Dear Sir,

For many years I have grown up listening to all kinds of people trying to explain and define the word democracy. Of course, as a young man coming up I was not quite sure what the ideals or principles of democracy were. I used to hear a lot of talk about the rights of certain freedoms, civil rights, voting rights and all kinds of other types of rights that were claimed to be associated to the term democracy, but it won’t be for quite a while before I got to understand just what this thing called ‘democracy’ was all about.

I was also told how Bermudians went off to fight a war all the way over in Europe to protect our so-called freedoms.

But you see Mr Editor I was born and grew up at a time when Bermuda practised blatant segregation and racism was wide open and in your face, and those who dominated both the political and economic power structure of the country were not about to make any changes until they were forced to do so (that’s if you want to call those so-called changes, changes). Because I am still not sure just what freedoms they were talking about or fighting for.

Remember it was not the people who were running the country at that time who were interested in making any real democratic changes, only the people who were negatively affected by the lack of those changes that took up the fight.

It was my understanding that African Bermudians went off to fight in that same war but returned home to face the lack of freedoms that they were told they were fighting to protect. Mr Editor, does that sound hypocritical to you?

I’m going to educate you on something I have learnt over the many years that I spent growing up in paradise, politicians when passing legislation in the house seem never to make the picture clear enough for the lesser-educated to understand or able to see the hidden details and loopholes in whatever legislation that they are pushing.

In other words, what look like changes are not really changes at all. The fact of the matter is that the only thing that they have done is rearranged the same old deck chairs on the Titanic and nothing more. It seems today that all that we have fought for over many decades are now becoming unravelled and seems as if we will be finding ourselves fighting for those same rights all over again, what a shame, won’t you say so Mr Editor?

E. MCNEIL STOVELL

Pembroke