Bermuda residents have not just the right but the duty to question received opinions, especially when they seem to favour the powerful or lazily attempt to justify the manifestly unjust.

And politicians, of course, believe they have the concurrent right to hijack and exploit any and all such legitimate concerns for partisan leverage.

Politicians along with their hangers-on and propagandists routinely misrepresent their motivations when it comes to the grass-roots issues and anxieties they occasionally seize on and move to the front burner. The fact is public concerns tend to be interpreted and manipulated by politicians based not on their merits but on whatever perceived power-political advantage they might provide. Electoral gamesmanship, not problem solving, tends to be the primary consideration and the right issues can end up front and centre for entirely the wrong reasons.

While there are, of course, genuine philosophical and policy differences between Bermuda’s parties, principle enters into the vote-winning equation far less often than most would care to believe. In the zero-sum, winner-take-all-game that is the two-party Bermuda political system, one in which votes are sought after as anxiously as oases in the Sahara, the disruption and unnecessary divisiveness this constant jockeying for electoral advantage causes cannot be overstated.

In an essentially centrist political environment like Bermuda’s, where the two parties are virtually as indistinguishable as grains of sand at Horseshoe Bay, even the most seemingly non-contentious issues risk becoming highly politicised if it is believed they can serve one or the other party’s goals at the polling booth. Short term electoral expediency has a long, unhappy history of trumping carefully considered long term solutions in Bermuda. This will always be the case as long as Bermuda continues to dress itself in the borrowed (and singularly ill-fitting) robes of the British two-party Westminster political system.

And once misleading generalisations, politically motivated exaggerations and ugly stereotypes are substituted for the specifics of any particular issue, the real matters at hand are instantly obscured by fogs of self-serving misinformation.

When it comes to the growing imbroglio surrounding those Permanent Residents who may now be eligible for Bermuda status because of a loophole in existing legislation, it should be remembered that immigration policy – even at the best of times – is far from being the least contentious issue on the Island.

There are, of course, longstanding public concerns that Bermuda status has routinely been used by both United Bermuda Party and Progressive Labour Party Governments to manipulate the electoral rolls in their favour (one by engaging in widespread hand-outs of status, the other by delaying grants to eligible spouses of Bermudians).

Add in the trauma of abrupt joblessness many have experienced in recent years, the lingering prospect of underemployment and unemployment in the current straitened economic times and some resentment at the idea of adding “paper Bermudians” to the population when a fair few born Bermudians are still scrambling to provide for their families, and you have a potentially combustible situation. It’s one which could all too easily become a flashpoint for increased social and racial tensions given the supercharged atmosphere of suspicion surrounding the issue

The Opposition has re-embraced what might be termed its traditional protectionist stance on the question, engaging in some bellicose theatrics and overblown public statements which have been neither necessary nor helpful (all the while dodging responsibility for creating the legal loophole at the centre of the controversy in the first place). Government, meanwhile, has adopted an entirely nonchalant approach, referring the matter to the courts for judicial review and taking such a muted position on the possible outcomes it has effectively invited the often wild speculation now rushing to fill the informational vacuum.

Neither approach is acceptable, not given the common perception that Bermuda’s immigration system has been systematically abused to ensure pre-determined political outcomes over the years.

The Opposition is cheerfully feeding off such concerns, the Government is giving it free rein to do so and the overriding need to introduce a sense of balance and fairness into the process as Bermuda moves forward is being entirely neglected.

Problem solving in the form of a comprehensive approach to immigration policy driven by bipartisan consensus is what we need at this juncture, not further partisan gamesmanship.