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I was wrong. In a column a couple of weeks ago I blamed “the zeal of pro-independence partisans working on or with the Bermuda Independence Commission (BIC)” for the inclusion of “skewed information” in the report. It was unfair of me to imply a deliberate attempt to mislead and I apologize for doing so.

The BIC’s mandate was to gather information about and report on independence, and to encourage discussion about independence. The BIC’s final report is the most comprehensive collection of information on independence for Bermuda.

I had hoped it would be a significant milestone on the community’s path to gaining factual information about the pros and cons of independence. I was extremely disappointed and resentful when the report was criticized by anti-independence partisans and there was no immediate response or explanation to be had from the Commission. My comments reflected that resentment.

In preparation for upcoming public meetings I have re-read the BIC report and months of comments published about it. The report itself impresses me as a relatively independence-neutral document with mostly neutral language. Contrary to published predictions, it neither advocates nor recommends independence. I give the commissioners full marks for producing a relatively emotion-free document about an emotion-laden subject.

The commissioners did make some mistakes.

Error #1 was one of fact. Given the heightened tension around the issue of how the independence question was to be decided, The Commission’s statement that it could find no instance of the use of a referendum for determining independence was bound to draw attention. The Premier picked up on it and repeated it in his press statement at the report’s release event. This raised the ire of the Bermudians for Referendum group who were scornful in their criticism of the statement. Their scorn was amplified in the daily press. Error #1 was compounded in that the BIC made no response to the criticism during their self-imposed sixty-day period of silence (see error #3 below). The explanation for the error, however plausible, needed to be immediate. Its delay helped the error gain traction as an indictment of the entire report.

Error #2 was one of judgment. The BIC made a decision to omit the full submission of the UBP, instead relegating it to the summaries of written submissions in Annex #27. The reason put forward was that the UBP’s submission dealt wholly with the issue of referenda, an issue outside the Commission’s mandate. The commissioners might have reasoned, however, that to avoid accusations of bias or vindictiveness, the UBP’s submission should have been treated similarly if not equally to that of the PLP.

Error #3 was one of process. It was a mistake in my view for the commissioners to muzzle themselves for 60 days after the report was released. Their reasoning was to avoid an appearance of biasing the reception of the report. This may have been well intentioned, but the result was that for sixty days critics had free rein to attack the report without rebuttal.

None of these errors, however, is fatal. The BIC Report, warts and all, represents an ideal base for discussion and questions about our collective future. This week, the first of the post-BIC report public meetings on independence will take place, hosted by the PLP. Our job as members of the public is to read the BIC report and raise questions about whether independence will yield the kind of future we want for Bermuda. The job of those who served as BIC commissioners will be to treat all questions and questioners with the respect they would want for their report. Let the discussions roll on.[[In-content Ad]]

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