The KING has directed that the appointment of William McKeeva BUSH to be an Officer of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, dated 31 December 1996, shall be cancelled and annulled and that his name shall be erased from the Register of the said Order.
(CMR) Former Premier McKeeva Bush has once again proven to be less than an honest man after it was revealed on Tuesday that the king of England was stripping him of his honor received almost three decades ago. Bush made a list of 12 disgraced individuals who were stripped of their honors by King Charles II due to his conviction for assault.
Bush holds the distinction of having his award the second longest of the 12 people on the list. His has bestowed upon him on December 31, 1996. The record holder is Richard John Thornton PALLISTER, who received his on June 15 of the same year.
The two share quite a bit in common after Pallister, a disgraced Royal Navy Commander and ex-head of the Somerset Council, was described as a “sexual deviant.” Pallister was charged with a total of 33 historical sexual abuse allegations against four victims, a woman and three minor children as young as 9, spanning decades. Pallister served on the council for seven years. The jury cleared him on 15 counts, but he was convicted of 18 in September 2021.
The offenses, all denied by the defendant, spanned a period of 21 years, with the oldest dating back to the 1980s. The 76-year-old was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment.
“This case highlights that survivors of sexual abuse can receive justice, no matter how long ago the offences took place”
The revocation announcement, which was revealed earlier today by the United Kingdom, comes less than two weeks after Bush claimed he was relinquishing his Order of the British Empire award voluntarily.
In his social media explanation, he claimed that he no longer wanted to retain the award because it does not “promote Caymanian excellence but one that people believed celebrated imperialism and perpetuated a system of class and privilege.”
It has been revealed earlier that Bush's distinguished award was under review and could be subject to forfeiture. The Forfeiture Committee has listed several reasons why the holder of an honor could be found to have brought the honor system into disrepute, including being found guilty by the courts of a criminal offense with a term of more than three months imprisonment.
The revocation is due to his conviction for an unprovoked assault in 2020, where he received a 60-day suspended sentence for attacking a female bar manager. Bush was fined and placed on probation.
Despite what Magistrate Gunn called a “very serious case of common assault on a woman,” Bush remained relatively unscathed politically and assisted the PACT group in taking the majority to form the government. However, this was short-lived as Bush allegedly continued to display a disregard for women and now faces multiple charges in relation to two separate incidents involving assaults on women.
The London Gazette shared the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood at St. James's Palace London.
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