Editorial Note: This article is a reader submission and is published as opinion. The views expressed are the author's own and are not those of The Caymanian Journal, which has reported the facts of the purchase in its news coverage and makes no allegation of wrongdoing against any person.

There are two ways to read the Government's CI$6.5 million purchase of a West Bay preschool site from two sellers, one of them the Premier's election nominator. The charitable reading is that an overcrowded primary school needed rooms, a purpose-built building stood 10 minutes' walk away, and officials paid what it took. The cynical reading is that a political supporter's venture closed within a year and the public purse caught it. The question is which one the evidence supports with fewer assumptions.

William of Ockham's rule, that the explanation needing the fewest assumptions wins, settles it quickly. The charitable reading requires four assumptions: a costed alternative the Ministry of Education and Training has not produced or released to the public, a negotiation that extracted value from a seller with no other known buyer, a Cabinet process in which the one Minister with a personal link either declared it or did not receive the paper, and a Government confident enough in all of that to answer plain questions. The cynical reading requires one, that no declaration was made, and on that the record is silent because, according to TCJ's reporting, the Office of the Premier has been asked twice and has not answered. Everything else, the record already says.

The record, in order

Take the record in order, as The Caymanian Journal set it out in its 24 October article. Jennifer Stein, one of the two sellers the Ministry named, signed the nomination paper of André Ebanks MP, then the TCCP candidate for West Bay South and now Premier, before the 2025 General Election. In a secret ballot that signature matters more than it sounds: nominators put their names to a candidate in public, and the Elections Office publishes them. Of every voter in West Bay South, Ms Stein is one of two whose support for Mr Ebanks is on the public record, and the Premier is the one person who cannot claim not to know it. The preschool opened on 8 August 2025, and the Premier cut the ribbon. Beside him, as TCJ reported on 30 October, was Katherine Ebanks-Wilks MP, Minister for Health, Environment and Sustainability and the member for West Bay Central, against whom nothing is suggested by me here. So, according to TCJ's published stories on its website, two of the Ministers whose Cabinet later approved the purchase had stood in the building, with its founders, ten months before the funding request reached Cabinet. According to TCJ's 30 October article, it asked Ms Ebanks-Wilks MP on 28 October in what capacity she attended, whether she knew Ms Stein and whether she recognised the property when the request was circulated, and she had not replied by its 29 October deadline. According to the same stories, the Ministry says it knew by late 2025 that the site was or might become available. Nobody has said who told it.

Then the act. Lands and Survey obtained three valuations. Two said CI$5 million or less. One said CI$6.9 million. The Ministry considered no other site, advertised nothing, attached no conditions and, on its own account, had not determined the cost of building instead when it chose to buy. It paid CI$6.5 million: CI$1.5 million above the April valuation and about 16% above the average of the three. Cabinet approved by circulation on 29 June. Whether the Premier received the paper, signed it or recorded an interest is not known. The 24 October article says the paper asked the Office of the Premier on 18 September and 15 October whether any declaration had been recorded, and that the Office redirected the questions to the Ministry. The 30 October article says that question is still unanswered. The Ministry has said that Lands and Survey arranged the valuations, led the negotiations and finalised the purchase.

Then the aftermath. By the 24 October article's own dates, the Ministry took 33 days to answer the paper's questions: they were emailed on 16 September and answered on 19 October. The Premier has since discussed the purchase in a live-streamed interview without saying whether he declared the connection. On 28 October he published a statement saying he had asked the Attorney General "to consider in keeping with paragraph 2.8 of the Ministerial Code of Conduct, whether there should be a formal referral of this matter" to the Governor. The same day the Opposition said its leader, Joey Hew MP, had asked the Governor to investigate, while alleging no wrongdoing by anyone. The paragraph the Premier invoked does not say consider. Paragraph 2.8 says the Attorney General "will, as soon as practicable, refer any allegation that the Premier has breached the Code to the Governor." There is nothing to consider. There is a letter to write. The one answer open to the Attorney General is that 2.8 bites on an allegation, and the Opposition was careful not to make one. If so, the Premier has referred him a complaint that does not exist, and the Governor can ask the question herself. And if the letter is written, the Governor faces the only question that matters: was she told in June?

What the Code asked of him

This is not to say the Premier chose the site or set the price; no evidence has been published that he did. The point is narrower and, ultimately, more serious. Paragraph 10.1 of the Code says the Cabinet Secretary should be kept informed of conflicts of interest as they arise, and that the Governor should be advised in writing of any "of a particular concern". Paragraph 10.2 provides that a declaration of interest made at Cabinet "will be recorded". Paragraph 5.2 makes Ministers responsible for conflicts that "appear to exist". A relationship the electoral system itself placed on the public record, between a candidate and a nominator whose property his Government later bought, is not one that merely appears to exist. It is proven on paper, which is precisely the appearance the Code's wording was written for. If those steps were taken, a one-line answer would end this. None has been given.

If no declaration was made, there are two explanations: the Premier did not see the conflict, a failure of judgment, or he saw it and judged his political capital large enough to carry it, a decision. Mr Ebanks is a lawyer and knows what a declaration is for; it is hard to believe the first. A fresh majority and a weak Opposition are the kind of capital that makes the second look cheap. If no declaration was made, both explanations breach the Code. Only one of them is a choice.

What other places learned

The United Kingdom has been here, and its lesson is uncomfortable for the charitable reading. In 2020 Robert Jenrick MP, then Housing Secretary, approved a developer's scheme against his own inspector's advice; the developer had raised it with him at a party fundraising dinner and donated a fortnight after the approval, a donation the Electoral Commission then published. The public record of support, not any proof of a deal, made the decision indefensible. Mr Jenrick MP never admitted actual bias; his department conceded apparent bias, the approval was quashed, and the developer lost his permission: the consequence fell on the decision, not on the man who made it. In 2023 Nadhim Zahawi was dismissed not for his tax affairs but for failing to declare them. In 2021 Owen Paterson resigned his seat after the Commons Standards Committee found he had lobbied officials on behalf of two companies that paid him and had not declared that interest in his emails to them. In each case the undeclared interest was what did the damage, and the underlying transaction was almost beside the point. The House of Lords set the test in Porter v Magill: would a fair-minded and informed observer conclude there was a real possibility of bias? That observer does not need to prove a favour. She needs only to open the Elections Office list, see the nominator's name, see her paid above two of three valuations, and see a Premier who has not yet said whether he declared the connection or recused himself from the decision.

We are not yard fowl

There is one more thing the British example shows, and it is the reason Mr Paterson went when he did. Since the Recall of MPs Act 2015, a suspension of ten sitting days opens a recall petition in the member's constituency, and if a tenth of the electors sign it the seat falls vacant. Mr Paterson faced a 30-day suspension and resigned rather than face his own constituents. Cayman has no such step. Parliament can suspend a member for breaches of the Standards in Public Life Act, but nothing in our Constitution or statutes then hands the decision back to the people who elected him. Between general elections a Caymanian voter has no petition to sign and no by-election to force. The next word West Bay South gets on its member is in 2029. That is why the documents matter now, and why we should not be told to wait for a process that ends in a letter nobody will see. We Caymanians are not yard fowl, waiting in the yard for whatever is thrown to us. We cannot recall a member, so we have to do the only thing left to us, which is to insist, loudly and in public, that the paper be produced.

The price

Lenders take the lower of two valuations, because an outlier is noise, not evidence. The Ministry had three figures. Two agreed, within 3%, on CI$5 million or less. One sat CI$1.9 million above them. Any lender would have set that figure aside or asked the valuer to justify it. The Ministry instead treated it as the ceiling of a fair range and paid within CI$400,000 of it. On what instructions and assumptions that valuation was prepared is the first document to ask for. And here is a test that needs no FOI. It is doubtful that any Class A bank in George Town would have lent CI$6.5 million against this building on these valuations: on a purpose-built nursery with a thin resale market a lender would discount the lower figure further still. The Ministry says it achieved value for money. If so, it should have no difficulty finding a bank prepared to finance the purchase at CI$6.5 million on arm's-length terms. The Premier could ask one. If none would, that says more than any ministry statement about what the building was worth.

There is a further reason conflict rules exist. They police the price as well as the relationship. A payment above valuation to a connected seller is exactly the transaction a declaration is designed to put in front of colleagues before it happens, with the valuations beside it, rather than in front of the public afterwards. That is why the quantum matters as much as the connection. Nothing before the public suggests that any part of the CI$6.5 million went anywhere but to the sellers, and no such suggestion is made here. But the fair-minded observer the law invokes is not required to be naive. Shown a payment CI$1.5 million above the valuation, to a seller whose support for the Premier is on the public record, that observer is entitled to keep asking until the documents answer. The completion statement and the payment records would do it. The Ministry holds both, and that is the part I cannot get past: if there is nothing to hide, why has it not simply put them in front of the public? TCJ's 24 October article says it emailed Ms Stein on 15 October asking when and how the discussions with the Government began and who started them, whether the site was offered to anyone else and whether she had any connection with a Minister she wished the paper to consider, and that she had not replied by the time it published.

The honest defence

The honest defence exists, and it answers the three questions this way. Where is the evidence? Withheld so far: no Cabinet paper, no register entry, no valuation instructions. What is the cost? CI$1.5 million above the April figure, or two years of the new site's staffing at the Ministry's own estimate. Compared to what alternatives? Here the defence has its say: Sir John A. Cumber Primary is, on the Ministry's own account, using every part of its campus; a new build would take years and might cost more; the seller was under no obligation to accept the lowest valuation, and valuations in Cayman can differ widely, as these did. All true. None of it explains why the Government, arguably the only plausible buyer of a closed nursery, paid near the top of the range rather than the middle, why no alternative was priced, or why the Premier has not said whether he declared the connection. Add a fourth question: who gained? The sellers, one of them the Premier's nominator, received CI$6.5 million for a building whose business had closed, and the Government gained a building it never tested the market for. A good deal survives scrutiny. This one has so far avoided it.

There remains a simple way to displace the simplest explanation. Publish the Cabinet circulation paper, the conflicts register entry if one exists, and the letter to the Governor if one was sent. The Cabinet Office can do this in a week. If the documents show a declaration made and recorded, every media house in this country should report that as prominently as it reported the purchase. If they do not, the public will have its answer, and Ockham will have his.