By Dr Victor Look Loy

Yesterday, while taking my helper home on South Sound, I was caught in traffic that chugged along at a stop and go pace. Just before my turn off to Tropical Gardens I noticed in my rear view mirror a car on the shoulder of the road, overtaking everyone on the left.

It reminded me of my days as a young man driving my sisters and my father to Port-of Spain in traffic and seeing similar driving habits; only in Trinidad everyone was doing it.

I recall thinking how civilized and disciplined people of Cayman still were compared to the rest of the Caribbean; only one man did it here. That civility and discipline, however, is being chipped away by bad example, our tolerance and sheer numbers of immigrants who by their numerous acts modify the norm enough to make it eventually ok to make a second illegal lane on the shoulder of the road.

It was only a few years after the PNM came to power in Trinidad; the deputy Prime Minister who was also in charge of the Police, demanded the keys from a police sergeant and released his step-son who was under arrest and incarcerated. Nothing untoward happened to the Deputy Prime Minister then or ever, but that set the precedent for the behavior of quite a few other Ministers of the PNM.

Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams allowed them that latitude; and to this day multi-story structures both in Miami and Toronto are owned by the descendants of the PNM hierarchy bought with public funds belonging to the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. Estimates of the fraud over the reign of the PNM run into the billions of US dollars. No one to my knowledge has ever been prosecuted and I have been reliably informed that some of that money lies buried in financial dynasties still present in [guess where]...the Cayman Islands.

More recently, drug barons who masquerade as cloth merchants and live behind walled, video monitored, armed guarded compounds have also amassed incredible amounts of money some of which is still here. KYC is not much of a problem for a hairdresser who has consistently deposited half a million every month for the last ten years, is it?

Presently in Trinidad, the true meaning of the word terrorism is appreciated. Elderly women are raped and robbed in their homes; armed criminals remove your car from your yard and order you back inside as if they had a constitutional right to your property. It was not always like that; Trinidad was a very safe place filled with friendly happy people who like to dance and party and laugh. Maybe they laughed a bit too much because now hardly anyone has a laugh to spare.

The change happened slowly; the oil money seemed endless and “Black Label” could keep them all happy for a long time. I was always a “stick in the mud”, I never liked “Black Label” or Trinidad very much, I preferred coffee. What worries me is that I see a similar slippery slope here. I see that just because operation Tempura cost a lot and nothing was found does not mean that it should never have been done nor does it mean that there was nothing to find. I see that just because some police officer was let off by another police office 4 years ago in Cayman Brac that justice should not be pursued because it costs too much. My friends, it would eventually cost infinitely more to sweep it under the carpet and forget it. Already we have been told that it is not a crime to break in to private property in the public interest. Before you know it, the Government itself would get with the program and start to disobey its own laws and by that time we may not have a Governor; just a Premier or horror of horrors, a Prime Minister.