Premier Juliana O’Connor-Connolly has forced the inclusion of two controversial bills on the agenda for the Friday session of Parliament.
As it stands, the premier relies on the Progressives-led opposition to prop up her beleaguered minority government, allowing her to call a meeting of the House for government legislative business.
Her move on Wednesday comes in spite of opposition MPs, including the Progressives, having voiced resistance to putting changes to Cayman’s National Conservation Act, as well as the holding of a referendum on decriminalising small amounts of ganja and establishing a national lottery, on the order paper for the House’s next sitting.
The terms of the Progressives’ agreement not to block O’Connor-Connolly’s faction from the day-to-day business of government, had specified that any divisive issues be left to the next government to resolve.
A business committee meeting on Wednesday, chaired by the premier, initially led to an impasse over the issue as the cross-aisle group of six MPs quibbled over what the committee has the authority to determine – in the face of protestations that the contentious bills be left off the order paper.
According to Parliament’s official website, the business committee decides “the order of business to be transacted in the House. The items that the Business Committee choose to allow into the Meetings of the House will then go on to the Order Paper outlining the business of the day.”
But it would appear Wednesday’s stand-off arose as a result of a disagreement over the distinction between what is included and the order in which the items appear.
Opposition Leader Joey Hew, who is one of the six MPs involved, told the Compass that the committee was “working through” the issue when news of the impasse spread.
In addition to the premier and the leader of the opposition, Deputy Premier Kenneth Bryan and Minister of Planning, Agriculture, Housing and Infrastructure Jay Ebanks, along with opposition MPs André Ebanks and Roy McTaggart make up the business committee.
André Ebanks, initially was a member of the committee as a government MP, now sits on the Opposition benches.
‘A direct violation’
In an early morning statement from The Caymanian Community Party on Thursday, the new group, led by former Deputy Premier André Ebanks, called the move by the premier “an unusual and very narrow stance”.
Her position asserts that “the Committee’s only role is to set the order of bills – effectively dismissing objections to their inclusion altogether”, the statement said.
TCCP is pressing their counterparts on the opposition bench to withdraw from its agreement with O’Connor-Connolly’s coalition of independents.
The TCCP-led calls – echoed by advocacy group Sustainable Cayman – pressed for the Progressives, also known as the PPM, to boycott Parliament on Friday.
It added that the premier’s “manoeuvre” to introduce the two bills was a “direct violation of the agreement between the minority government and the PPM”.
“We urge the PPM to stand by their agreement with the minority government, that is to only ensure Parliamentary quorum for urgent, non-contentious matters,” the statement argued, suggesting there is “no alternative” for the Progressives, other than withholding the necessary numbers for Parliament to sit on Friday.
O’Connor-Connolly requires 10 MPs plus the Speaker for the meeting to go ahead – she currently commands a Cabinet of just five MPs, including herself, and two backbenchers, McKeeva Bush and Bernie Bush.
“In our view, the circumstances dictate that the PPM has no alternative but to withdraw from its promise to provide quorum because this meeting of Parliament is now set to deal with contentious matters, a clear breach of their original agreement,” Ebanks’ party statement read, offering their “full support” to this action.
The Compass understands that the Progressives will attend the sitting of the House on Friday, but it is unclear how they will deal with the two bills when they come up.
Bills’ defeat a certainty?
While it appears to be mathematically impossible for O’Connor-Connolly to muscle the numbers to get the bills passed in the House, preparations continue at the Elections Office for the 30 April vote on the referendums, as well as the general election.
“It does cause us to have to do an extra set of planning. So we have plans afoot that if we have the referendum and we’re able to have the ballots joined up … the solid one document would have candidates’ names at the top and referendum questions at the bottom. So we’re training for that,” Elections Supervisor Wesley Howell told the Cayman Compass Thursday.
Howell said his office is now contingency planning for separate ballots – one for the election and one for the referendum – as well as “a scenario where it’s only the election and no referendum”.
“We can’t have the referendum unless the bill passes, and then the questions are decided by the government and issued in time for that to proceed,” he said.
If that scenario happens, he said, the Elections Office will be prepared, and if it’s only the candidates’ ballot, staff will be trained accordingly.
However, he said, “From a voter’s perspective, that’s a whole other argument because some persons are looking forward to voting in the referendum. We heard that from voters who were coming in to register, they really wanted to have their voice heard in relation to those questions.”
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