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With the upcoming decision over who will lead the PLP, the party itself is making its third and final step into full political maturity.

Following its 1963 formation, the first major internal decision that the PLP had to make resulted in its near disintegration.

From holding fourteen Parliamentary seats in a 40-seat House, the PLP dropped to a dismal seven seats and simultaneously gave rise to the National Liberal Party; which was created by some of the just booted-out PLP dissidents.

That was in 1985. On August 13, 1996, Frederick Wade, PLP Party Leader and Premier-in-Waiting, dropped dead.

By the end of August 1996, Jennifer Smith was Party Leader and the new Premier-in-Waiting. On November 10, 1998, Jennifer Smith ceased to be Premier-in-Waiting and became Premier. Mid-July 2003, Premier Jennifer Smith was hurriedly and somewhat untidily replaced as Premier and Party Leader by Premier Alex Scott. In late October 2006, there may be a new, third, PLP Premier and a fourth PLP Leader within ten years.

But, change or no change in premiers or leaders, the PLP itself will still go on. That's the way it's supposed to be.

That 2003 process was planned but hurried. It was an action by a party that had grown since 1985. This 2006 process is planned and unhurried. It's the action of a party that has matured. This time, there's time for reflection and evaluation.

With an eight-year track as Party-in-Power, what's been done for Bermuda and thus for all Bermudians? What would a dispassionate observer see?

The observer would note the new school on Berkeley Hill, but would also note that the overall output of graduates from that new school and from the public education system generally is low. It's dangerously low - even when compared to the U.K. where Labour MP Gordon Brown is complaining that: "61 per cent of girls went on to get five or more good GCSEs, against 51 per cent of boys".

Meanwhile, here in Bermuda, despite new buildings, Bermuda's public education system stumbles along getting an even lower - dangerously lower - result that no one wants to talk about.

Bermuda imports hundreds of workers. These foreign workers are the output of the U.K.'s public education system [and India's, Canada's, Poland's…]. They're imported to Bermuda to do a variety of mid-to-low level work as work permit holders.

In doing this, Bermuda has created a new form of now noticeable social pressure as well as an even greater stress on the demand for low cost rental housing.

Visible problems

The observer would note that after years of that imbalance, Bermuda has a new highly and bloodily visible problem with gangs of disaffected youth, most of whom appear to be 'young black males'. The observer would connect this new social problem, and the crime that spins off from it, to the ineffective education system that has been working within an expanding economy that demands entry-level workers with globally competitive literacy and numeracy levels.

A dispassionate observer would note all of that.

The observer would note that some issues have become non-issues. The observer would note, for instance, that the independence issue - once capable of causing meaningful national debate - dwindled into a fuss over the mechanism for determining the broader wish of the whole of the electorate.

The observer would probably comment that there had been an apparent resurgence, at least in numbers, of visitors-on-the-ground - if one simply counted heads walking around. The observer would also see that there had been a total fall-off in hotel bed counts; and that the old-style 'chicken-coop' hotel room was being replaced by a new style of co-owned tourist accommodation. The observer would see that this new style will diminish the need for service; and that the labour servicing this tourist facility would be the kind of unskilled labour that is now the almost exclusive preserve of imported non-Bermudian labour.

A dispassionate observer would see a need for significant change in the energy and drive that's needed to cause real change in education with the resultant positive national spin-offs that can only come from real change in that core area. A dispassionate observer would see an overall need to go from eight years of relatively unsuccessful pie-slice governance to more successful whole-pie governance.[[In-content Ad]]

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