Two unrelated incidents within the past week have shown up
what we at the Caymanian Compass believe to be somewhat shocking failures at
public relations within the Cayman Islands government.
In the end both government entities involved did the right
thing, but they took some time in getting around to it and that time lost
simply allowed questions to persist around both matters.
The first issue involves Premier McKeeva Bush’s trip to the
Far East. Rumours of this sojourn began circulating over the past few weeks and
eventual “news” reports came out about a jolly that the Premier and various
public and private sector representatives were embarking upon in China.
As it turns out, the Premier had some very good reasons for
taking the trip. However, these reasons weren’t known until about a week after
the initial stories came out. Why not, as is done in other countries, have the
Premier’s weekly ‘events schedule’ distributed to the press? The media
generally agrees not to publish the schedule itself, but at least the
government would be proactive and wouldn’t give the appearance that it is
trying to cover up a trip to China – no matter how mistaken that appearance
might be. The other matter involves the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service’s
release of information regarding a man who might fairly be described as a
repeat sex offender. Following the abduction and rape of a 49-year-old woman
during the day Saturday, police issued a brief press release with scant and
somewhat confusing information about separate incidents where the suspect is
alleged to have approached two women. What we weren’t told officially by the
police until Monday afternoon, was the man’s identity and the fact that he may
have been involved in another attack on Saturday night. Police absolutely did
the right thing in distributing the suspect’s name and photo to the press, but
why that took more than 48 hours after the initial incident is not clear to us.
In a case like this, the local press will obviously do whatever it can to
assist the police, but it needs swift and reliable information to do so. The
Cayman Islands Government needs to operate within the modern information age.
These two recent cases show it’s not quite there yet.
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