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The campaign to save the Botanical Gardens is making good use of today's technology. With a handful of volunteers and a shoestring budget, the Save the Gardens campaigners have launched a website and an online discussion forum or Blog.

These have enabled the public to get information about the Botanical Gardens and the campaign to save them, and to make their views known via the Internet.

Now, Save the Gardens has launched an online petition that went live mid-day on Sunday, October 5.

The wording of the petition is simple: 'We the undersigned are opposed to the development of a new hospital in the Botanical Gardens.'

Within three and a half days over 1,300 signatures have been collected.

The petition is called a phototition because petition signers can add a photo along with their signatures, if they wish.

The online petition will allow Bermudians at home and abroad to voice their preference to save the Botanical Gardens

I am aware that there are some who will try to discredit the petition. Premier Scott has implied that the government has no preference. The government is supposedly neutral and merely wants the Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB) to get and report feedback from the community for one site or another.

Supporters of members of the BHB should be neutral too, even though they have been ambivalent about where the hospital ought to be built. Their expert architects and engineers preferred building onsite.

One version of their stance has the BHB itself in favour of placing the new hospital where the old one was. It does appear, though, that since the government was prepared to deed over a third of the Botanical Gardens, the BHB has become attached to that idea.

One would think, nevertheless, that the BHB would like to appear neutral so they could avoid challenges of bias in their gathering of public feedback to the no-choice 'choice' now being offered: Either carve up a third of the Botanical Gardens for rebar, concrete and asphalt, or foot an inflated bill to build onsite.

But then, the BHB has already tried to skew the feedback, portraying any who opposes their taking of the Botanical Gardens as anti-healthcare; trying to cast the debate as between health care providers and 'environmentalists'; speaking derogatorily of 'special interest groups' as though they themselves are not one.

So it might not be surprising to hear an attempt to discredit the petition from that quarter.

Reliable

However, the petition organizers are a step or two more transparent than the BHB. Petition signers have the option of having their names and even their photo appear so there's nothing that can be hidden by the petition organizers. Also, the comments made by those who sign can't be added to or edited by the organizers. And if they could, signers would know and could complain.

Here are samples of some of the comments made by those who have already signed the petition.

n "I believe I speak for most of the Bermudians both at home and abroad that the Botanical Gardens is not only part of our beautiful island's attraction, but it is a part of us. You take that away and you take away part of our history, our present and our future." - Dereka Amie.

n "The gardens need everyone to speak up for them. They have been there for me all my life and I'm not about to let them down now." - Deirdre Doyle.

n "… Please think of our future generations before the continuation of turning Bermuda into another concrete jungle." - Kim Durham.

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