By Peter Polack

Peter Polack

The new Auditor-General of the Cayman Islands, a native son, discovered $37 million dollars worth of mistakes at the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority headed by the ancient millstone, Cindy Scotland. It should come as no surprise as one of her former deputies, Langston Sibblies, rode herd on the Financial Services Commission debacle in Jamaica that cost Usain Bolt $12 million.

These people do not make small mistakes. It is in the millions.

No apologies and no explanation.

Another venerated native son, Mr. Ormond Panton, said of a visiting magistrate in protection of some young Caymanians that the higher monkey climb, the more you see it’s ass. Like Marius Voiculescu, the authorities dragged him through arrest, bail and several hearings before innocence was pronounced.

No review or consequence for bad decisions. A Teflon Bureaucracy.

The corollary of that simple expression is that too often people in high government positions remain there past errors of judgment, poor management and leadership deficiencies without a single sanction or departure from office. At least Sibblies resigned after the scandal, but too little, too late.

Too often members of the Teflon Bureaucracy are promoted to the highest level of their incompetence to remain there year after year as if part of some unsaid Freemason sect. The Public Service Management Law is just that, another non-performing law, ignored by the failing officials and the unappreciated underlings who are denied promotion, decade after decade.  

Some posts and board membership appear to have no age limit and others seem oblivious to past disasters.

The politicians were put in place by the voters to watch the public purse not participate in a conspiracy of idiocy to retain the status quo.

This is a Caribbean wide problem without solution.Perhaps the silent voters are to blame and we should all just keep quiet and let the boat rot.

Not so the the Generation Z movements of Nepal, Morocco and Madagascar.

Perhaps Caymanian youth are too busy swiping left.

Notes

https://www.caymancompass.com/2010/08/31/teacher-s-ganja-acquittal-upheld

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.