Believe it or not, but believe it because it is so; Cayman is on the road to Election Campaign 2025.
Campaigning mode might appear to be slow for now, but in the background, the wheels are already churning, revving up to full steam ahead of campaign launches.
And that has already started with the progressives first out of the gate triggering its own leadership succession plan. Roy McTaggart has made way for Joey Hew.
Meanwhile, in the governing United People’s Movement coalition, formed from the remnants of the imploded PACT government, Premier Juliana O’Connor-Connolly has dropped several very public hints that she could be ‘dropping out’ - if not of politics, then apparently the Premiership.
What then might become of her hastily formed post-PACT UPM? Will PACT make a comeback? Ex-Premier Wayne Panton has not been exactly quiet, especially recently.
Will loose associations of independents formalise their ‘arrangements’ to become political parties, or will Cayman continue to be the outlier with a dominance of independents influencing the politics of the jurisdiction?
Some might argue that Cayman’s continuing political stability is an indication that we may have become quite adept at managing the resulting uncertainty surrounding independent ‘associations’.
So far, the only entity that can adequately describe itself as a political party is the former governing - now Opposition - People’s Progressive Movement (PPM/Progressives).
And that’s just the politics.
The policy landscape is looking equally uncertain.
Even within the ruling UPM, signs of a rift (or at least a serious difference of opinion) have emerged over a proposed hike in annual fees on financial institutions which has ensnared the civil servants’ credit union - the Cayman Islands Civil Service Association (CICSA) Co-operative Credit Union.
Premier O’Connor-Conolly appears to be cautious about the CI$200,000 annual fee.
On the other hand, Deputy Premier, Andre Ebanks, has insisted in a statement that “when the Cayman Islands Government’s 2024/2025 Budget was approved by Parliament in December last year, it included a budget policy statement that gave all Ministries a broad mandate to review all current fees and consider new revenue.”
The recently dumped ReGen waste-to-energy project, the largest ever proposed infrastructural project for Cayman, will no doubt be recycled as a headline campaign issue for the 2025 polls.
Add to the list, traffic congestion - a persistent reality and policy bottleneck, the stubbornly environmentally controversial East-West Arterial road plan, cost of living pressures, and creeping beach erosion with its implications for tourism and employment ...and under-employment).
And speaking of tourism; the cruise pier plan is once again berthing on the political agenda on a scale of impact equal to the size of the mega cruise ships at the centre of this issue.
A referendum on the cruise pier has been announced by the government for later this year. Will that referendum also be a sounding board for voting intentions in the 2025 election?
The mix of topics also includes population and immigration, electoral boundary reviews and minimum wage. The minimum wage matter is another prevailing policy headache now again kicked into the proverbial long grass.
And hanging over Cayman like an ominous dark cloud is the sinister spectre of concerns about crime.
Within all these challenges there are opportunities for Cayman.
The question is: Who will take Cayman forward?
After all, 2025 is just around the corner.
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