Like the rest of Cayman’s media houses I have had to go to the Cayman Compass to read our premier, Alden McLaughlin’s, discourse on the Cruise berthing Facility/Referendum.

He gave the interview to the newspaper he raged about not so long ago. It seem it is back in his favour.

The interview did not sit well with me. Unfortunately, my support for him is draining from an intermediate shower to a steady English rainfall.

$4 million, he said, had already been spent on preparing and planning the cruise ship berthing facility project and the Referendum is costing the country another$1.5 million.

He actually said “It would be a small miracle, I think, if they [the opposition to the project in the Referendum] were able to get 50% plus one” after the votes are counted.

To make his position even clearer, he warned, the project will go ahead even if the vote falls only marginally short of the 50% plus one target!!

Those of us who stay home, he warned, will be counted in the ‘yes’ column, even if those voters are against it but for whatever reason don’t make it to the polling booth.

Wow. Why on Earth would he want to warn us all about that? It is because he is so confident he will win.

I never thought he was that arrogant.

And I have to wonder, now, how many crocodiles’ teeth are going to spring out and bite us once the contact has been signed. You see, he also said voters are unlikely to get much more information about the project before Referendum Day.

If it was good news I am sure he would have shared it with us so as to cement up his ‘Yes’ vote.

It has taken me a while to understand precisely why the premier wants a low turnout. Unlike the UK’s Brexit Referendum, when the decision was made on the actual votes cast, this one is based on the number of persons on the Electoral roll. Stay at home and you are voting ‘Yes’. If you are away on the 19th December (the actual polling day) and you are against the project, you need to make the effort and post in your vote, or use the mobile outlets.

Cayman’s official opposition have sent out a Press Release urging the government to reconsider the Referendum date…….

Why would they waste their time doing that?

Instead, they should be urging their No vote supporters to use the postal and mobile voting means.

They are assuming that everyone who is going off the island to shop are all No Voters! Do they have a crystal ball to stare into?

They should be practical, not puffing out hot wind that blows away and does nothing.

The premier is NOT going to change the date.

Pray for a miracle, Mr. McLean. They sometimes do happen. And if you are arrogant enough to believe they don’t, like Premier Alden McLaughlin is he will get his way – the mighty have fallen, as the history books show.

END

PS. Take a look at our cartoon today in the slider. I am one of them swing voters. That’s the mood I’m in.