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The Editor speaks: Why the failure to implement the Standards in Public Life Law?

Colin Wilson

The Standards in Public Life Law fills the gap in the increasingly comprehensive anti-fraud and corruption regime and our Auditor General Sue Winspear stressed in her recent report titled “Fighting Corruption in the Cayman Islands”, this should be implemented quickly.

This law was passed nearly five years ago.

North Side MLA, Ezzard Miller, and Chairman of the Anti-Corruption Commission, voiced his concerns about it. He reportedly said it was unacceptable.

“As a committee, we are concerned that five years after the Legislative Assembly passing the Standards in Public Life Law, it has still not been brought in to force,” he said. Safeguards are needed, he added, “to ensure people involved in public life and are sitting on the boards of public bodies are operating with integrity and honesty”.

“If board members of public entities don’t want to abide by the requirements of the legislation, then they should not be appointed. We will be asking government officials about this when they appear in front of the committee at the end of January.”

See: https://caymannewsservice.com/2019/01/auditor-ethics-law/

To add even more to my question, “Why the failure to implement the Standards in Public Life Law?”, the Deputy Governor Franz Manderson, made no mention of the Standards in Public Life Law when, in his Press Release, said he welcomed the Office of the Auditor General’s report “Fighting Corruption in the Cayman Islands”.

He did, however, admit more needed to be done.

Once again, government gives the silent treatment to important concerns that only fuel suspicions.

It is all very well Manderson saying the civil service “has instituted a zero tolerance approach to corruption and has a proven track record of referring cases of corruption to the Anti-Corruption Commission,” but not even mentioning the main thrust of Sue Winspear ‘s Report at all is very, very strange.

Perhaps in a few days time we will get some clarification on it when someone in government can put together enough gobble-de-gook to satisfy all their members of that ever increasing elite club!

One person who is not a member of it is Mr. Miller and I know he will take the bull by the horns and try and shake some truth as to the reason.

He doesn’t take kindly to “I don’t know”.

Those words are a failure, too.

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