With no power change in sight, let's focus on detail of current governance

With all 36 seats now re-filled and no apparent change in the PLP’s support base, Bermuda will have to settle down and wait for a general election before there can be either real change or another reaffirmation of the current situation.

One way or another, and as happens in every functioning democracy, the electorate will always decide its own generic fate. Through the secrecy of the ballot box, the electorate will choose to either stay with one course of action or it will change. The electorate will make that grand decision, after which decisions on details fall to whomever the electorate has selected as its representatives.

The devil is in the detail. So it is with national governance. It is visible now with Barack Obama. Obama came into the Oval Office on the tail end of a wave of euphoria as almost the whole world stopped to watch the first African-American take up the Presidency. Then the detail.

Two years on, euphoria gone; his health plan in disarray, national unemployment still high, recession still in place, home foreclosures still happening, war in Afghanistan still ongoing with no clear end in sight, and Wikileaks leaking. Just some of the be-devilling details.

Here at 32N64W, it is the same story. Even though Wednesday’s by-election was not a national litmus test, the portent for the immediate future is that there appears to be insufficient momentum to replace the PLP as government. Hence, the PLP is likely to remain as the ruling party through the next election. So consideration moves from speculation about change to the ‘detail’ of ongoing governance.

Absent a strong Opposition threatening their imminent replacement as governing party, a ruling party need only look to what it considers its own best interests. There is nothing evil about that. It is a normal outcome of the democratic process. In Bermuda, this has happened several times before. Between 1965 and 1992, the UBP faced a PLP that had so little support at the polls, that the ruling UBP could afford to almost ignore the PLP as an Opposition who might replace them. However, from 1993 on, with replacement more of a threat, the UBP paid far more attention to the PLP and the political noises that it was making. Between 1993 and 1996, the UBP was particularly sensitive to the balance between its own party interests and those of the whole country.  The crazy McDonald’s affair and the unsupported push for independence saw the UBP implode in self-interest and a surging PLP come in and take over in 1998.

Now, twelve years after taking power, the PLP sits where the UBP sat in 1989. Then the UBP held 29 seats against the fractured PLP’s seven. Between 1989 and 1993, the UBP held complete sway. In 1993 a resurgent PLP brought them to heel and in 1998, a new PLP took over. Twelve years on, Bermuda is now in the same dangerous democratic space as it was in 1989.

Effectively, the whole picture that appears in December 2010 is that the PLP is solidly in place and will likely remain so even through a next election. The determinant is not the PLP. Rather, it is the disarray in the electorate and the state of the opposing political parties. Neither party — BDA nor UBP — currently shows the strength or voter base to unseat the PLP. Ultimately, those who oppose the electoral might of the PLP must mass and outweigh PLP support. Absent that massing and consequent arithmetic outweighing, the PLP — like the UBP — will remain in power.

Which takes me back to detail. From today, and possibly until about 2017, the most important question to be answered is ‘whither the PLP’? Will the PLP focus on the whole national interest, or will it do what democratically elected parties in democracies tend to do see to its own party interests first, then look to sometimes unpleasant and often difficult national interests after?

By Friday 25th February 2011, Bermuda will get its first real inkling when, in Bermuda’s unprecedentedly difficult economic situation, the PLP government presents its spending plans for FY 2011/12.

The devil will be in the detail.