One of the few sensible decisions associated with “Operation Tempura” has been the decision by a majority of our MLAs not to sue Britain for reimbursement of the money wasted.
I don’t know what half-baked legal opinion was behind the proposal to sue. If the lawyers had glanced at the Constitution they would have seen immediately the futility of it.
There’s no doubt Tempura was a total cock-up. Our FCO masters seem to have sent out the wrong people with the wrong plan and wrong background information. The FCO seems to have learned nothing from the EuroBank fiasco of 2003.
Nevertheless, the FCO was within its rights to investigate corruption, especially in those parts of Cayman’s government for which Britain has constitutional responsibility. Indeed, it would be interesting to learn why the FCO turned a blind eye to it for so long. It’s no secret that the effectiveness of both Police and Immigration is severely inhibited by corruption.
Anyway, let’s keep the expense in perspective. If your mother sets you up in a business that allows you to live high on the hog, you shouldn’t grumble if she takes a few bucks out of the till to play Bingo once in a while.
Local website http://knalsaywha.blogspot.com is an amusing and irreverent blog that last week listed some of Cayman’s commonest corrupt practices. (If you can’t find the link, just Google “knal say wha”.)
A couple of them are only borderline corrupt, but of course tolerance of small misdemeanours opens the door to bigger crimes. Knal’s pet peeves may not be the same as yours or mine, but it takes a very large canvas to contain all of Cayman’s daily acts of corruption, large and small.
Colonial status
Even if the FCO were to send a thousand coppers and MI 6 agents it would take several years to uncover and prosecute all the crimes. In fact, the situation probably warrants direct rule from London for a while. If that does come about it will be partly our fault as a community for not taking the problem seriously.
However, maybe our corruption isn’t taken seriously in London, either. Maybe Tempura was merely a bluff, or a token effort.
As a British colony, Cayman and its people are entitled to British protection from their enemies. Local corruption is as big a threat to our well-being today as the Spanish Empire was in 1670 when Cayman and its residents were first taken under Britain’s wing. For the next three hundred years there was never a doubt as to that protection.
Seeds of doubt were probably first sown with the enactment of the Caymanian Protection Law in 1971. That protected Caymanians (as defined) from competition in the workplace; and the Constitution of 1972 protected them from competition in politics. By those documents the FCO delegated all day-to-day protection of Caymanians to the Caymanians themselves.
Since then every Work Permit ever issued has been issued by true-born Caymanians in the course of their duty to protect their fellows. Every sale of land to foreigners has been approved by true-borns carrying out the same duty. Every building and road has been built under the same rule. Every tree cut down has been cut by the authority of the Caymanian community.
Some powers of governance have been reserved by the FCO, but even those have all been consented to by Caymanians. (The repeal of the death penalty and the ban on homosexuality were rare exceptions, hardly worth noting.) Our colonial status is voluntary, after all.
Caymanian laws
The Civil Service has always been exempt from the Protection laws, but only on paper. In practice native Caymanians have exercised control over all government workers. So the protection of Caymanians by Caymanians has been all but absolute.
Every law of the territory has been passed by native-born MLAs and implemented by their appointees – almost all of whom have been native-born too. All our local rulers are drawn from a very small gene-pool, which isn’t always a good thing.
Whatever corruption we have here can be laid at the door of Caymanian laws and practices. Whenever foreigners have initiated a corrupt practice (which may be nine times out of ten, for all I know or care), it is Caymanian citizens who have given them permission to live and do business here.
If Operations Tempura and Cealt are failures – and they certainly do seem to have failed, at this point – it’s because they are too little and too late. Our local corruption festered out of control during the FCO’s decades of neglect. The FCO chaps must have forgotten the adage that a stitch in time saves nine.
As far as any of us can tell, the ten million dollars spent so far has been a complete waste. It hasn’t diminished the corruption one whit. However, ten million bucks is a drop in the ocean of what the corruption has stolen from our Islands’ store of wealth and integrity. For us to worry about the ten million is hypocritical while we overlook the continued corruption.
Do we as a community have the will to sort out our own corruption?
It’s unlikely, isn’t it?
There are too many vested interests. I mean, can you imagine anybody abolishing our indentured-labour system, so rife with corruption?
There’s supposed to be a Commission for Standards of Public Life coming into our lives shortly. Let’s hope that isn’t as weak a reed as the Human Rights Committee has proven to be. | 
