully the people she doesn’t like (or pay her hush money) isn’t getting my vote. Dawn, you go ahead and tell us how you will sell of all of CIG companies like the HSA. Your ‘boss’ has that all figured out. #NotTodayBobo
No; whoever was in power the last four years inherited a bag of manure from the PPM, who was in power for three administrations in one or another. Every problem we have today was born and raised under PPM administrations. They deserve to disappear.
What a way to deflect..Who left us in debt ? Wayne and his commandos thats who
Oh. You are badly deluded, 11:17 pm. Three weeks before the PPM demitted office they signed off on a contract that was not complete. Do you understand that? The plant was supposed to sell energy to CUC, but CUC had not agreed to buy said energy yet the PPM signed the contract. Are you going to blame the PACT for that? The 17.7 million was for different services, which would have been rendered no matter which party was in power, so what is your gripe, exactly? Or do you think the services would have been free of charge if it had been a PPM administration?
The Independent Experiment should be enough proof to know that the Inexperienced Experiment will also fail!
None of them are spending their own money, unlike the rest of us they don’t stop and think
“Can we afford to do this?”
Instead they ask “What can I get out of this?”.
PPM have now morphed into the self seeking UDP.
Share absolutely right! Call it out Dawn!
Dawn Thomas was very impressive compared to the other candidates. If I was a voter in Red Bay, she would have my family’s vote in the bag. I wish my district had even something remotely close to her, LOL, but alas, I guess I will get to hear Mr. Donkey Man from my district tonight.
Yeah but she need explain the shooters bar she running down town and the drama around it
To Red bay Article Dan: then Seymour should explain why he was not paying his employees’ 5% pension contributions which were being deducted from wages every payday
¿Por que no los dos?
One party will tell you that they set up business staffing plans to ensure that Caymanians got a fair chance at all these jobs for which work permits are granted, but guess what… No one enforces BSPs. Same thing for all the building concessions—no one in customs or WORC or labour or immigration is verifying that those foreign investors are doing what they undertook to do in exchange for those concessions. Vote wisely. #Votethemout.
Since the 1990s. That is how long one particular party has been in a position to make deep, lasting changes that affect us all. Why didn’t they?! Time for them to go. I would rather have nineteen intelligent people agree on three major national issues and throw the kitchen sink at those for the next four years; even if they are not all from the same party. We have enough data to make tangible change. #Votethemout
See how that worked out last time?
You head hard, na true?