Dear Sir,

I have been speaking to my friends on both sides of the House.

It is certainly not a nice time to be a politician or to be in politics, or even to be a voter watching the carnage.

Between never-ending social-media attacks towards our elected officials, inter-party accusations, personal threats and gutter politics, my question to you is why would anyone even consider serving their country? Herein also lies a significant “national” problem.

The purpose of this letter, Mr Editor, is to point out that never-ending negative attacks scare away badly needed new, electable talent.

Consider the following: to begin with, Bermuda’s numeric pool of talent to fill 36 parliamentary seats is already very limited, as most people choose to pursue a life career that suits their abilities and likes. Additionally, very few people actually grow up aspiring to serve their country as politicians.

The point being that the available political talent pool in Bermuda is very small to begin with, but is also getting smaller by our own hostile negativity.

In this negative public environment, there is a significant challenge to attract caring and capable individuals with the varied skills that are required successfully to drive the country forward with meaningful change.

We will always need fresh talent with vision and leadership skills, capable of bringing positive legislation forward that will serve all Bermudians.

These skills include informed candidates with community connection skills that require listening, understanding, consensus building, planning, interaction and a bias for action.

Then there are the formal abilities that are needed by governing parties to enact policy change. Country stewardship requires elected representatives with multiple skills in team building, strategy development, international finance, budgeting, legal, modelling, analytics, communication and more. These are serious talent requirements.

So we need to do all that we can to encourage public service by energetic and capable persons with diverse skills and abilities.

Meanwhile, maybe we can consider offering thanks, praise and acknowledgement to all those that are already willing to serve our country.

BERMUDIAN BUSINESSMAN