PLP tactics slow our progress

The Premier has been making a special plea recently for collaboration on the political front.  He reasons that the mess we’re in is too serious to allow for business as usual.

He’s 100% correct, of course.  We continue to be at a stage at which the economic and social fabric of Bermuda is under serious threat.  All Bermudians in a position to help should put their shoulders to the wheel of repair.   

Instead, in politics, we are suffering from a different construct altogether. The Government has its focus on repair, but the Opposition has its shoulders to the wheel of scoring political points. As a result, the recovery of Bermuda is getting less than the focus it deserves and desperately needs.

The PLP seems to be bent on convincing Bermudians that the OBA has created two Bermudas – the world of privilege and comfort that international business represents, and the world of the ordinary Bermudian, struggling as never before.  

It’s a terrible mischaracterization of the true situation.  The truth is that despite their differences, those two groups of people need each other.

Without international business, on whose presence and earnings the Bermuda economy survives, the world of the ordinary Bermudian would suffer further collapse.  What the OBA is doing is not favouring the international business community at the expense of Bermudians, but trying to undo the damage done to Bermuda’s relationship with international business by a PLP government that seemed determined to use it as a whipping boy, to curry favour with voters. 

The PLP got it wrong when they got us into this mess in the first place by a careless, thoughtless mismanagement of our economy.  The new OBA government took over a Bermuda in much worse condition than we thought would be the case.  

Now, by their drumbeat of criticism and pessimism, the PLP is working to defeat our efforts to put Bermuda into recovery mode.  And they’re prepared to misrepresent the truth to do it.

In his Labour Day speech, for example, Derrick Burgess claimed the OBA had broken a promise to create 2,000 jobs in its first year in office.  The truth is that we said we thought we could do that in five years.  It’s in the jobs and the economy section of our platform, which is on our website. Mr Burgess knows that – I’m sure he’s read the OBA platform more than once.  But he is determined to make things worse than they are.

Elsewhere in his speech, Mr Burgess misrepresented the truth of a number of other issues, including Heritage Wharf, the Millennium Ferry, the Tourism Authority, shortening the school year and the new education commissioner.

He’s not the only PLP shadow minister who is involved in this effort.  Walter Roban, for example, talks whenever he can find someone to listen about the OBA’s broken promises.  He twists and turns to make the OBA seem to be the villain in every instance.  Typical is his oft-repeated claim, that we promised not to hire consultants.  What we said in our platform, on our website, was that we would cut down on the use of consultants in Government, and we have already delivered on that promise.  It’s a work still very much in progress, because the PLP created a glut of them, as if our own public service was incapable of doing its own work.  

Bermuda cannot afford to be sidetracked into fighting this kind of effort-wasting propaganda campaign.

Give the country a break, PLP, and be a part of the solution, not the problem.

Thad Hollis is Chairman of the OBA.