George Town West hopefuls debate jobs, prison reform and school lunches

Date: Monday, 7 April 2025

Candidates

• Tyree Hernandez (IND)
• Hunter Walton (IND)
• Craig Merren (CINP)
• Pearlina McGaw-Lumsden (PPM)

The forum

The Chamber of Commerce series of candidate forums entered the final week with just two constituency debates remaining before the party leaders’ debate on Wednesday.

It was the turn of George Town West candidates to go head-to-head on Monday evening in a debate held between three of the four challenging candidates. Craig Merren from the Cayman Islands National Party sent his apologies for his absence due to “unforeseen circumstances”.

George Town West’s current MP, David Wight of the PPM, retired in the last Parliament, and the challengers for his seat spanned a wide range of ages, interests and experience. He has thrown his support behind community advocate Pearlina McGaw-Lumsden, who is standing for office for the fourth time and running for the first time under the PPM banner.

Her GTW rivals – 28-year-old café owner Hunter Walton and 53-year-old iguana hunter and grandfather Tyree Hernandez – are both running for the first time.

Key issues debated

1. Why are you running for office and how do you intend to represent the people of George Town West, if elected?

First to answer, McGaw-Lumsden said that this “has been the most difficult decision of my life, and difficult for so many different reasons, because this is my fourth time running”.

She told of how, while canvassing one evening in the constituency, she met an elderly man who had just received a $25,000 bill following surgery, and “that hit home. I don’t understand, as a thriving society, how we’re not taking care of the elderly, and so that instilled and invoked in me the reason why I was running for George Town West …

“It’s because I have a drive and a passion for my people in the Cayman Islands. I think we are a society that, although we are thriving, our people are not and so I’m here to advocate on their behalf. I’m here to be a voice for the people that don’t have a voice.”

Walton said that as “a young Caymanian at 28 years old, I’ve seen enough. I’ve seen the politics as usual, promises being made and never followed through … I’m putting myself forward for the betterment of my country, my family, my friends.

“I know through hard work and dedication and strong, bold leadership, that we can achieve anything, and I hope to be that change, that guiding light for George Town West.”

Answering the question last, Hernandez said, “I’m not an empty promise. I’m a barrel full of water. When you’re thirsty, you get water to drink. I’m here because I’m tired of all the promises. The last politician that we had for George Town West left us eight years of emptiness, nothing done in our community.

“Our elders are suffering. Our parks are deteriorating. Our basketball courts are being left to Mother Nature … I’ve seen the problem with traffic. I’m from George Town West, the Windsor Park area, and Windsor Park is like another highway. We need to take control of it.”

2. What are the top three national issues you would prioritise if elected, and why are they most urgent to address?

It was Walton’s turn to answer first and he went straight in with this election’s hot topics: immigration, jobs and housing.

“The population is growing out of control. Our current immigration department cannot handle the influx of the immigration in the Cayman Islands,” he said, suggesting that increasing staffing and using technology to streamline some of these processes would help speed things up.

Regarding jobs, Walton said he was affected by the issue as a business owner himself and that he would support clamping down on work permit abuses, saying, “Work permit holders are jumping from job to job to job, and these employers are completely bypassing cases, as well as working outside the scope of their work permit and operating illegal businesses, which is affecting our economy negatively.”

He added that he would make changes to the permanent residency system as well, which he said was causing Caymanians to lose their heritage and their culture.

“Caymanians aren’t being employed, and if they are being employed, unfortunately, they’re getting the bitter end of the stick,” he said. “Six dollars an hour minimum wage is absolutely unacceptable.”

The three issues go together well, he said, “because, in my opinion, housing has been caused by the weak immigration policies that have been put in place … We’re creating artificial demand for luxury apartments in Cayman when these developers should be prioritising affordable housing for Caymanians.”

Prison reform and traffic control

Hernandez chose traffic control, affordable housing and prison reform as his issues of national importance. Speaking about prisons first, Hernandez said that it cost thousands of dollars to house people in the prison system, including foreign prisoners.

“When I’m elected, that’s going to change,” he said. “Jobs that are in the prisons that should be given to Caymanians, that is going to change. The proper benefits that should be given to Caymanians from those jobs, that’s going to go to Caymanians.”

His plan for traffic control involved stopping “throwing millions of dollars every year at building shoulders in the roads. That does not work. Every time that there’s a shoulder and expansion to a road, there’s a fatality. That needs to change.”

He squeezed in a fourth issue, saying, “We need better care for our elderly.”

Closing immigration loopholes

Last to speak was McGaw-Lumsden.

“We have to reform immigration,” she said, “because it trickles down to so many different factors in our society, such as traffic, housing, cost of living.”

Once immigration was reformed and all the loopholes were closed, she said this would have a knock-on effect to help deal with the issues of traffic congestion and soaring house prices.

Affordable housing was her second issue.

“So many people have actually left island because they can’t afford a house here,” she said. “That’s unacceptable for a nation that we consider to be first class.”

Cost of living was another priority and she pointed to the PPM’s recently released manifesto, which has said the minimum wage should be increased to $9 an hour.

“Right now, the $6 is not a liveable wage for any person. It’s pushing people below the poverty line. And we may say, okay, it doesn’t impact Caymanians but it still impacts people that are living within our country, and it’s totally unacceptable,” she said.

3. With the introduction of ONE GT, which will bring new residents and business amenities to George Town West, do you support similar developments in the future? What is your vision for the development of George Town West, particularly given its strategic location as a potential hub for both cargo and cruise ship berthing in the future?

In an evening characterised by broad agreement between the candidates on many of the issues, ONE GT was an exception. Answering first, Walton said he believed that in time, ONE GT “will prove that it’s going to be a disaster for that little road. It’s a lot of people, a lot of buildings, a lot of offices on this little tiny street.”

He continued, “So for us to think that it’s a good idea to continue with similar developments, building up and jamming people into these buildings in an already condensed area, if we thought we had problems now, we’ll have problems then.”

He suggested instead that there should be an affordable housing unit in the capital, as well as “more community walkability and preserving green spaces as well, to keep that natural feel”.

Cruise location

Regarding the cruise berth, Walton said that it was a problem that cargo and cruise were together, and that while we didn’t yet know how the public was going to vote on cruise berthing, cargo did need to be expanded, “especially if we’re going to get into lowering the cost of living through regional trade”.

If the public voted ‘yes’ for the cruise berth, Walton said he was “a strong believer that I do not want to see it built in George Town. I would love to advocate for it to be built in either the eastern districts or West Bay, but at the end of the day, that’s the decision that the people are going to have to make.”

Hernandez’s answer started off sounding like a metaphysical poem.

“Development is the future,” Hernandez said. “If we stay in one place, there is no development, and there is no way possible that we can stay in one place. Every second the clock ticks is the future.”

Getting more specific, he said that you could only develop what was available, and there was not enough land available unless private owners were willing to sell to government or developers. His plan instead was to move government and the larger businesses away from George Town altogether. Where the cruise berth was going to go, he said, “was a good question. I don’t have the answer, unfortunately.”

Sustainable revitalisation

In her answer, McGaw-Lumsden said that she supported businesses like ONE GT coming to George Town.

“We have to bring life into the capital,” she said. “George Town needs revitalisation.”

However, she said that any development should be done in a sustainable way, by not always adding new buildings but refurbishing the older buildings which already exist.

“We also have to talk about having George Town as a mixed-use city, and when I say that, I mean people living there, people dining there, people working there,” she said.

Regarding the cruise berth, she said that concerns of George Town West residents were over the impact on the natural environment.

“I think more of the issue or the most concerning issue amongst the people in George Town West is the location, not the actual project itself. Because they know that actually, if it is in George Town, the erosion that is going to do to the beaches including Seven Mile Beach, that is the issue more than anything,” she said.

Notable answer

In a question about whether providing free school meals for school children was a good use of government money, the stand-out answer went to McGaw-Lumsden.

“There was a family that lived in West Bay, and there were 10 children in the house, along with their parents, and if it wasn’t for free meals, those children would not have eaten for the day … That family that I speak about is my family,” she said.

“I didn’t come from a privileged background. We depended on government lunches at school, and my snacks came from classmates. And trust me, when I tell you, it played a very pivotal role in my life. I couldn’t learn, I couldn’t function if I didn’t eat.

“So we’re not only thinking about free lunches, we’re thinking the benefits of those lunches and it was significant to me and my nine siblings. In our family, we have lawyers, doctors, graduates … built on the foundation of free lunches.”

“Trust me,” she added, “a free lunch is like a great benefit. It’s a gift, and it’s something that we cannot even think twice about, because I know how impactful this is, not just for me but for our future as well.”

Standout moments

Walton exuded confidence saying, “I plan on being the best leader that you guys have ever had.”

Hernandez, shortly before losing his voice and having to take an emergency gulp of water, told listeners, “I’m not an empty promise. I’m a barrel full of water. When you’re thirsty, you get water to drink.”

During his closing remarks, Walton read out his phone number three times in rapid succession.

“If you call me, I will be there,” he said. “You can call me at any time of the day, anytime of the night.”

The next Chamber of Commerce forum, held on Tuesday, 8 April, will feature the candidates from the George Town East constituency. The final event of the Chamber of Commerce series will be the party leaders’ debate on Wednesday, 9 April.

Watch forum online