People’s Progressives Movement leader Joey Hew believes the party has shored up an experienced line-up to contest the general election with the final pieces expected to fall into place in the coming days.
The confirmation that Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan and Labour Minister Dwayne Seymour will run on the PPM ticket has edged the party closer to the critical mass of candidates needed to push for a parliamentary majority.
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Hew believes there will be 12 candidates in the red shirts of the PPM by Nomination Day on Monday.
Entering his first election as leader, Hew plans to hammer home the party’s ‘Experience over experiments’ slogan when he addresses the PPM conference at the Kimpton Seafire Resort on Saturday evening.
The additions of Bryan and Seymour gave the PPM nine publicly confirmed candidates at press time Tuesday.
The party has announced candidates with sports signing-style photo shoots. And the scramble to fill the final slots on the roster, for all parties, has the feel of rival sports franchises seeking signatures as transfer deadline day approaches.
Hew expects the process to go to the wire.
Several well-known names – some already announced but without affiliation and others who have yet to declare – are circulating as potential candidates.
And speculation abounds that current Premier Juliana O’Connor-Connolly could reverse her decision to step down and seek re-election as a PPM-affiliated candidate on the Brac.
That would serve the dual purpose of giving Dan Scott – the leader of the new Cayman Islands National Party – a more difficult race in that constituency on the Sister Islands.
Hew said he respected the premier’s decision to step down but added that he believed she still has a lot to offer to constituents if she does decide to reverse that call.
Meanwhile, efforts by the PPM to recruit Mark Tibbetts, the district commissioner for the Sister Islands, as a replacement for retiring Moses Kirkconnell in his constituency, appear to have floundered with the long-time civil servant now expected to remain in his current role.
Hew declined comment on specific names circulating as potential candidates, saying only that lots could change in the run-up to Monday’s declaration deadline.
The race to 19
Realistically, he believes the Progressives will go to the polls with a slate of 12 candidates, meaning they would need a near-perfect result to take the government. With 19 seats up for grabs, a minimum of 10 are needed.
Hew said it had been an important week.
“We continue to demonstrate that we’re putting together a team of experienced, current and past politicians, as well as some fresh new blood. I think we are striking the right balance,” he said.
“We know what it takes to operate a caucus. We know what it takes to operate a Cabinet, and we are putting together a team that can hit the ground running.”
Hew insisted that the PPM offered the best chance for the country to have stable, consistent leadership over the next four years.
“Everyone refers to the last four years as the independent experiment and everyone, I think, is unanimous in their thoughts that we can’t afford another four years like we just had.”
In the run-up to the election, two new political parties have formed.
Dan Scott’s group had 12 publicly announced candidates as of press time Tuesday. The Caymanian Community Party, led by André Ebanks, had nine.
A handful of current MPs who are expected to have a solid chance in their constituencies, including McKeeva Bush, Chris Saunders, Isaac Rankine and Jay Ebanks, have not yet declared for any particular group.
It appears likely that some form of coalition government may be necessary – unless one of the three parties wins a surprise clean sweep – something that could put those four and any other unaffiliated MPs in the ‘kingmaker’ position.
Hew was not ready to contemplate coalition strategies in an interview with the Compass on Tuesday.
He said he was fully focused on campaigning to put the PPM back in government.
Likening the election to the 2013 poll, when Sir Alden McLaughlin led the PPM to victory and Hew was elected for the first time, he said the country was “coming out of a term of turmoil” and needed experienced legislators as well as “some fresh perspective and new energy”.
Cost of living the key concern for PPM
Drawing a line of difference with some of the other groups, Hew said he did not feel that Cayman was ‘lost’.
He characterised some of the slogans, including TCCP’s ‘Enough is enough’, and some of the rhetoric among independent candidates about taking back the country as “scare tactics”.
“The fact is that we’re still in one of the best places in the world to live,” he added. “The fact is that it’s not a matter of ‘We’ve lost the country’. It’s a matter of managing what we have.”
On the thorny topic of immigration and opportunity for Caymanians, he said the party wanted to see a balanced approach.
“We need to ensure that Caymanians have the opportunities to succeed in in our country, and at the same time provide a platform for economic growth that everyone benefits from.”
Beyond that, he said addressing cost of living – from housing to health insurance – was the PPM’s top priority alongside improving education and addressing crime.
Critically, he said the PPM’s message to voters would focus on the ability to deliver.
“It is about getting back to some level of normality a government that you can trust, a government that, you know, can hit the ground running,” he added.
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I’m baffled at how this party politics works. The PPM opposed and talked bad about these individuals including lacking political experience for over 4 years and now they are full of experience? I have lost all trust in the system and will now be voting the other way just to stop the over spending, to stop the pending runaway big capital projects and to save the environment.