In a recent commentary titled “The Unborn Constitution Part I”. Virgin Islander Mrs. Shaina Smith-Archer addressed the need for good governance by making some suggestions on various agencies that could assist in the accountability and support of democracy moving forward.
Smith said, “We need to implement agencies such as the Human Rights Commission. It is inexcusable why this hasn’t been set up in 15 years. There needs to be a penalty when instances like this happen because it is not in the public interests and can be seen as a neglect of duty by the House of Assembly. A timeline should be made for when new institutions like this set-up should be established and not left open-ended.”
She further stated, “In my research, I noted that in the Cayman Islands Constitution 2009, PART VIII Institutions Supporting Democracy has a list of institutions we do not have.
- Constitution Commission – is established as a permanent body.
- Commission for Standards in Public Life – would replace the Registrar of interests.
- District Advisory Council – would help bring inclusion of the civic society and accountability in district representation and they should be consulted on allocation of monies for small district projects.
- Freedom of Information – should be listed in the Constitution to ensure that legislation is enacted. Freedom of information is valuable to promoting good governance in any society. The people’s business should be EASILY accessible to the public for inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. Abuse of power can be a result of an uninformed populace to the policies and laws being made excluding their involvement in some way, shape or form.
- Electoral District Boundary Commission It is time for an Electoral District Boundary Commission to assess the current legislative branch representation make-up and confirm whether additional districts are needed an/ or Virgin Gorda, Anegada, and JVD should be separate districts and if territorial representation is doing what it was intended to do – bring independent representation to the HoA.
- Statutory Bodies: I do not think another commission is needed to regulate them.
- The legislation of each statutory body should be reviewed and modernised to make them more autonomous from the Cabinet.
- Each statutory body’s Board should have a code of conduct for their members that align with the code of conduct for elected officials as they have been given a public trust to run the body in the public’s interests.
- Boards should not be appointed but an employment process carried out by the oversight Ministry.”
The full commentary can be viewed on 284media.com.