Hon Kurt Tibbetts Leader of Government Business	Hon Alden McLaughlin Education Minister

Leader of Government Business, Hon Kurt Tibbetts will tomorrow (11 February) make what is expected to be a profound presentation to the Legislative Assembly and the people of the Cayman Islands on the new draft constitution agreed with the UK Government.

Mr Tibbetts had last week led a Cayman team comprising representatives of Government, the parliamentary opposition, and non-government organisations in negotiations that ended Thursday with an undertaking to have the draft document in the Cayman Islands by Tuesday for public release.

Following a second round of talks in January in Grand Cayman, negotiators moved to London with the aim of ironing ten outstanding areas and determining the final draft of a new constitution that will be placed before voters in a 20 May referendum.

Cabinet Minister and Government negotiator, Hon Alden McLaughlin, told Cayman Net News over the weekend that, although all parties involved agreed on the outstanding areas, there were two key issues with which the Cayman representatives were satisfied, and were ones that he saw as crucial to the Islands.

These he named as the composition and function of a National Security Council, and the wording in the Bill of rights.

He said that agreement for provision of a National Security Council in the constitution, with its proposed membership, was described by Ms Merron as ‘novel’ because of its wide base of local Caymanian representation, which is not seen in any of the other Overseas Territories.

In the draft constitution, the proposed National Security Council will have the authority to make policy decisions on matters relating to security, except in cases where an issue is deemed to be one that could jeopardise the interests of the United Kingdom.

The Governor will chair the Council and members are to be the Deputy Governor, the Attorney General, three Cabinet Ministers, the Leader of the Opposition, and two persons from the private sector.

“All those situations with the Martin Bridger matters will no longer be a decision of the Governor alone, but will be involving the entire national Security Council,” Mr McLaughlin gave as an example of the coming change with a new Constitution.

Mr McLaughlin reflected that for years he has been among those calling for more Caymanian involvement in making decisions on matters concerning the security of the Islands.

Citing current investigations led by Special Constable Martin Bridger, and the fallout from those probes he said, “Faced with the recent investigation, people can see that there are real life problems that are happening in Cayman right now, which are costing the country a great deal of money and its international reputation.”

“The Bill of Rights is huge, very huge. People expected that we would not get there. The Bill of Rights has widespread support, with the notable standout being Human Rights Committee (HRC), even though with the recent statement from them being a bit more tempered,” Mr McLaughlin said.

He pointed out that fashioning of the Bill of Rights to give recognition of all Caymanian values and culture had to be done within the scope of the UK obligations.

“Even though it [draft constitution] does fall short of their [HRC] aspirations, it does move forward the issues significantly.”

He said that the Cayman religious representatives agreed to the final wording of the Bill of Rights.

“When [UK foreign Office Minister Gillian] Merron said that the Bill of Rights was in a form that the UK Government would accept it, the room was dead silent. There were more than a few persons moved to tears,” Mr McLaughlin said, as he described the surprise and satisfaction of the Cayman delegation.