It’s been a turbulent year for The Caymanian Community Party leader André Ebanks.
Having served as deputy premier under Juliana O’Connor-Connolly for almost a year, his decision at the end of October 2024 to quit the ruling United People’s Movement party with three colleagues left the government without a working majority and on the brink of collapse.
Just over two months later, and Ebanks was unanimously elected leader of a brand-new political group, TCCP, tasked with taking his fledgling party into battle in the upcoming general election.
That’s a big ask of any party in Cayman politics, especially one which is just a few months old, but, with many years experience in government ministries as well as several years as the Cayman Islands Representative to the UK and Europe, Ebanks is not lacking in political know-how.
He sat down with Compass TV’s Tammi Sulliman to outline his plans for the future.
Q: One of the issues that I know is near and dear to both of us is that of education. What is your plan to deal with this?
A: What we are experiencing now in this country with education, in my view, is leading us to a sociological disaster … Specifically, we need to get back to reintegration. But that can’t happen overnight, because we have a capacity issue. There aren’t enough physical facilities in order to do reintegration, even if you were to wave the magic policy wand and do it tomorrow. So in the manifesto, what you’ve seen is we’ve taken a step back and say, Well, how can we get there a bit faster? We have the ECAP system [Early Childhood Assistance Programme] at the preschool level, where eligible students and families are given money or credit to go to private pre-schools. Let’s expand that idea to the primary level and the secondary level so you can start to get kids back into other schools, so they can begin to mix.
Q: How will this work in practice?
A: This kills two birds with one stone; the child is not just dropped off for babysitting, the child is learning. And if you can do that at an earlier age, that then frees the parent up to then go to work. So you’re solving two things at once, maybe three, because you’re now starting to get back to reintegration. This is why the school of $50 million in the Brac was such a contentious issue, because imagine what you could do with that capital to have spread facilities in different districts.
Q: How do you see this feeding into workforce development?
A: The human capital workforce plan is the marrying of the social development and educational elements, matched with what the jobs of the present and the future are. Once you mine that data and align students, you should then be able to relieve the angst of Caymanians of having to hunt and pick and register online. Once you line that data up, you now then [are] able to assemble the workforce that the country needs. My concern is, I don’t see a marrying of that data with what the jobs are currently in the market.
Q: Do you think we have an issue regarding importation of cheap labour?
A: I don’t think the system is working well for anybody. The temporary work permit, as I understand it, is a tool that’s used to get the work permit faster, because the full-term permit is very, very slow. So it’s used as a workaround, but that’s not its proper purpose … What’s happening now is that it’s being used to leapfrog and then get a long-term permit afterwards, because the system is too slow. But your question now, in terms of cheaper labour, ties into the workforce development plan, because if you’re upskilling Caymanians in these other areas … it gets Caymanians into these vocational skills, and then you don’t necessarily need as much labour [coming in].
Q: Should the TCCP be successful at the polls and take the majority of the seats to form the government, what do you see your first 100 days in government looking like? What would be your priority items?
A: So the first thing to do, particularly in light of that pre-election financial update, is to stabilise the finances to find out exactly what’s been happening. Then we have to begin to prepare the budget for 2026-27 and the Strategic Policy Statement. Those are the first priorities, because the budget is the lifeblood of what you’re able to execute. Without it, there’s not much that you can do.
Q: After you’ve looked at the budget, what would you like to tackle first?
A: It would be good to give some glossy answers now, but until you actually see the state of things, it might change your priorities. But you know the things that need to be done, you need to get back to doing the ReGen project – that’s a crisis. You have to then invest in immigration reform, which is tied to education and the workforce. There’s the cost of living, so you might have to drop duties, particularly on the more healthy items, so that people can afford those, and motivate behaviours to eat healthier rather than junk food.
Q: Do you support cruise-berthing infrastructure?
A: I think there is a place for cruise tourism. The question is, what is the medium balance that we can strike that protects the environment, is within the budget, but then can still sustain cruise tourism? Because you never know what markets will be down. It’s good to have diversity in your economy…
The question is whether or not it should be more quality of cruise rather than quantity. That’s something that I think the country should get to grips with, because if you look at our overall product, we don’t have the setup, the land mass and the infrastructure for mass tourism. But are we more equipped for more … qualitative cruise tourism than quantitative …? In other words, should there be more high-end [tourists] that spend more here? Because ultimately we want economic activity for all of our operators, rather than mass tourism, which may have a lesser economic spend, but more people, which is heavier on the infrastructure.
Q: How can you strike a balance between protecting the environment and the need for development?
A: When I’ve been in meetings and caucus, discussing issues like the East-West Arterial, what I hear is departments saying that we’re not against development, but what we want to see from planning is the planning for the entire country … What we’re seeing is project-by-project approval. But where is the actual planning for the entire country? That’s what I get from listening to people in caucus.
… But then what I hear stakeholders in my constituency say is that the process is either too slow, too tedious and is bottlenecked … You have to bring the stakeholders together and forge a vision of where you want to go, you have to be able to reconcile those views with a plan and then take the entire industry forward. And that’s what’s missing.
Q: Do we need a refreshed tourism plan and where does the airport fit into that?
A: Definitely – it’s all part of the tourism product, right? The good thing is, we’re getting the traffic, so people want to come to Cayman … But it also means that we need to invest in expanding those facilities and enhancing that experience for a better experience, so the airport is definitely crucial to that plan.
I think that the vision could be a much more even flow of tourism, of increased visitation year round. Look how many financial services conferences are happening now. Look how many shareholders meetings are happening now. We need a better alignment between financial services and tourism. Added to that, there’s now so many cool things that you can do with ecotourism. If we can resolve Barkers, for example, and make that a true heritage park, you can now have heritage and ecotourism.
Q: Were you surprised by the pre-election finance report? Did you realise how bad it was?
A: I had a feeling it was going to be bad, but not that bad. I knew that there would be some overspending, because I knew that there were areas of the budget that the government knew at the time were underfunded…
That’s another thing in terms of the governance that has to be cleaned up. You have to admit the areas that you know you are going to need more for, and get to the root causes of why it is so high. But in the meantime, you knew that some of those areas, there was going to be more than it was budgeted for, but what you didn’t expect is the continuation of lavish expenses for what I consider vanity projects [such as] parks, a very expensive school. Nobody is saying the Brac shouldn’t get a new high school, but whether or not it’s something that’s much more affordable so that capital can be placed elsewhere or even conserved.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?
A: Although the country has a number of challenges, we have a fantastic country, and some of the problems that other areas have, you wouldn’t want to trade Cayman’s problems for theirs. So there is hope. Do not be dispirited. Go exercise your right to vote for a team that will be built on values and integrity and competence, working together hand in hand to resolve those challenges.
