Tuesday’s lack of confidence motion in the Wayne Panton and his PACT government was defeated in the House after failing to reach a two-thirds majority. Here’s what the members who spoke during the debate had to say:
Chris Saunders
Chris Saunders, who earlier this year left the PACT government to cross the aisle and join the Opposition, was the first to speak after Leader of the Opposition Roy McTaggart finished his opening statement on the motion, which he had tabled.
He sought to use his vote to secure the government’s commitment to move pension reform legislation forward through a special meeting and have it debated before year’s end.
“We need to sit down and focus on the things the public wants. I want my special meeting for next week. I want the legislators to come down here for one day next week and pass the Pension Law so people can get relief, and as the government is finalising the budget, I am going to make a call again for the civil service, public service pay increase,” Saunders said.
During his speech – the longest of the day – he made it clear that if the pension changes were not pushed through, the government would be guaranteed to face another vote of no confidence in six months’ time.
In June this year, legislators voted unanimously in favour of a motion brought by Saunders to that effect.
He also said he was displeased with the actions taken after his departure from PACT when his policy of requiring advertisements for temporary work permits was rolled back.
Saunders pointed to the broad outcomes listed in the Strategic Policy Statement from the premier, reminding him that those items outlined in the document still remain in effect.
He said the expansion of CINICO, and the provision of free healthcare for seniors and children, must be delivered.
In a shrouded jab at the premier’s financial standing, Saunders said, “If the only people in a country that pays taxes is the middle class, then we need people with middle-class values, middle-class understanding and middle-class struggles. It is only then you can understand what the majority of our people is feeling.”
Saunders abstained in the vote on the motion.
McKeeva Bush
Before the debate began, West Bay West MP McKeeva Bush requested that an amendment be made to McTaggart’s motion, so that it specifically called for a vote of no confidence in the premier, rather than his entire government. That led to a short adjournment while members discussed the issue. When the House resumed, Speaker Katherine Ebanks-Wilks said the motion would go ahead unamended.
In his speech to Parliament on the motion later in the day, Bush said he had not wanted to express a lack of confidence in ministers who were working “to make things better”.
In explaining why he supported the removal of Panton, he said the premier was running an administration that was not cohesive and in which government members were not able to complete work they were trying to do, saying they were being “outfoxed by the premier on too many things that are good for our people”.
He told the House he supported a call for a “government of national unity”, made up of members of the Opposition and some of the PACT members.
The former Speaker of the House admitted he regretted joining the PACT government and inviting others to do so following the 2021 general election.
He listed several areas where he said PACT was failing the country, including the delay in finalising the budget that he said would mean civil servants could not be paid; a lack of action on CUC’s monopoly and the high electricity bills seen this summer; slow progress on the East-West Arterial; and not enough increases in payments for veterans, seafarers and civil servant retirees.
One of the final straws in his decision to resign came on Monday last week, he said, a few days before he crossed the floor of the House, when he attended his last PACT caucus meeting, “and they couldn’t give us one written [budget] document”.
He said members were told at that point that nothing in the budget could be changed, though it failed, for example, to provide funding for a new Cayman Brac high school, which was needed, he said, because the existing Laymen E. Scott High School had asbestos, as well as other funding for Lighthouse School and teachers’ salaries.
He told the House that the proposed budget includes $60 million for new civil service posts, which he said was “unsustainable”.
Bush insisted he’d “never seen anything like” the type of governance that had led to current budget situation.
“When it comes to trying to change some of these things, the premier has been absent and not willing,” he said.
In closing, he told his fellow legislators, “The country needs a new look. It’s a good time to reset. … We can do it, we can do it together.”
Bush voted in favour of the motion.
Sabrina Turner
In an impassioned speech in the debate, Health and Home Affairs Minister Sabrina Turner staunchly stuck by Panton and the PACT government, saying she was “going nowhere” until or unless she was instructed to do so by her constituents.
She accused the Opposition of being the ones preventing the budget being finalised, by forcing government members to spend their time in the House taking part in the no-confidence debate rather than dealing with the country’s finances.
She took aim at the former PACT members who had crossed the floor to join the Opposition in recent months, accusing them of “flip-flopping” and “theatrics”.
The Prospect MP told the House that the government of independents was fighting for survival.
“We are a group of independents; we came together to form this coalition government. In those circumstances, it was to be expected there would be choppy waters to navigate. Any time you are trying to do something new, completely new in this setting, under difficult circumstances, it’s going to be challenging,” she said, defending PACT’s performance.
“This is not a campaign,” she added. “This is the survival of what has never ever been done before. We have never been given a chance. We were failed from the get go. We were branded as colour prejudiced, uneducated, all sorts of memes were thrown at us. It brought us to tears.”
She argued that the debate was not about loyalty versus disloyalty, but about “truth versus lies”.
Turner insisted that the people have placed the government in power, and it was up to them to remove it – in the next election – and not up to other members of the House who were using the situation for their own political gains.
She queried the timing of the motion of no confidence, asking why it could not have waited until after the budget, when the country could see the government’s plans for the next two years.
“Words are wind,” she said. “Judge us by our performance, judge us by our outcomes.”
Turner voted no on the motion.
Dwayne Seymour
Former Labour and Border Control Minister Dwayne Seymour, who resigned from the PACT government in September this year and returned to the Progressives-led Opposition benches, lent his voice to the chorus of calls for Panton to resign.
He praised the work of the Progressives over the years, saying they presented a far better option for running the country than what he had seen during his time being a member of the PACT government. Seymour had belatedly joined the PACT administration, in November 2021.
He said the PACT government, partly made up of ministers who had never been elected before, had attempted to change processes too quickly.
“We cannot come into politics, thinking that some things that we have been doing for 40 years can be changed in two years,” he said. “It confused the civil service. We can’t do it like that, we have to take our time… That’s why we’re having these problems with the budget. We’re trying to change the processes with the budget, we tried to change too much and now we’re in a quagmire. I don’t think the budget can be fixed.”
Like others who contributed to the debate from the Opposition side, he listed what he considered failures and delays by PACT, including the handling of the long-delayed ReGen waste management project, the lack of progress on the East-West Arterial, the delays in opening the long-term mental health facility, and environmental barriers that were preventing the development of “affordable land in East End”.
He told his House colleagues, “If you decide to vote against this motion, you are saying ‘I’m sticking with this man’; if you decide to vote yes, you are saying you are sticking with your country.”
He added, “ I have respect for the 19 persons in this Parliament. .. I’m telling you that I stepped away… of my own accord, with no attachments, nothing. I just see that it’s going in a different direction, and I said I need a break from this, it is really stressful; I see things that are going on that I don’t appreciate.”
He described Panton’s efforts to pull 13 independents together in a government as a commendable effort, but it had not worked and it was time to try a different approach.
Seymour voted to support the motion.
Sir Alden McLaughlin
Former Premier Alden McLaughlin said the premier was living “in denial” and was holding onto his job at the expense of his coalition and the country.
Beginning his contribution with the famous soliloquy from Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ which ends, “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” McLaughlin said this was a fitting description of Panton’s speech in which he defended his record, but didn’t seriously address the issue of how he intended to govern without a parliamentary majority.
In a speech, bookended by Shakespeare quotes, McLaughlin leaned on the children’s song ’10 Green Bottles’ as he spelled out the parliamentary maths.
He said he had counted “over and over”, and still came up with 9-9.
Describing it as a hung parliament, he said “the only person that doesn’t seem to understand the arithmetic is my good friend, the premier.”
Suggesting PACT could ask Speaker Katherine Ebanks-Wilks to step down in order to lend her support to government, he urged her to hold onto the chair with the same “strength and stubbornness” that Panton was holding on to his premiership – “like death to a dead man’s jacket”.
He said the motion was not about the performance of the government, adding, “The issue is that the government is in a constitutional crisis and the premier is in denial. Unless he has 10 [members] sat over there, he has no quorum, let alone the ability to get anything passed.”
He took issue with Panton’s claims that PACT was functioning well and was simply navigating some differences of opinion as the budget approached.
The former premier claimed he was getting constant calls from stressed-out civil servants, some of whom, he said, were taking medication for blood pressure, stress and insomnia, with the chaotic budget process leaving them feeling wiped out.
McLaughlin echoed Bush’s entreaty to disaffected members of PACT to combine with some on the Progressives side to form a ‘government of national unity’.
He closed by acknowledging that the Opposition’s no-confidence motion may not meet the high bar of getting the two-thirds majority needed to pass, but he questioned where government could go from here.
“If it wins the motion, but still doesn’t have a majority, then what?”
McLaughlin voted ‘Aye’ on the motion.
Joey Hew
Deputy Opposition Leader Joey Hew, in his contribution, appealed for government members and the premier to be honest with themselves on what items on their agenda they have been able to achieve.
He said as a parliamentarian it was “embarrassing” to see the situation the country is now in with a “hung parliament”.
“We are not playing politics,” he said, adding that the truth is “the country deserves better” and the existing 9-9 deadlock cannot continue.
“We are here to debate that the country is in trouble and it needs a change, it needs help. Our people are crying for change, crying for help. We are not saying they are crying for PPM,” he said.
He said it is the government members who will have to decide how that change is going to happen.
“If, by some miracle, they can come together and find a way to get us out of this constitutional crisis that we are facing at the moment with a 9-9 hung parliament, I will be happy as long as they have settled their differences and they can go to work for the country in harmony… Bring us a budget that will take us through the next year and a half until the elections,” he said.
“A budget that will not put us in bankruptcy in years to come,” he added.
He said the Caymanian people deserve a budget that has been “thoroughly thought through… that has been created based on consensus and advice on what is best for our people and the future of this country. Not a budget that is based on promises or threats or promises and threats.”
Hew urged the government MPs to ask themselves if they are “satisfied and confident” that they have agreed to a two-year budget that “will serve the people of this country, our people of today…. or two… three years down that road because that is when it will manifest – down the road”.
He took aim at the premier’s agenda, saying that even he could not achieve what he set out to do with his environment portfolio.
Hew asked the premier where the National Development Plan was, which is the “foundation” of sustainability.
It is through that development plan, he said, that major issues like beach replenishment, affordable housing and infrastructure will all be dealt with.
He said each government member sitting on the front bench has a responsibility to the country.
While he said he admired Health Minister Sabrina Turner’s loyalty to the premier, he appealed to the other government members to step up.
“Someone has to demonstrate that they can put country first,” he said.
Hew voted in favour of the motion.
André Ebanks
Financial Services Minster André Ebanks said he had been energised by the “noble cause” of the PACT coalition and its emphasis on attention to grassroots issues.
But he acknowledged there were times when the group had fallen short in terms of “respect, professional conduct and collaboration”.
He accepted that comments made earlier by former Premier Sir Alden McLaughlin that civil servants were “more stressed than they have ever been” were accurate. He also accepted that there were times when Cabinet seemed to be at “battle with itself”, even on the floor of the House for all to see, something he described as “unprecedented”.
Ebanks said he was prepared to do his bit to help the group get through its current crisis. But he insisted PACT should look internally and reform itself.
“Let’s come together,” he said, “we have the ideas, we have the heart, we need to improve our culture.”
And he insisted he was prepared to resign if PACT could not commit to reviving itself and “exceeding expectations”.
Ebanks abstained in the vote on the motion.
Katherine Ebanks-Wilks
Katherine Ebanks-Wilks, who as Speaker could not vote on the motion unless it had been tied, and who did not speak during the debate, addressed her parliamentary colleagues after the votes had been counted and the motion was defeated.
In a searing statement at the end of the meeting, she questioned if all MPs had the interests of the people of Cayman at heart.
Stating that she had received calls and “even threats from the minority of people who say I need to move from this position”, she said that decision should only be made in the best interest of the country.
She told legislators she wanted to put on record that she believed constitutional reform needed to be carried out to make the role of the Speaker of the House an autonomous one.
And referring to a report by the Electoral Boundaries Commission, which she said would be tabled at some point in the future, she stated, “You really have to wonder, if Members of Parliament are the individuals who determine if that report is accepted or not, if we’re ever going to get to a place where we are thriving constitutionally. And we’re right back in the same position, of government having a hung parliament. I see it as a sad day for our country.”
Ebanks-Wilks told the House that she had been appointed as Speaker after former Speaker McKeeva Bush resigned and there had been a “difficulty in consensus to elect an outside Speaker”. The role had been a “huge challenge”, she said, but she felt she had displayed “nothing but neutrality” since taking her place on the Speaker’s chair.
“So much so, that I locked my door this morning,” she said. “No one can say that I have interfered in this process.”
In her parting words before leaving the chamber, she told MPs, “I pray that I will live to see the day when a majority of these seats in Parliament will be filled by leaders who possess the political will to make decisions that are in the best interest of the Caymanian people and for the love of country. And although there are 19 seats, until we have enough members who lead based on what is right, the status quo will remain and Cayman will never work for Caymanians.”
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