What a fine mess you got yourself into, Mr Furbert

FRIDAY, DEC. 7: What a mess. We now learn that Wayne Furbert considers himself a ‘black surrogate,’ used for the purpose of garnering support with black Bermudians for the former UBP in 2007. This may be true. In the smoky back rooms of politics, deals are brokered all the time.

But we’ve learned something else: Wayne Furbert is a gun for hire. He apparently didn’t mind being the head of the UBP, espousing the party’s record of achievements, while he found fault with the PLP. He didn’t mind being part of a strategy to get elected and one can only ask the question, had the election gone his way, had he been elected Premier, would he still be calling himself a surrogate? I think not.

In every action movie there’s always the “bad guy” character who by the end of the movie, turns out to be the guy with a real heart, the guy who’s  been misunderstood and the guy who takes the bullet for the team and let’s everyone live. Wayne Furbert won’t be cast as this guy. He’s more likely to be cast as the guy who managed to get on one of the few remaining lifeboats while the Titanic was sinking. You understand his fear, but boy do you ever wish he just stayed on the boat with the rest of the men.

Wayne Furbert had every moral right to take a good hard look at his former party and conclude it wasn’t for him. That is everyone’s right and your decision to change parties should be seen as the morally correct action if indeed your ideologies are more closely aligned with another party. Frankly, why kick around in another political party if you’re not on board with their programme and won’t be an effective voice?

After the election loss of 2007, it appears that the UBP hired a consultant who gave them the obvious bad news that a bunch of white guys in suits wasn’t resonating with the majority of black Bermudian voters. It shouldn’t come as surprise to anyone that a political party is going to do whatever it can to either keep voters or regain voters that had been lost in the melee of a political campaign. The report highlighted several instances where the UBP’s efforts during the campaign in 2007 were deflected by the PLP’s use of emotion and repeated references of “historical racial prejudice, fear and mistrust.” No surprise there, either. 

Here’s the critical point that no one seems to be focusing on:  the report was not authored by a UBP politician, but a consultant. The consultant authored a report and then it was up to UBP party leaders to either use the information or toss it aside. Wayne Furbert was elected to the UBP’s leadership prior to any report. If Minster Furbert’s former colleagues hedged their bets and decided that a black candidate was the superior tactical approach to winning black voters, well then, I’m afraid that the bad news is that Minister Furbert was effectively a participant in that strategy. It’s a little too late to be crying foul now, don’t you think?

Politics can be dirty business. Unlike certain industries in the private sector, one isn’t forced to sign a “non-compete” clause or be prohibited from working in the same industry for a certain period of time. Instead, you get to change your colours and carry on waving a new banner. It’s a shame that a former leader of a now defunct political party didn’t see that there’s honour in being honorable. He’s waited for nearly four years to use a consultant’s observations and advice for a complicated political landscape to advance his own agenda and enhance his political capital with his new party. 

Right now Minister Wayne Furbert has friends in high places. Those same friends, the ones with real honour and integrity, regardless of the headlines, can’t be impressed. They know all too well that it might be their turn some day for his loyalty, his attentions, to be called elsewhere. And now they know what he will do.