The Progressive Labour Party has celebrated ten years in power this month, marking the decade since November 9, 1998 with a variety of events.

Any government anywhere that survives for a decade deserves credit; parties do not stay in power this long without doing something right.

And the PLP has some signal achievements to its name. On the constitutional front, the move from the old system of dual-seat constituencies to single seats was a major achievement. Perfect it ain't, but few would dispute that it is a fairer system than its predecessor.

The abolition of capital punishment, albeit not strictly a partisan development, was a welcome step forward and removed a major area of tension in the community and in the courts.

On other social issues, notably the continued lack of a bar on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the Government has failed to live up to its progressive name.

The major concern for the PLP on coming to power was to prove its economic credentials, and for the most part, especially in the early years, it accomplished this, particularly in the way it worked through the economic downturn afer the September 11 terrorist attacks.

More latterly, the jury is inevitably out. Much will depend on how Bermuda survives the current global economic crisis. But there must be concerns that the jump in Government spending in the last two or three years may make a bad situation worse.

To be frank, the PLP has been decidedly schizophrenic in its attitude to international business. It often seems to regard the sector, and the large number of people it has brought to these shores, as a necessary evil, something to be endured rather than welcomed. That attitude may still cost the Island.

Tourism ranks as one of the most uneven areas of PLP policy; the late David Allen's 100-day turnaround turned into a three-year nosedive from which Bermuda has yet to fully recover. Premier Dr. Ewart Brown's "turnaround" since becoming Minister has stalled this year, in part because of circumstances out of Bermuda's control, but it can be argued that the recovery was overhyped.

And education improvement, which was supposed to be one of the centrepieces of PLP administrations, has proven to be intractable. A record of seven Ministers in ten years tells its own story, and the current reform programme may now take five years to achieve – a far cry from the 12 months to marked improvement promised in the Hopkins Report.

Housing was another area that the PLP was expected to get to grips with immediately on taking office. Instead, scandal and torpor marked the PLP's early years in office and it has taken two spells in the portfolio by Sen. David Burch to get a serious building effort underway.

Ironically, the economic downturn may prove to be a blessing in disguise as prices finally flatten or even fall to more affordable levels. However, if incomes go the same way, it won't help much.

Again, after a slow start, the Government got to grips with the financial problems facing seniors, although few would dispute that they still face hardship, and the current economic downturn may affect them most deeply.

In health, Bermuda has a good but not great system. Delays in rebuilding the hospital have exacerbated the problems, but the major challenge remains spiralling costs, and the Government's still to be unveiled Future Care will have to address that for seniors. As worthy as that idea is, the cost to the ordinary consumer will be the litmus test of whether it is successful or not.

Bermuda's most fundamental challenge remains bridging divisions between blacks and whites, with the most critical of these being the wealth gap.

While it can be argued that black Bermudians now feel confident and comfortable in leadership than they did a decade ago, broader progress has not been as marked, with some of the blame for that lying in the public education sphere.

And too often, attempts to end inequities have become mired in often justified suspicions of cronyism and the like. The Economic Empowerment Zone appears to be an exception to that rule, but even it has been a long time coming.

In all, the question that all this begs is whether Bermuda is a better place than it was ten years ago. Some statistics would say it is, but it is debatable whether it is a happier one, or whether the promise of 1998 has been fulfilled.