Maybe this is what the next Cabinet should look like...

FRIDAY, NOV. 25: It is sometimes — often? — said that the PLP may still be a shoo-in at the next election.

If so, the post-election Government will have to be formed from the group of PLP Candidates that have been established by PLP constituency processes. Thinking about going forward with a re-elected PLP party, but a party that has a slew of new faces in it, I turned my mind to the serious matter of who is best suited to what Ministerial task.

Given that she has spent from 2003 to 2011 in charge of Bermuda’s national finances, I thought that the re-elected Premier might divest herself of the Ministry of Finance and pass it on to someone else.

Rolfe for Finance

Assuming that the PLP ‘stronghold’ elects him to Parliament, I thought that Candidate Rolfe Commissiong would be the best choice for Finance Minister in a re-elected PLP Government. He is relatively young, energetic, knows about banking procedures, and is intelligent. His work with the ‘Big Conversation’ has caused him to be generally well-known within the community, and he possesses some degree of credibility. His appointment should inspire strong responses from Bermuda’s business community, especially International Business.

Candidate Walton Brown should make an excellent Minister for National Security. He is known to be well-versed in Constitutional matters and should therefore be perfectly suited to interfacing with the Governor in matters of crime, drug interdiction, and gang gunplay; while eruditely articulating his Ministerial views on Bermuda’s views on the Governor’s exercising of his Reserved Powers.

Should ex-UBP leader, now PLP MP, now PLP Cabinet Minister, and also now PLP Candidate, the Honourable Wayne Furbert, win his old UBP seat as a new PLP Candidate; his experience, versatility, and flexibility should be used to full advantage.  Post-election, Wayne Furbert would make an excellent Deputy Premier and would show how the UBP and PLP have now become one and can even sing off the same page. It would demonstrate the kind of ‘working together’ that Premier Cox speaks of nowadays.

In a new post-election assemblage of MP’s, Dame Jennifer should be elevated to the post of Speaker of the House; thus killing two birds with one stone. She’ll replace the ‘bumped-off’ ex-Speaker Mr Stanley Lowe, and she’ll become Bermuda’s first female Speaker of the House of Assembly. As they say at Oxford and Cambridge, she’ll be a ‘double first’. In her time as Deputy Speaker, she always demonstrated a full knowledge of all the Rules of the House and of proper Parliamentary procedure.

Tourism should go to the Honourable Michael Scott. He’s good-looking, well-dressed, intelligent, suave, articulate, very well-mannered, and has superb social graces. He is the perfect person to represent us lot to that lot of foreigners who need to be enticed into travelling — at their expense — to Bermuda. In the same way that Barack Obama has become the face of America, Michael Scott could become the good looking face of Bermuda.

Even though she is not a candidate, and for that I can only fault the PLP Candidate selection system, post-election, ex-Senator LaVerne Furbert should be re-appointed to the Senate. Then she should be appointed to Cabinet and given responsibility for Communications and Public Information. Ms Furbert has always impressed with her ability to readily, rapidly, and roundly articulate answers and explain events. In addition, she is well-versed — or has always seemed to be so — in how things really, really, work as opposed to how things are seen to be working or how things are perceived to be working. I thought her summary dismissal from the Senate was scant reward for such strong past efforts on behalf of the party of her choice.

Post election and presuming a PLP win, Premier Cox will still be Premier. Clearly, as I show by my recommendation for a new Minister for Finance, I think that Premier Cox should divest herself of the heavy burden that she has carried since February 2003.

After giving the task to another member of the new Parliamentary Group, she should concentrate on managing the whole of Cabinet and the country; and — in these still declining economic times — she should spend more time soothing our increasingly frazzled nerves and lowering our increasingly rising temperaments.