Election speech

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Governor George Fergusson delivers his first Speech from the Throne today, but everyone listening will know that whatever plans are in it aren’t worth much more than the paper they are written on.

That’s not because they have no value, but because the parliamentary session is likely to be one of the shortest on record.

Whether it will be any longer than the one of almost exactly five years ago, when then-Premier Dr Ewart Brown called an election on YouTube just hours after the speech was delivered, remains to be seen.

But if Premier Paula Cox wishes to call an election before the end of the year, as she has “hinted”, and if she wants to hold it on December 18, as seems likely, then she will have to call it by early next week to allow for the six-week campaign which is the minimum allowed.

Regardless, the Throne Speech will at least contain a foreshadowing of the Progressive Labour Party’s likely platform, and as such, is worth studying carefully.

The bare bones of the PLP’s plans have already been flagged up pretty heavily during the “pre-campaign” which has been going on for months.

Almost all attention is focused on the economy.

The PLP will try to portray its record of the last five years as having spared the Island from the worst ravages of the global recession.

It will portray its spending of the last five years as “investment” and will point to social programmes like Future Care, day care for the needy, free bus passes for students and housing construction as having helped the most vulnerable avoid the worst pain.

Looking forward, Senator David Burt has, remarkably, stated that there will be no reduction in Government spending for the next three years.

This spending, it will be argued, is further investment and stimulus aimed at helping people out of recession.

The Throne Speech will not, or at least should not, be an attack on the Opposition One Bermuda Alliance, since it is supposed to be an explanation of Government’s plans for the next 12 months.

If that’s the case, it will make a change from the PLP’s campaigning so far. Already, this feels like a more negative campaign than the 2007 election, which itself plumbed new depths.

Having discovered the effectiveness of negative campaigning and advertising then, the PLP shows every sign of being addicted to it.

That’s too bad, because when Ms Cox became Premier, there was every reason to believe she wanted to embark on a more unifying and less divisive appproach to government.

Belatedly, the Government has in fact come up with some programmes that may help the economy, but most are too little too late.

Changes to work permit policies, encouragement of small business, the Job Corps, restoration of Government-owned buildings are all welcome. But they should have happened two and three years ago when the Island was falling into recession.

That failure haunts Ms Cox’s record as Finance Minister and Premier, so much so that it is generally assumed that regardless of who wins this election, Ms Cox will not survive as leader of the PLP for very long.

So the question is this: Are voters being asked to vote for a party, which if re-elected, is very likely to have a new leader soon afterwards?

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