It is a well known “secret” that our premier, Hon. McKeeva Bush has longed for the British to pack up their bags and go. He would love to see the Union Jack be struck off the Cayman Islands flag.

There is a wide spread feeling, especially amongst the young people, that Independence is the right and only way forward for the people of the Cayman Islands.

The question is, is the time right? Is this the premier’s last hope of surviving? And he is a survivor. He was very nearly down and out over the First Cayman Bank inquiry when he had to resign his position on the Government’s executive committee. He was a director of the First Cayman Bank, and was implicated in the dealings that led to its bankruptcy. But he was exonerated and lived to fight again.

I well remember his tirade against Joseph Ebanks back in August 2001 when he referred to him as a “greedy ras” in a letter he sent to the Caymanian Compass. The style of that letter is similar to his press release last Friday (4). He also referred to Joseph Ebanks as one of the “suckers like you.”

Now Mr. Bush has attacked the highest person in the Cayman Islands, H.E. Governor Duncan Taylor, in exactly the same style. And why?

The opposition say it’s to change the public discussion about the premier away from the police probes. PPM leader, Alden McLaughlin called it a “red herring.”

Ezzard Miller and Arden Mclean warned in a joint statement. “We are extremely concerned that Mr Bush’s approach draws eerie similarities to what happened in the Turks & Caicos Islands, which led to the suspension of their constitution, the removal of their elected government…”

Mr. Bush has described the investigations of him as baseless and a conspiracy between the governor, the police commissioner and FCO bureaucrats. He accused the governor of doing nothing to help the Cayman Islands and “stealthily and insidiously” undermining his attempts to improve the local economy.

This is exactly the rhetoric the “Independence for Cayman” brigade loves. Mr. Bush has learnt if you keep bashing the drum loud enough it will be heard and people will start to believe it.

By writing a letter so crudely and rudely, and sending it to all the media outlets, it has already achieved its aim. We are not now headlining the police investigations about him. His use of the words “stealthily and insidiously” is not the words of an uneducated man. They were used deliberately to maximise his castigation of the British system of Colonisation, where they suck the very life blood out of their dependencies, and to depict McKeeva’s persona of a David fighting Goliath.

Will it succeed? He has sowed the seeds, seeds he has slowly planted along the yearly paths. He has nurtured them but now he is fertilising them with everything he has.

Even the opposition are using the word “independence”. It does strike a chord. McKeeva loves the idea of his country being shackled and all his good works being undermined by Foreign Office slave masters. These mysterious men with whips and chains.

He wants the British Government to over react and send in “the troops.”

Then he can organise marches of the poor Caymanian people against the suffering they are bearing under the tyranny of British rule; for the whole world to see. And he will be there at its head, leading the charge.

“I will die for my country,” he cries.

I doubt that will happen. The British are masters at diplomacy with hundreds of years of experience. They probably will go along with the old proverb, “give a man rope enough and he will hang himself.”