Governor steps in, premier stands ground
Cayman Islands Governor Duncan Taylor criticised Premier McKeeva Bush on 26 August over the Premier’s harsh words concerning the auditor general’s office.
Premier Bush replied that “there are two sides to his matter” and did not apologise for his earlier remarks.
In a rare, perhaps unique moment Mr. Taylor took the Premier to task over what he termed “personal attacks” against the country’s auditor general and his staff.
Mr. Taylor typically stayed out of such verbal spats in his first several months as governor, but Friday he questioned Premier Bush’s statements over the past week regarding an auditor general’s report on government procurement and the office’s intentions to look into the Premier’s ‘nation-building’ fund.
“I do not think it is helpful to accuse the auditor general of bias, of ‘seeking out banner headlines’, of being used as a ‘hit man’, or to accuse his staff of being ‘spiteful’ or of ‘indulging in bureaucratic harassment,” Mr. Taylor said in a statement released Friday. “These are very serious accusations to make. I have seen no evidence to justify them.”
Loan deal: Law not broken
Cayman Islands Auditor General Alastair Swarbrick said on Wednesday, 24 August that the country’s Premier did not break the law in arranging a US$185 million loan to finance government operations during the last budget year.
However, Premier McKeeva Bush’s decision to disregard the established bidding process for the loan and choose a New York financing firm based on the advice of his political party members was in violation of the financial regulations attached to Cayman’s Public Management and Finance Law.
Sections 33 and 34 of the Public Management and Finance Law allow the country’s minister of finance – Mr. Bush – to arrange loans on behalf of the Cayman Islands government. In Mr. Swarbrick’s view, the law itself would supercede the regulations.
Phone tapping
Rules that allow “any person employed by the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service to intercept a message in relation to a matter or person” for the purposes of gathering intelligence were approved in August of 2011.
The interception of the message – which can include any form of communication such as telephones, post, e-mail, text messages and the like – must be authorised by a warrant issued directly from Cayman’s governor. The warrant would have to be addressed to the RCIPS commissioner who can then authorise a police service employee to execute it.
East End port out
Developers of the Shetty medical tourism hospital announced Tuesday, 9 August that they plan to build it on a site earmarked for the East End sea port, which appears to have been scrapped.
In a joint statement, Gene Thompson, local director of the Narayana group which proposes building the 2,000-bed hospital, and Joseph Imparato, owner of the land, said an agreement had been reached to locate Dr. Devi Shetty’s health care city on 600 acres at High Rock.
Bush gives $4.1 million to churches
During the month of August, 2011, Premier McKeeva Bush revealed that during the past two years the government has given $4.1 million to 19 churches from more than $7 million of funds set aside for nation building.
“To date, we have provided grants of approximately $4.1 million to about 19 churches, impacting from West Bay to Cayman Brac; to complete and extend facilities, to augment outreach work, and services such as the much-needed after-school programmes, to build new, and enhance existing structures as hurricane shelters,” Mr. Bush told members of the Legislative Assembly during a meeting.
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