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What's Bermuda's biggest political problem?

When you take surveys or ask politicians (who have been reading the surveys) it's usually housing, or racial inequity, or over-crowding, or cars, or crime, or foreigners, or an appallingly bad education system - well, you've seen the surveys so you know the list goes on and on.

But no, the biggest problem is trust - or rather, the lack of it. Bermuda is built on a stinking swamp of political suspicion.

Lack of trust is either at the root of most of our political problems, or it is the thing that stands in the way of reaching a solution.

The consequences are far-reaching, profound and tragic. But they can be summed up by saying that the people of Bermuda have developed an irrational fear and suspicion of each other and each other's motives.

So they don't sympathize with each other nearly as much as they should, they don't hear or believe each other's complaints or concerns, they don't share in each other's joys and triumphs.

They don't learn from each other, they don't help each other, they don't learn from each other as much as we should.

So we don't fulfill our potential as a community, either in accomplishments - be it in business or sports or education or just anything else you can imagine - or in less tangible ways like simply being as happy as we should be.

It's hard to be happy when you are a bundle of fears and suspicions.

And it's harder still to be happy when you believe other people are fearful and suspicious of you. Lack of trust has a way of compounding itself that way. If you are suspicious of somebody, almost everything they do gives you evidence to support your fears. Almost everything any of us says or does can be interpreted in different ways.

Besides, nobody can really know another person's motives, so people will usually interpret them in a way that matches their pre-existing assumptions.

Catch 22

So politicians and political parties frequently find themselves in an impossible Catch 22 position.

For example, people who do not trust the UBP regularly criticize the party for racism whenever it elects a black leader ("They only chose him because he is black," they say) and whenever it elects a white leader ("They only chose him because he is white," they say).

And people who do not trust the PLP regularly criticize its MPs if they don't seem to be making much money ("No management skills," they say) and are even more suspicious when they do seem to be making money ("Now, exactly where is that money coming from?").

Of course, sometimes the fears are justified - just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you.

But our political parties regularly respond to the problem by doing exactly the wrong thing - by becoming more defensive and less open, by angrily lashing out at its opponents (both real and perceived), and thereby offending and alienating a lot of people whose trust they ought to be trying to win.

False accusations need to be vigorously denied, of course. But that's never going to persuade the legions of suspicious doubters, and so it will never cut through the poisonous atmosphere of distrust that permeates public life in Bermuda.

What our governments and our political parties need to give us is complete openness.

If they can agree on absolutely nothing else, they must at least make public agreements on what the rules of the game will be. And they must speak softly and respectfully - not just to their friends and allies, but especially to those who fear and distrust them.

They need to be open about their fundraising, open about their decisions and how they make them, open about every detail of how their leaders are selected, open about their history and about their mistakes, open about the money they earn and the contracts they sign.

Of course it's demeaning and insulting to answer to outrageously unfair suspicions, or defend against false and politically or racially motivated accusations. But it needs to be done, for the good of the community.

These are basic things that our governments and our political parties, have yet to learn: If somebody's afraid of you, or suspicious of you, or thinks you are trying to hide something, you absolutely have to speak softly, speak respectfully, to keep your hands where they can see them, and open all your closet doors so they won't think something's hidden.[[In-content Ad]]

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