Independence is way forward

I read with interest the Caymanian Compass poll that suggests that Cayman’s voters may favour as I do, independents in our next general election in 2013. But although Cayman’s political parties have failed to reflect the true ideological, social and economic needs and values of Cayman, many people are still convinced that parties may be the best positioned to win the next election due to their financial and human resources. And yes, it is true that there are few ways to defeat organised behaviour without becoming organised to do so. Thus once an organised group comes into existence and power, especially with the help and blessings of other forms of organised behaviour in the society, they will not just cease to exist because the unorganised public wish for them and their bad behaviour to go away. It will require more than wishful thinking to undo what has come into being due to necessity, and organised behaviour in politics. Even Caymanian politics is required, I believe, for as much as I hate the behaviour of our two political parties, to comply with the laws that govern human existence whether in Cayman or anywhere else. 

Due to my above position on the challenges we may face in the next general election if we desire change, I strongly suggest we concentrate mostly on what we want for our country rather than who we want. So I continue by again pointing out the need for us to develop sound, clear and forceful ideas in our political thinking and behaviour. This could well be the form that our organised behaviour could and should take but as I have said ideas without action are not an organised form; however, ideas with action are the greatest kind of organised behaviour for the achievement of citizen’s goals.  

In my previous letter, I began to outline two or three of what I believe to be the foundation of ideas for people power in our small island state. I will not repeat them but instead go on to say that every society is driven by commercial institutions, which automatically develop social classes and these social classes will by the nature of their relationship with the wealth of the nation, develop different interests and understandings of the major needs of the society. In other words, there will exist different kinds of consciousness about what is good and what is bad for the nation.  

But democracy is the tool used to bring these different factions together to create and maintain our focus on those national objectives, which serves as best as possible the needs and dreams of the majority, as different as we may be because of our relationship to the wealth of our nation. 

Again, I must state that true nation building must start with the consciousness that the role of government is not to provide for the material needs of the people but the social and economic framework or infrastructure within which the people can employ their human resources to provide for their own needs. Obviously, since each individual has from birth not only different abilities but different occupational interests, we must strive to diversify our economic base. In Cayman this has never been done; one reason we have so many unemployed and so many more collecting welfare or in prison. The first policies of our new government of independents must be to create the economic basis for the greater participation of our people and greater rewards for our people, regardless of where they originated.  

If we accept that ideas rather than political parties must now form the basis for our self determination and realisation, we must stop shooting the messengers and encourage more freedom for the press and for those persons involved in political, social and economic debates in order to gain and share knowledge with our entire society. The failures of both of our political parties and politicians were caused by their lack of ideas that would have connected us to governance. We cannot have good governance or government we trust if we do not understand the essence of governance.  

Civil and political education must therefore be one of the first orders for the next government of independents and should begin from now. It should also be instructed in our schools, for too often I have realised that we Caymanians do not understand the purpose of government and that government is of the people and for the people; and for government to truly function we must all play our roles as citizens and one of our most important roles is that of producers of wealth for the nation. Wealth does not just mean money, since money is but an accounting system. The true wealth of our nation comes from our enduring relationships based upon cooperation and the social recognition of each individual’s right to produce and be rewarded fairly for their efforts as well as being valued as a human being and a citizen. 

The first needs of every citizen is for food, shelter, medicine, education, training and security, but the citizen must be secured not just from being harmed by other citizens but also their government’s institutions and I have already written my concerns about the police and the criminal justice system in our island state, that have for decades stigmatised, criminalised and marginalised large numbers of our people while simultaneously bringing in population replacements; so much so that many of us now form a colony within a colony and are the real colonised in the true meaning and sense of the word. 

The appropriation of food is one of my great concerns and I will conclude this commentary by saying that the prices of food in Cayman are not just ridiculous they are darn right oppressive and act against any possible upward mobility of the working and middle classes. Therefore the first attack against this number one injustice must be to re-establish a food trade with those in our region we call third world countries. I am in one of these third world nations as I write this commentary and it is with great annoyance that I see that policies of past and present governments were to ban and continue to ban the importation of food from these countries.  

Not only is food here so much cheaper, it is also so much fresher and healthier. Then why have we who are incapable of producing food for our own needs, preserving conditions that only allow us to buy third world foods from first world countries like America.  

Food could be imported directly from any of these third world countries and sold at less than half the prices we now pay. We have different income groups in our society but one price and one quality of goods for all. Why should the agricultural department remain solely a merchant class’s instrument of protection against competition from small suppliers and distributors because we have a consumption based taxation system that makes more in taxes the higher the prices of food and goods.  

To me it is hurtful that our own government must kill us with high prices to achieve high revenue,create big government and then give us handouts to degrade and keep us in a state of dependency. When, if we could have cheaper access to food and goods, we could care for ourselves with what we now earn. And Caymanians that now reject low wages may be able to view these wages again as living wages and take up employment wherever they can find employment thus reducing the need for so many expat low income workers. 

Why is it that our people claim to know so much about everything and everywhere but know so little about now to identify, claim, and protect their interest? These are some of the questions we must be asking ourselves and those independents wanting to represent us in May, 2013. We want and demand less expensive food to feed ourselves and our families and our future political leaders must deregulate the laws governing the importation of foods and other goods so as to make our lives sustainable. 

I want independents and members of both political parties to finally accept the fact that I may not again seek political office but that I will always try my best to advance and develop Caymanian political, economic and social thinking. The New Vision Movement founded by me several years ago will try to assist the middle and working classes by producing meaningful ideas and debates because the middle and working classes are always forgotten after elections, so much so that only the very rich and very poor can survive in Cayman. And our politicians need to love our people and not just use our people. They must govern from a position of sacrifice and not from a position of personal gain. Only if we can find in our small ideologically underdeveloped island nation these type of men and women will be capable of sustaining our nation. 

Perhaps wise independents will establish some form of contact and discussion with me in regards to my ideas for a more dynamic Cayman. I look forward to hearing from those interested, especially those wanting to free our people from the economic stranglehold which the department of agriculture and the suppliers of foods have on our people. Let us labour for change but for change in our condition and not just the condition of those seeking to lead us.