GPS or no GPS? That?s the question. But it?s not the issue. If you look past the Press conferences, the posturing and the adverts and focus on the protests, you?ll see something much deeper than GPS driving (pardon the pun) this dispute. The Government portrays the conflict as one with an industry that is reluctant to modernise and improve its service. However, the placards and angry shouts outside Parliament and the Cabinet Office last week cut to the core of what is really going on.

The cabbies don?t trust the Scott Government. They question its motives and don?t see them as an honest partner in the process. They?re suspicious that they?re being misled and deceived. This is completely understandable.

On July 27, 2003 Dr. Ewart Brown ? the man also coincidentally at the centre of the GPS dispute ? delivered perhaps the most infamous line in Bermuda?s political history. ?We misled you because we had to?? the Minister proclaimed in justification of his leading role in the coup of Premier Jennifer Smith, only minutes after she?d led her party to only its second (successive) election victory.

It?s not surprising then the taxi owners are wary, not inflexible, as the Minister would have you believe. Put yourself in the shoes of an industry that are obliged to negotiate with the prime misleader. Is it any wonder that they?re mistrustful, wondering publicly whether they?re negotiating with someone in good faith or are being deceived?

So while the Premier and his deputy, protected by Police from the very working-class Bermudians who helped to elect them, argued with 300 people outside Parliament the real issue went unmentioned ? unless you listened to the shouts of the assembled drivers. The issue is trust.

The mistrust toward the Premier and his Deputy was palpable. Comparisons to Fidel Castro were raised, the Government was accused of running a dictatorship and Bermuda?s leaders were labelled as ?wicked? and ?weak?. Anger and resentment over the system?s financial ties to a PLP backbencher bubbled over. Accusations were even voiced about the Minister himself and whether he would profit from the implementation of GPS dispatching. Are these claims valid? Who knows?

It?s difficult to fault the industry for its worries. The Transport Minister, who became increasingly cagey about the GPS system as the election approached, might again be hoodwinking them. This lack of confidence in the integrity of the negotiations is understandable when new conditions are attached regularly and without warning. The taxi owners undoubtedly feel let down by a Government many of them worked to elect in 1998, and may have given the benefit of the doubt to again in 2003.

On a larger scale the PLP have betrayed the confidence of the electorate with scandals at the Bermuda Housing Corporation, Berkeley, Stonington Hotel, the Transport Minister?s sale of his house to the BHC, the allocation of Airport advertising contracts and other unresolved dealings. The Government has sullied its reputation by cavorting with a notorious dictator while the spectre of cronyism looms when a Government MP stands to benefit financially from this legislation. It?s no wonder then that the insistence on mandatory GPS implementation arouses suspicions.

The fact that the sunshine of public scrutiny is yet to come anywhere near these scandals, and the failure to hold anyone accountable, have contributed to this stand-off. Like its predecessor, the Scott administration has rapidly developed a reputation as dictatorial, arrogant, and untrustworthy. Couple these with a Minister who maintains that deception is a valid weapon in his arsenal, and you have a Government teetering on the brink of impotency.

The Scott Government has made its own bed and now it has to sleep in it. This Cabinet lacks the credibility of an electoral mandate, a vision or most importantly the community?s trust. The self-inflicted crisis of confidence and credibility, less than a year into a five-year term, isn?t unexpected. This hastily assembled compromise Cabinet is finding it increasingly difficult to govern because of the prior actions and statements of its Ministers.

Don?t be fooled into thinking that this dispute will be an isolated incident. It?s just one of many battles to come, fuelled by the mistrust of a Government founded on a campaign of deception.