Four key reasons the PLP lost power

Four months is enough time for the dust to settle and for people to understand what really happened. On December 17, 2012, the PLP lost the election. It did so after a number of strategic errors.

PLP Leader Marc Bean has admitted that the PLP lost its way. His understated analysis pointed to broad factors. But there were several specific actions that caused serious damage to the PLP’s ability to maintain its Parliamentary majority.

The first serious error was the selection of Rolfe Commissiong as a candidate. Nothing really wrong with Rolfe the man. He’s intelligent, articulate, and good-looking. For years he worked hard for the PLP.

However, Rolfe has a public persona. That persona is the broad public view of the man. That view is that of an angry man with a cedar tree on his shoulder. When Rolfe was selected, the PLP was trying its best to present a diversified and gentler face to voters. The PLP was trying to get away from Dr Brown’s legacy of bitterness and revenge.

But Rolfe’s selection brought all that back.

From 1996 to 1998 I was inside the PLP and ‘behind the scenes’. I know how things can work or be made to work, behind the scenes.

Because Rolfe was not de-selected, his public persona became attached to all the 35 other PLP candidates. That persona cast a pall over each of them. It caused a drift away of some PLP voters.

The second mis-step was the PLP’s fast and deep embracing of FFF — Flip-Flop-Furbert. Whilst some party insiders and leaders may have seen FFF’s inclusion as a sign of progress; much of the rest of Bermuda saw it as clear evidence of cynicism. The question? Who was most cynical? FFF or the PLP hierarchy?

That cost another island-wide erosion of support.

Third mistake? Discarding seasoned and successful Wayne Perinchief, who was creating so much public confidence in his ‘crime-fighter’ role; and replacing Wayne with Walton Brown, who has a reputation for ....?

The fourth and most prominent specific thing was selecting, almost by default, a non-leader as Party Leader and Premier.

Admittedly, in October 2010, everyone in Bermuda was ready to welcome any different person as PLP Premier. Any person except Dr Brown. It was clear that both Bermuda and the PLP wanted rid of Dr Brown. But what Bermuda got was a person whose record as a non-leader was already well established.

Ms Cox was Deputy Premier in July 2009 during the Uyghur incident, during which she described herself as ‘politically neutered’. Seven months later, in January 2010, as Finance Minister, she described herself, in a Bermuda Sun column, as a ‘cog in the wheel’. Both times, she was honest and accurate.

Ms Cox inherited the PLP stronghold of Devonshire North. This became PLP territory after the ‘Dame’ grabbed the seat from Sir Bayard Dill in the May, 1963 election. Fifty years later, Ms Cox lost that seat to a brash newcomer from a brash new political party that was barely eighteen months old.

However, the PLP’s over-arching error was its handling of our national finances. Slowly, tortuously, the truth about the real state of Bermuda’s national finances began leaching out. I began writing about that in January, 2010. 

Withholding information

As time passed, I got less and less cooperation from segments of the Civil Service who ought to have been providers of answers to my technical questions. I was forced to poke, prod, and probe for information that should have been in the public domain. The resistance to my probing showed that I was meeting multi-department withholding of information.

In addition I became aware of an organized political campaign of disinformation and misinformation that climaxed in pre-election distortions that still bedevils and damages public discussion on national finances and other matters.

The unintended consequence of this resistance and my forced probing was my discovery that Bermuda’s national finances were effectively un-managed. That no one was exerting a tight grip on national financial control tools; that no top manager was holding Government financial people to close account.

Not even the Minister of Finance.

The PLP’s biggest mistake was trying to conceal Bermuda’s national financial problems.  Reviewing my several e-mail chains confirms a subtle campaign to conceal — not answer.

The PLP wounded itself. The PLP damaged its own relationship with its own core voters. The PLP then went to the polls and asked a hurting and angry public to give it another five years.

And the public shouted: “NO!” n