What’s the real reason for Bean’s corruption allegations?

2013 Session of the Bermuda House of Assembly Official Hansard Report

July 26, 2013

Selection A

Craig Cannonier: “Yes. He is misleading the House here. Maybe he should look at the . . . The Honourable Member from the Opposition, the Leader, should look at the polls that were done by the consultants that they hired. It shows that seven out of ten are supporting this Government.”

Marc Bean: “The psalmist says, “A fool says in his [own] heart, ‘There is no God.’” That is the same type of delusional thinking we just heard.”

Selection B

Marc Bean: “But I said it before, and I will say it again. And it gets reiterated more and more in my mind when I hear this mockery of ‘14 years’. They are always evoking 14 years. Well, you have only got 14 months.”

Superman walks into a bar…  Back in December I was utterly convinced that the OBA had misled the country over their decision not to hold a gaming referendum. 

The primary reason for this was their lack of disclosure about their meetings with the Opposition, as well as their failure to address the Opposition’s claims about meetings/conversations initiated by the Government. 

But that particular knife cuts both ways. The Opposition has now brought its credibility into question by failing to disclose the full nature of the September meetings, and that the focus was matters of a highly-controversial nature. 

No amount of head scratching so far has inclined me to believe the Opposition’s corruption claims. First of all, these secretive conversations happened within the first nine months of an OBA government, which is hardly enough time for the Premier to have been frustrated by the diabolical plans of “rich, white, UBP boys”. Maybe if we were going into the OBA’s fourth year this would make sense, but within the first nine months, when the OBA is still trying to get their head around what they’ve inherited from the PLP? That seems awfully premature.

Secondly, on September 8, the Opposition Leader was still showing utter contempt for all things OBA:

“Since becoming Government, the OBA’s tenure has been known more for deception, blunders and inaction than the ‘urgency of now…’  ...This failure of leadership by the current government shows an inability to manage the legislative process and that should concern all Bermudians.”

We have consistently had an Opposition Leader and PLP supporters who have been advocating for (and prophesying) the demise of the demonic OBA and their black surrogate in charge. It seems utterly illogical to me that in the same month that Bean is maligning the OBA leadership, Cannonier would share even a shred of information that could be used against him. 

I posed a simple question to my sons: “Would Superman ever call up Lex Luthor and tell him where the kryptonite is?” With the most innocently-confused look on their faces they plainly explained, “Superman would never do that, Daddy.  Because then Lex Luthor would be able to kill him.” 

But even if you could believe that Cannonier would’ve been so incredibly foolish, the critical question becomes, what did Bean do with this knowledge of corruption?  Weirdly enough, Bean seemingly didn’t “play along” in order to try to get proof (nor Burt for that matter). One also has to wonder whether or not Bean took his concerns to the Governor so that the police could start an investigation. Why has he now put these allegations into the public domain instead of letting the police catch Cannonier red-handed? If Bean didn’t alert the Governor about corruption, then why not? 

Yet another question is, why was the PLP still entertaining the OBA’s overtures in December, which is three months after they learned of the OBA’s corruption? In summary, you have to wonder why Bean didn’t take advantage of Parliamentary Privilege to implicate these three Ministers last year.  

The plot still thickens. Back in December, the Opposition came out looking like a victim of OBA dishonesty over the referendum. They had the upper hand. It therefore seems illogical that Bean would still be so incensed over the alleged misrepresentation that he now feels compelled to open Pandora’s Box on the very first sitting of Parliament.  Or perhaps these theatrics are all meant to distract us from the real elephant in the room?

If someone claimed that Bean was setting up a betting shop in a low income black neighbourhood, or that he had proposed a coalition government with the OBA/UBP, I would have had major doubts. Interestingly, the debate and discussion since Friday shows that the PLP and their supporters are saying very, very little about this coalition government proposal. Exactly who in the PLP knew and supported joining hands with the OBA/UBP? Were any PLP MPs going to be left behind and cast out into the wilderness? That chapter is very unclear, and it’s almost deliberately being drowned out by incomprehensible claims of corruption and Shakespearian indignation over recorded conversations.  

For me, the relative silence about Bean’s coalition government proposal opens back up the possibility that the Premier actually was telling the truth about the Opposition threatening to boycott a referendum. The Opposition’s claims of, and reaction to, knowledge of corruption just don’t make sense.  It all begs the question at this 14th month of OBA government: “What’s the real reason for the Opposition Leader’s delayed corruption revelations?” 

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