Burch announces municipality changes

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30: Here is Senate Leader David Burch’s speech on municipalities in the Senate today:

“Madame President, the history of Bermuda’s electoral system includes some vivid imagery. One of the images is of the land owner mounting his horse and buggy in Somerset early on election morning and casting his vote in every constituency in which he owned land. That image is consigned to memory.

“Madame President, another image is a ballot paper on which people split votes and vote for two candidates, sometimes from either party; while others loyal only to party vote for one candidate. An inequality also now consigned to memory.

“Madame President, by this Order before the Senate today we are consigning to memory the inequality of the electoral franchise within the island’s municipalities.

“The argument made by the Opposition is refreshingly without shades of gray. They are being who they really are, the party of business-first. That is fine and healthily sets out the difference between our competing philosophies. But Madame President, the people, the residents, the ‘city slickers’ as they called them in my mother’s era, cannot match the electoral power of business.

“In the course of the debate in another place, the then Minister responsible for the principal Act which pre-faced these changes indicated that the business owners in the municipalities enjoyed a privilege that no other Bermudians could. They voted to protect their interests by day in the city or the town and still were able to vote to protect their interests where they lay their heads at night.

“Madame President, the inequity of this system is self-evident and cries out for reform. On the national scale, if one owns a piece of land in a constituency but does not meet the residence requirement for the general election, one cannot vote purely based on the ownership of that land. This is analogous to the situation we fix today.

“Madame President, perhaps now we will not see residents who measure the commitment to services by their corporation by their address within the municipality. It is within the modern era that Christmas lights stopped at Victoria Street, that road paving was done south of Victoria Street first and that the Mayor’s Parlour bore a striking resemblance to Front Street. Representation on the corporations now has a chance of better reflecting the residents’ aspirations and needs for their city.

“It is late but it is right on time. This is democracy made real.

“Thank you Madame President.”