Polack Post: Caribbean Loyalty – The Secret
By Peter Polack
One of the most perplexing questions that confront the Caribbean community today is the silence after targeted maritime assassinations by the United States from countries across the length of CARICOM with the exception of the outspoken Mia Mottley. In all likelihood she is neither the holder of a visa or other official connection with the USA, previously, as a private person, that either requires some nominal quid pro quo or other loyalty to a foreign government.
A similar conundrum is found in the classic Hollywood thriller, The Manchurian Candidate, where previously loyal persons in power are influenced or brainwashed into support of a foreign power as happens throughout the Caribbean.
This loyalty schizophrenia is found in some of the British Caribbean colonies today where conflict arises because a government employee seeks to do what is best for her country as opposed to what is desired by the locally based, but temporary, UK representative.
This reared it’s head recently in the Cayman Islands where a well regarded and long serving native daughter Ombudsman was the subject of attempts to expel her from that post by the Governor. The court will decide but not resolve this duality of Cayman Kind.
On the other side of the floor, usually reserved for the opposition, are the many politicians with long standing connections to the USA, visas or dual citizenship. It is a dangerous time in the Caribbean when voters and the opposition are unaware of who has loyalty and who has not.
In 2017 the present Minister of Home Affairs in the Cayman Islands, Nikolas DaCosta, was excluded from that election year because of American citizenship. Further, those proceedings revealed that he had sworn allegiance to the USA to become a Notary Public of Florida.
Perhaps the solution lies in an expansion of election declarations or register of interests to include dual nationalities, visas or other tests of loyalty so that a prospective voter can make an informed decision come elections. If persons are excluded from candidature by legal process or media outcry, then it is a small step to limit those qualified to offer themselves to political posts.
Questions of integrity for politicians are not only undeclared or dubious assets but unswerving loyalty, far from any hint of foreign influence.
It is who you know not who knows you that matters.
Notes
https://www.caymancompass.com/2017/04/19/court-disqualifies-2nd-election-candidate
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
His views are his own.
