Which Marc Bean do YOU know?

There are two Marc Beans.

The first one is Marc Bean, the Opposition Leader, who stays on script, urging Bermudians to cooperate and work together.

The second is the Opposition Leader who goes off script, expressing anger and scorn, rudeness and making threats. 

It’s a departure in which his words and their venomous delivery call into question the balance needed for anyone who aspires to the highest office.

Friday night witnessed another episode in his emergence as a Jekyll and Hyde character.

In a debate on immigration, Mr. Bean likened the OBA’s approach to “lady-of-the-night-open-legism” that would sell out Bermuda for 30 pieces of silver. 

The Speaker ordered him to retract the remark, though he repeated “ladies of the night” a few minutes later. My colleague Pat Gordon-Pamplin was outraged, calling it “disgusting” while noting there was a respectful way to disagree “that the Honourable Member clearly has not learned”.

The exchange was one more indication of an approach to politics that is more about two sides, bare knuckles and vulgarity than the collaboration, common ground and hope espoused by Premier Michael Dunkley.

Mr Bean clearly has a toxic view of the One Bermuda Alliance and their supporters. Almost from the day he became Leader of the Opposition, he gave voice to a grim, twisted view of the party that won a majority in the 2012 election. He has called us “demonic” and “practitioners of The Dark Arts”. When our members have spoken he has referred to “the smell of sulfur”. 

And senior colleagues have said he has used threatening language against MPs on the floor of the House — always with his microphone off.

Often, he has provided glimpses into how his mind sees politics working. In March, during another anti-Government diatribe, he said this:

“It’s the contracts. That’s the real reason why you all fight and sacrifice to get into this House to have political power, ‘cause that’s the gravy train. Yeah, hello for those of you who are just coming into politics, that is Politics 101 around the world.”

Hmm. 

I’d say that’s about the most cynical view of politics I’ve ever heard; perhaps a view developed during his time as a Government Minister.

And then last month there was this extraordinary, conclusive statement during a late-night sitting of the House.

“There will be no hotel development!”

Pessimistic?

I suppose you can look at those words a couple of ways. Perhaps it was a pessimistic statement of the odds against hotel development given the record in recent decades. But that would mean he sees no hope at all for the revival of tourism, and that just can’t be.

Or it could mean that Mr Bean was intimating there would be no hotel development in Bermuda with the OBA in power. Some of my colleagues considered it a veiled threat to scupper developments we are pushing at sites from St George’s to Morgan’s Point.

Given what I’ve seen of Mr Bean over the past year and a half, I’m inclined to think his political agenda is bigger than the national agenda or, more specifically, the jobs and opportunities Bermudians need now.

Sure, he might want Bermuda to succeed — how could he not — but just not under this Government. And he’s been working overtime to turn back the decision the voters made in December 2012 to drop a PLP Government that had brought the island to the brink of economic disaster.

The angry, extreme words I’ve heard too often from the Opposition Leader are not the answer for Bermuda. They send the wrong message to the outside world, and the investors we need to help turn around the economy, and they send the wrong message here at home. 

Bermudians need encouragement, optimism and a unifying message. I don’t see that coming from the Opposition with Mr. Bean as leader. 

Lynne Woolridge is an OBA Senator