It is not only Joan Wilson, publisher of iNews Cayman, who has condemned Premier McKeeva Bush’s astonishing attack on Cayman Islands governor, Duncan Taylor, in a press statement the premier released last Friday (6).

“I am so disgusted and I want H.E. Governor Duncan Taylor to know that this is not how Caymanians have been brought up to behave,” Mrs. Wilson said in her editorial on Friday. “Mr. Taylor, on behalf of the Caymanian people please accept my apology. I am afraid I doubt you will get one from the premier.”

Opposition leader, Alden McLaughlin said, “I deplore the disgraceful and vindictive attack on the governor. It is a truly wicked attempt at distraction and to create a red herring by raising the issue of independence by questioning if the UK is serving us well. He is seeking to distract the focus of public discussion rather than doing what he ought to do, which is to explain the Stan Thomas letter.”

The Stan Thomas letter is in reference to a letter Mr. Bush is alleged to have sent to Thomas in 2004 demanding $350,000 for a service that remains unexplained but is linked to a land deal involving re-zoning.

North Side MLA, Ezzard Miller, and East End MLA, Arden McLean, were the first to issue a statement about Mr. Bush’s tirade. Their joint statement said they viewed “with great concern the Premier’s press statement released today in which he attacked His Excellency the Governor Mr. Duncan Taylor both professionally and personally, in the most vitriolic and inappropriate way.”

All three MLA’s said it is an attempt by the premier to deflect attention from the three police investigations he is currently under.

Miller and McLean are 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 and multiple persons being charged with corruption and other abuses of power.”

Mr. Bush’s attack on Cayman Island’s governor has been heavily reported all over the Caribbean and made the UK press as well as in the USA.

Mr. Bush is facing a “No Confidence” vote filed by the opposition but this is sure to fail as his UDP colleagues have all said they are standing behind their leader

“I have not done anything illegal to cause a probe into what is termed financial irregularities,” said the premier on Friday, alluding to two of the police investigations against him and “I have not imported or caused to be imported any explosive material,” alluding to the third investigation. As this third charge announced by Commissioner Baines used the word “peripheral” in the investigation, Mr. Bush could be right but it is the question whether he knew about the importation of it and whether he took steps to aid and abet its importation.

The last word comes from Miller and McLean:

“It is not Mr. Taylor’s signature that is on a demand letter to Stan Thomas. It is Mr. Bush’s. It is not Mr. Taylor who is allegedly caught up in an illegal attempt to import explosives into the Cayman Islands. It is Mr. Bush.”