By Peter Polack

Peter Polack

One of the older Caribbean shipping companies recently announced a promising link between Jamaica and Grand Cayman dedicated to reducing shipments from the USA. This is not a novel idea with an extended history of the Cayman Islands being managed by Jamaica as a parish pre independence. Jamaica provided many government services, doctors, teachers, schooling in Jamaica and even many jobs for Caymanians.

This had a true ring to it as close neighbors as opposed to the oppression of dictates from far off, now socially confused, lands.

The Caribbean has had it’s fair share of political and economic groupings with the failed but historically important West Indies Federation replaced by CARICOM now threatening to rise from the ashes of complacency. There are many tempting comparatives in the new political and economic order from the South American Mercosur to the wider BRICS as everyone seeks to follow the American example and paddle their own canoe.

The unresolved question is of capable and brave leadership far from the weak kneed pretenders in the British Overseas Territories. Two shining exceptions are Ministers Jay Ebanks and Michael Myles of the Cayman Islands.

Minister Ebanks has tirelessly promoted closer links with his neighbors as well as necessary local food security despite failing support from colleagues and preferential budget allocations for financial regulation ordered from overseas.

Wider afield there is the vigorous example of Mia Mottley in Barbados. No integrity question there.

Like most things, necessity will be the mother of invention and what political will lacks, economics will provide.

Fingers crossed and eyes wide open.

Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands for several decade. 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.