A number of Little Cayman residents attended the Constitutional Review Secretariat meeting last Wednesday at the Little Cayman Beach Resort.
Sister Islands MLA Moses Kirkconnell, Leader of Government Business Kurt Tibbetts and Cabinet Minister Alden McLaughlin were in attendance.
Little Cayman currently has only 23 registered voters and has been historically tied to Cayman Brac when it comes to political representation. Under the present structure electors of both Islands are lumped together into a single voting constituency which elects two representatives for the Legislative Assembly.
With Cayman Brac being much more populated and therefore having more registered voters, the Sister Islands’ representatives typically end up coming from there. However, most Little Cayman residents did not have a problem with this.
Little Cayman resident Maxine McCoy said she was very pleased to see that Mr. Kirkconnell was making the effort to visit Little Cayman at least once every six weeks and the people had an opportunity to talk to him and air their concerns.
Linton Tibbetts said the residents were realistic about what Government could afford.
‘I’ve been all over the world and can’t find a better place than Little Cayman,’ he said. ‘It is only a quarter-inch from Heaven.’
Kurt Tibbetts said that while Little Cayman ‘may be lacking some facilities, as demand grows, so will the services.’
One of the issues discussed at the constitutional review meeting was whether or not the people in Little Cayman would like to see a ‘one man, one vote’ structure instead of the current system where each Sister Islands’ voter gets two votes.
The review committee also wanted feedback about how residents feel about the possibility of splitting Cayman Brac into two separate voting districts (east and west) with the Little Cayman voters eligible to vote in the western block.
Peter Hillenbrand, owner of the Southern Cross Club, said that ‘while he was not a registered voter, he supported maintaining the broad voter base.’ He said it was his experience that splitting the vote often resulted in what he termed ‘political mongering,’ whereby the system of voting blocks ends up getting distorted and manipulated by the people who are in power, so in effect it ends up being less fair.’
MLA Kirkconnell pointed out that it might also be in the interests of the residents of Little Cayman to maintain the current system, because right now they had two representatives speaking on their behalf and by keeping the Islands of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman together they had a stronger voice.
There was no talk of human rights issues at the meeting.
The only point of contention that was brought up was that the people in Little Cayman were paying higher fees than in Cayman Brac for various services including renewing licences, inspecting vehicles and school fees. Ms McCoy asked in relation to this matter ‘are we a part of the district of Cayman Brac or are we a part of the district of Grand Cayman?’
Mr. Tibbetts responded: ‘You are part of the Cayman Islands, but you are also part and parcel of the district of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman,’ adding that he would look into the matter of the different fee structures.
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