By NAN Staff Writer
News Americas, GEORGETOWN, Cayman, Mon. Dec. 7, 2020: The Cayman Islands now has its own Parliament, thanks to a constitutional change that became formalized on Dec. 4, 2020.
The Cayman Islands’ unicameral legislature is now only the third United Kingdom Overseas Territory and the first among Caribbean Overseas Territories to be designated as a Parliament.
Premier Alden McLaughlin welcomed the renaming of Cayman’s Legislative Assembly to the House of Parliament on Friday and signaled a need to continue to clear up “anomalies” in the constitution.
Chief among those constitutional provisions that needles the premier, according to Cayman Compass reports, is having a governor as head of Cabinet.
The change brought the curtains down on the “Legislative Assembly” that was “born” on July 4, 1959 when the Cayman Islands got its first written Constitution. The move ushered in 61 years ago, installed the Islands’ house of legislature, which in turn had replaced the historic bicameral Assembly of Justices and Vestry functioning continuously for 128 years, from December 31, 1831.
On November 11, 2020, the UK Privy Council had formalized the move from LA to Parliament as one of several changes contained in the Constitution (Amendment) Order 2020.
All 19 Cayman Islands’ new MPs and the two ex-officio MPs received from the Speaker of the Parliament, McKeeva Bush, symbolic keys to the Parliament crafted in Caymanite by local artist Horacio Esteban.
