Down The Rabbit Hole Again
How can you tell if you're living in a healthy democracy?
According to Premier Alex Scott, the test is that the within hours of election victory, members of the winning party will stage a successful political coup to replace their leader, the country's elected Premier.
Bermuda may or may not be better off without Jennifer Smith at the helm. The PLP may even have garnered more votes had Alex Scott been leader when last year's election was called. But still, the people voted with the expectation that if the PLP won Ms. Smith would be Premier. Hell, even Dr. Ewart Brown acknowledged the coup's plotters had misled the electorate - not usually a sign of a Government's commitment to democracy.
Perhaps the Premier was just inviting us to compare ourselves to our CARICOM cousins. At least we didn’t have the Bermuda Regiment surrounding the House of Assembly and the Americans didn't come in to fly out Ms. Smith. But as the first anniversary of his swearing-in approaches, Mr. Scott should probably avoid reminding the electorate of how he got his job, rather than trying to spin it into something it's not.
Archives By Date
He loves the sound of his own voice. Lots of big words -- that don't actually flow well or mean much but have the right air of pomp and importance.
Recent polls here show that young people in particular distrust politicians -- now wonder; they sound like the worst sort of con BS artists!
Posted by Xando on 19.07.04 at 20:46
Speaking of Caricom, you can tell they really like us by the fact that they refer to our Premier as "Walter Scott" (http://www.caricom.org/pres115_04.htm). He attended the heads of state meeting in Grenada earlier this month which was chock full of issues of primary importance to Bermuda: discussion of banana shipments, the sugar market, common agricultural policy, bad relations between Belieze and Guatamala, and what to do about Haiti. We pay a quarter million dollars a year to be part of this (actually not a fixed rate, we pay a percentage of the Caricom operating costs), plus the costs of flying our boondogglers to the frequent meetings. What do we gain from this?
Posted by Xando on 26.07.04 at 13:54
called him "Walter Scott"!
pathetic.. they don't even know who he is,but they take the $100,000 grand every year.
Has the auditor reported on how much these travel junkets cost us, for scott and his whole entourage?
Posted by Sal on 26.07.04 at 16:18
Funny how we pay to get closer to our Caribbean roots, when quite a few of the sunny isles to our south were colonised from Bermuda (including both the Bahamas and the Turks & Caicos).
Posted by Tiger Bay on 26.07.04 at 17:05