Kenneth Bryan

| 18/04/2025

Kenneth Vernon Bryan, George Town Central (incumbent)
Deputy Premier and Minister for Tourism & Ports, and Social Development & Innovation
Deputy Leader of the PPM

Biography

Bryan (44) first ran for office as a member of the PPM in the 2013 General Election in the multi-member constituency of George Town. The party swept to power, including four members in that constituency: Kurt Tibbetts, Alden McLaughlin, Marco Archer and Joey Hew (Roy McTaggart later joined the PPM).

Bryan was not elected, but after the election, he worked for the PPM as the political assistant to then-premier Alden McLaughlin, which lasted until March 2015 (see below). After falling out with McLaughlin, he ran as an independent candidate in 2017 for the new single-member constituency of George Town Central, beating the PPM candidate, Marco Archer, after getting almost 52% of the vote.

He served as a member of the opposition during that term. In August 2017, he had a falling out with the opposition, led by Ezzard Miller, and no longer caucused with them. However, after the opposition MPs (then called MLAs) split with Miller, Bryan rejoined the official opposition, now led by Arden McLean, in June 2019.

Bryan successfully ran for re-election in 2021, again as an independent, beating another PPM candidate, Frank Cornwall, this time with 87.1% of the vote. After the elections, he joined PACT, a group of independent MPs who came together to form a government. In the first PACT/UPM Cabinet, he served as Minister for Tourism and Transport.

In March 2023, Chris Saunders resigned from PACT. In the Cabinet reshuffle that followed, Bryan lost the Transport portfolio and acquired Ports, becoming the Minister for Tourism and Ports. He kept the same portfolio after Wayne Panton was ousted as premier in November 2023 and replaced by Juliana O’Connor-Connolly.

After four members resigned from the UPM Government in October 2024, Bryan became deputy premier, and in addition to Tourism and Ports, he took over the Ministry of Social Development and Innovation.

In February 2025, despite previous heavy criticisms of him by the party, Bryan confirmed that he had rejoined the PPM to run for re-election in April. At the party conference on 1 March, it was announced that he was the PPM’s new deputy party leader.

Bryan was born on 12 July 1980. His first job was as a fire officer in 1997. He also worked as a male model, and in 2001, he was the 4th runner-up in the Manhunt International contest. In November 2008, he was hired by the local TV station, Cayman27, as a television reporter, following a period as a DJ and radio host on local radio station Spin 94.9.

He founded the “Grasp Your Future” voting registration drive in 2013, which helped register over 1,000 young people to participate in the electoral process. According to his official biography, in his free time, he speaks with at-risk youth in various schools, most notably with the “Boys to Men” programme.

Bryan has a degree in Business Administration from the University College of the Cayman Islands and is certified as a Backpack Journalist by the Poynter Institute of Media in Tampa.

He is a member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and has served as a member of the Cayman Islands Youth Parliament Committee. He was the first Caymanian to be elected as chairman of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) and served in that role from 2022 to 2024.

Court cases and fallout:

  • In February 2007, he was sentenced to 90 days in jail, having pleaded guilty to supplying cocaine to an undercover officer during a police sting operation at a nightclub in 2004. He had no previous convictions at the time.

  • Bryan was arrested in October 2015 on charges of assault on a police officer following an incident outside a nightclub when he went to the assistance of an off-duty female police officer and became embroiled in a verbal dispute with on-duty officers. The charges referred to a verbal assault, and at no time was he accused of physical assault. Bryan claimed that a simple count of disorderly conduct had been trumped up to a much more damaging list of charges in a conspiracy that he implied went to the top of the police service and high political office.

    At the end of the trial in February 2016, Bryan was found guilty of assaulting police and disorderly conduct, but the magistrate recorded no conviction so that his future political ambitions were not derailed. She said he had done the right thing when he went to the police officer’s aid but went too far when he spoke with police after the event.

    In December 2015, after charges had been brought against Bryan but before the trial, Premier McLaughlin placed him on required leave from his job as political assistant and then fired him at the end of February 2016. However, the relationship between the two men was reportedly strained before then and has never improved, becoming particularly pointed during the 2017 elections. Bryan stated in court that he believed the case had provided “an opportunity for the premier to get rid of me”. He was replaced by Cornwall, whom Bryan beat in the 2021 elections by 74 points.

Other controversies:

  • In March 2020, Bryan blocked the opposition’s call for a special meeting of the Legislative Assembly to debate a no-confidence vote in Speaker of the House McKeeva Bush after he was accused of assaulting the female manager of Coral Beach bar in a public display of drunken aggression. Bryan was the only member of the opposition at the time to vote against having the meeting, which allowed Bush to remain as speaker until the April 2021 General Election. Bush pleaded guilty to the crime in February 2021.

  • While a member of Cabinet in July 2022, Bryan appeared in a social media video promoting his wife’s real estate business. Then-PPM leader Roy McTaggart called this a breach of the Ministerial Code of Conduct and said he was greatly troubled by the “shocking video”, which was a flagrant breach of the principles of good governance and “egregious conduct”. According to the video, as well as endorsing and promoting his wife’s business interests directly to his constituents, Bryan delivered leaflets door to door.

  • In the weeks following the 2021 elections, as the new transport minister, Bryan committed to making the necessary legislative changes to transform public transport in the Cayman Islands, which he failed to do. Deloitte was commissioned to review the local public transport in September 2022. It was completed and handed to the CIG in May 2023 (two months after Bryan lost the Transport portfolio) and finally released in November 2023.

  • As deputy leader of the lame-duck UPM administration, Bryan was a vocal critic of conservation efforts and a leading advocate for amendments to the National Conservation Act that environmentalists say would have gutted the law.

  • In October 2024, the UPM government accepted a private member’s motion made by McKeeva Bush to consider the compulsory acquisition of Red Spot. The five-member minority UPM government (three of whom are now members of the PPM) continued with the attempt to forcibly acquire the property, with Bryan appearing to be the main force behind the move. He has denied rumours that this is not to support the local fish market located there, as claimed, but is tied to plans for a cruise dock.

  • In February 2025, Bryan steered through the bill for a government-initiated referendum to take place on Election Day, 30 April, which included the highly controversial question on cruise berthing facilities, which has been widely criticised for being far too vague. The bill has also been slammed because it contains no rules about campaign financing, which means that special interests can pour an unlimited amount of money into promoting the ‘yes’ vote in addition to government resources to secure a positive result.

    The bill was passed after Bryan secured the support of the PPM, despite previous criticism of the bill. A few weeks later, he confirmed that he was joining the PPM to campaign with them in this election and shortly afterwards was elected to be the deputy leader of the PPM party.

  • While candidates are permitted to erect billboards during the campaign period, Bryan did not remove his after the 2021 campaign and has continued to post messages to his constituents throughout the administration. The legality of this is far from clear.

Source:
CIG
Cayman News Service
Cayman Compass

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