The university town of Oxford has long been known as England’s City of Dreaming Spires. Bermuda’s Hamilton, by way of comparison, might once have merited the designation “City of Scheming Squires”. Throughout its almost 200 year history Hamilton’s Latin motto has often been freely translated as “Get What You Can”, underscoring the fact that a cheerfully laissez-faire approach to commerce superseded any genuine commitment to transparent, democratic and accountable municipal government.

With an unwavering interest in free trade, and an equally pronounced aversion to public scrutiny (the Corporation’s of Hamilton’s meetings are still largely held in-camera), the city originally thrived as a seaport. Onions, potatoes and Easter Lilies were exported to North America from the city’s docks. Later, moneyed vacationers were imported aboard ocean liners and cruise ships which berthed alongside Front Street.

Hamilton’s infrastructure, stores and services rapidly evolved to meet the very different needs of both the agricultural and tourism industries, transforming this Regency-era waterfront settlement into a bustling boom town within a very few years of its establishment.

In recent decades, of course, Hamilton has become an entrepôt for various off-shore financial services industries and their satellite businesses, and once again the Corporation proved extremely adept at both anticipating, and responding, to new economic needs and imperatives.

But while successive generations of canny burghers only infrequently proved themselves incapable of keeping up with Hamilton’s periods of extremely rapid growth, the city’s track record for adapting to new democratic norms has been genuinely lamentable.

Reform of Its archaic electoral system – with a franchise restricted to business owners and property holders – had been conspicuous by its almost complete absence since the passage of the Municipalities Act of 1923. With little more than a thousand Bermudians living within the city limits by the end of the 1990s, the Corporation’s focus doggedly remained on administering Hamilton as a business venue rather than a municipality with a variety of residential as well as corporate needs. The fact such a state of affairs continued well into the 21st century was as laughable as it was completely unsustainable.

Opting to remain a type of benign autocracy, never ignoring those who lived in Hamilton, but never providing them with a direct voice in how their affairs were administered, the Corporation had been on the losing side of history since at least the 1960s.

And since change was not forthcoming from within, it was only a matter of time before it would be imposed from without. When that change eventually did come in 2011, it was dramatic, regressive and discriminatory.

While participatory democracy was finally extended to those living in Hamilton, the city’s business owners – who pay the majority of the taxes – found themselves summarily stricken from the voter rolls by Parliamentary decree. The cynical disenfranchisement of Hamilton’s business base – its job creators and entrepreneurs – did not so much rectify an historic injustice, as it did tilt an already uneven playing field in the opposite direction.

The subsequent election of Team Hamilton on a franchise so limited and unrepresentative as to almost invalidate the very concept of free and fair elections, has ushered in a period when the Corporation has become a byword for ineptitude and near-incoherence.

A former Mayor has said, correctly, the current Corporation has “thrown away its credibility -- whether it was with the clothing allowance, the iPads and iPhones or the $800,000-plus set aside for the Members in this year’s budget, the $100,000 wasted on a trip to Colombia to whip up business for Hamilton, the undisclosed amount for the US Stock Exchange visit, or the 262-year lease on the waterfront.”

A damning Ombudsman’s report cataloguing numerous examples of malfeasance, abuse of power and systemic misconduct has since been greeted by City Hall with the same bemused indifference a group of high school delinquents might demonstrate to the performance appraisal of a school guidance officer, further hardening public opinion against the Corporation.

While a growing number of Bermudians may sympathise with threats emanating from the Home Affairs Ministry to effectively dissolve the Corporation, replacing it with an appointed board of administrators, such a move would actually compound the errors of the last Government, not redress them.

Clearly there is an overriding need to staunch the ongoing hemorrhaging of Corporation funds, to end the frivolous lawsuits being filed to hamper outside scrutiny, and to impose some semblance of order on its increasingly bewildering affairs. But the We-Must-Destroy-The-Corporation-In-Order-To-Save-It logic invoked by the Home Affairs Minister is both nihilistic, and short-sighted, to the point of folly.

The Corporation of Hamilton is a statutory body which exists at the pleasure of Parliament, so Government would be fully within its right to act. However, nullifying this elected body, even on a temporary basis, would set an appalling precedent. It’s one that could all too easily be invoked in future to justify permanently absorbing the Corporation’s finances, landholdings and activities into the relevant Government departments by Parliamentary fiat (something the Opposition has already pledged to do if returned to office).

Despite Team Hamilton’s serial mismanagement, and deliberate provocations of late, the One Bermuda Alliance should be more intent on enhancing the abridged democratic process within the City of Hamilton, not abolishing it altogether.

Even in so small a jurisdiction as Bermuda, there are numerous practical advantages to maintaining an independent Corporation, and avoiding the further concentration of power in an already bloated, sometimes woefully inefficient, central administration.

To think otherwise would be to risk throwing away the OBA’s credibility in precisely the same way Team Hamilton has.