'One man, one vote' divides coalition gov't

A lengthy political wrangle last week over proposals to fundamentally change the Cayman Islands election system finished in a dramatic tie vote Friday that raised questions about the unity of Cayman’s Progressives-led coalition government.  

At around 3:15 p.m. Friday, East End MLA Arden McLean abruptly ended his debate on a private members motion he filed asking the government to implement 18 single-member voting districts within three months of its passage. Mr. McLean, at the end of his debate, accused Premier Alden McLaughlin of deliberately misleading the voters in the run up to the May 2013 general election. 

“That premier [referring to Mr. McLaughlin] never had any intention of implementing ‘one man, one vote’ single-member constituencies,” Mr. McLean said.  

Following the debate’s end, with several government ministers absent from the Legislative Assembly chamber, a 6-to-6 draw vote on the motion was reported by Speaker of the House Juliana O’Connor-Connolly. 

Opposing the “one man, one vote” single-member constituencies motion were Premier Alden McLaughlin, Deputy Premier Moses Kirkconnell, Minister Kurt Tibbetts, and MLAs Winston Connolly, Roy McTaggart and Joey Hew.  

Supporting the motion were government backbench MLAs Anthony Eden and Alva Suckoo, opposition MLAs Bernie Bush and Capt. Eugene Ebanks, and independent MLAs Mr. McLean and North Side MLA Ezzard Miller. Absent for the vote were Ministers Osbourne Bodden, who was off island Friday, Wayne Panton, Tara Rivers and Marco Archer. Opposition Leader McKeeva Bush was also absent.  

In the end, Ms. O’Connor-Connolly, who joined the Progressives after the May 2013 general election, was forced to cast the deciding vote. It’s an unusual step, constitutionally allowed only when the House deadlocks on a question before it. “I hearby vote no. The motion has failed,” Ms. O’Connor-Connolly said.  

Long-time Progressives member Bodden Town MLA Anthony Eden’s defection on the vote came as no surprise – he had announced his intention to support Mr. McLean’s motion on Thursday during his debate.  

However, Mr. Suckoo’s “yes” vote appeared to catch government members by surprise. The freshman member from Bodden Town indicated during his earlier debate that he would be willing to support government’s shift on the “one man, one vote” issue.  

Contacted after the vote Friday, Mr. Suckoo, a founding member of the grassroots group that supported “one man, one vote,” said he changed his mind Friday when government declined to propose amendments to Mr. McLean’s motion.  

“I would have expected an amendment to the motion [by government] to say how we were going to address ‘one man, one vote,’ but that didn’t happen,” Mr. Suckoo said. “We had a discussion at our [political party] retreat [about implementing OMOV], but I want more than that. If I’m going to back away from ‘one man, one vote,’ which is what made my political career, I want more than just verbal assurances.” 

Mr. Suckoo said outside observers shouldn’t take this as a sign that political dissention has appeared in the Progressives coalition government.  

“I won’t let it come between us,” Mr. Suckoo said. “I’m a Progressives member. If they’re uncomfortable with my position, we can sit down and discuss it.”  

Absent from the vote, Mr. Panton had just gone out of the chamber to meet with a constituent, while Mr. Archer was heading out to a meeting at his daughter’s school. Both acknowledged they were taken by surprise when Mr. McLean suddenly called for a vote on the motion.  

“I actually told [Mr. McLean] ‘Don’t think I’m walking out on your speech’ [prior to leaving],” Mr. Archer, another founding member of the “one man, one vote” movement, said. “People can assume anything they want. I had to leave because I had an appointment for 3:30 p.m. I rushed back in when I heard the vote being called, but I was too late.”  

Mr. Panton acknowledged Friday that he may have made a rookie mistake in leaving the chamber while Mr. McLean was still debating.  

Minister Rivers said Saturday that she was also in the Legislative Assembly building when the vote was called, but that she was taken by surprise and couldn’t get back to her seat fast enough.  

Legislative Assembly rules state that members must be in their seats when a vote is called by the speaker to participate. 

A more experienced political veteran, Premier McLaughlin, said he realized what was happening right away and ran back to his seat to take the vote. “Arden [McLean] pulled a fast one. He looked up and saw several of us were out of the chamber.”  

Mr. McLaughlin said he believed Mr. Suckoo had “changed positions” from his earlier debate on the “one man, one vote” motion, and agreed there had been a brief discussion about amending Mr. McLean’s motion prior to the vote on it.  

“There was no way I could amend the motion without doing violence to what it sought,” the premier said.  

Unusual alliance  

Opposition Leader Bush and independent MLAs Mr. Miller and Mr. McLean, diametrically opposed on “one man, one vote,” both said last week that the Progressives government isn’t serious about implementing single-member voting districts before the next general election.  

“Tell the country the truth; you don’t want it,” Mr. Bush said Thursday. “You [referring to Progressives party members] talked to them about 18 single-member constituencies, that’s what you talked to them about.”  

“Government wants to hold the election under the same conditions as 2013 [with multimember voting districts],” Mr. Miller said. “And once they get it past December of this year, we get into the two-year window.”  

The next election is expected in May 2017. 

Premier McLaughlin said earlier in the week that his government needed more time to look at voting options, including the potential creation of at-large districts, in which Legislative Assembly members would receive votes from the islands’ entire voting population, rather than from the citizens of just one district.  

For instance, Mr. McLaughlin said, the government could create 14 or 15 single-member districts that each sent one representative to the Legislative Assembly and another four or five at-large members, whom all voters in the Cayman Islands could elect. Such a system would end up with each elector having five or six votes to cast, but they would have an equal number of votes, the premier said.  

“It’s Alden-mandering,” Mr. Miller said, a reference to the concept of gerrymandering in the U.S., where district voting lines are drawn to over-represent or under-represent a certain constituency or political party.  

Mr. Miller said a move toward at-large constituencies was a clear effort by the Progressives, whose traditional voter base is in George Town, to elect more members from a larger district.  

“The ills of single-member constituencies do not disappear by some magical drop from 18 to 15 [Legislative Assembly] seats,” Mr. Miller said. “The positives of single-member constituencies far outweigh the ills, not for the politicians, but for the people we represent. 

“Politicians have….for the last 55 years done what is best for politicians and not what is best for Caymanians and participatory democracy.”  

Mr. Bush, who does not support a change to any single-member districts, said power and position had clearly changed the ruling government’s tune. 

“I have never heard more ‘we want it, we want it, but we don’t want it’ in my entire life,” he said. “They can find some good excuses.”  

The Progressives party ran on a campaign supporting a move to “one man, one vote” single-member co
nstituencies during the 2013 elections. Mr. McLaughlin said the government still supports single-member constituencies, perhaps just not in its “pure” form, with 18 or 19 members in separate districts. “The changing of the voting system is a most serious matter,” Mr. Bush said. “When a man can’t keep his word, he’s just a pyah-pyah person [pyah-pyah is Jamaican patois term meaning “second rate” or “weak”].”  

During his wrap-up on the debate, Mr. McLean called the government’s position a “betrayal” of the voters who supported them in 2013.  

“[Government] has turned their backs on the people of this country and their wishes,” Mr. McLean said. “It is wrong, it is downright wrong.” 

All Progressives party members, as well as independent legislators who sit on the government side of the House, addressed the “one man, one vote” motion, and it quickly became clear from the debate that there was no real consensus. George Town MLA Joey Hew said he believed the current voting system of multimember districts to be unfair, but wasn’t sure that creating 18 or 19 single-member districts would be any better. Mr. Hew said the smaller the constituencies, the greater the chance of “garrison“ communities forming, particularly in districts that do not elect members of the winning party to the House.  

Independent George Town MLA Roy McTaggart said while he supported the “one man, one vote” referendum in 2012, he had some reservations about single-member districts and that his constituents had many varying views on the subject.