April 24, 2014

Dear Sir,

When I read recently in The Royal Gazette that a poll showed Ewart Brown had been considered the most “effective” Bermuda Premier since loquats, I almost choked on my hot cross bun. I thought, “Bye fet, those byes mus’ be micin’!” The interviews were held two sides of April 1st. Was it April Fool?! But no, it all seemed to be kosher: “26 percent of 419 homes (polled) said Dr Brown was the most effective Premier”, significantly more than any other Premier, over the last 10 years.

Well, ain’t that somethin’, I mused. Because “effective” covers a lot of ground. Effective at what? Gandhi was effective at mobilising the Indian population towards independence. Mandela was effective at bringing down Apartheid (among many other things). But so, too, was Nixon effective at lying through his teeth.

Ewart Brown was clearly influenced, even inspired by his experience of living in Jamaica in his formative early years, and in the United States later on for twenty or so years, with all the Caribbean and American influences that that implied, including racial discrimination derived from a genuine plantation mentality in both places. He seemed to assume that the “plantation” mentality of the Caribbean and the United States applied equally to racial discrimination in Bermuda which was, in fact, never a plantation economy (it always has been and continues to be a predominantly mercantile economy).

Brown’s response was to confront the situation in Bermuda (and racial issues in particular) as an assumed and imported “plantation” inheritance — which it was not; for historical and demographic differences, it was much more complex than that. Apart from the basic fact that this was Bermuda and not Jamaica or the United States; the situation called for “Bermudian” solutions, not imported interpretations. At that time Bermuda needed a Premier matured in the soleras of indigenous wines redolent of local terroir, long on the palate and reliably drinkable. What Bermuda got was a Premier of blended imported wines, tart and tannic, sharp on the palate, and with a distinctly acidic aftertaste — and possibly corked.

Ewart Brown has always been, in his own word, “confrontational”. Nothing wrong with that. What mattered, though, was not THAT he was (and is) confrontational but HOW he was confrontational. He confronted racial problems in Bermuda in particular with a perception of division rather than differentiation. Racial distinctions in Bermuda served Brown to wedge them further apart to his advantage in his style of “payback” politics.

Whether this style served anyone else is arguable. What it did not do was exploit the diversity of resources and experiences of the whole Bermuda community to the benefit of all Bermudians and Bermuda herself. Its foundations were grounded in the divisions of the past rather than illuminated by a vision of unity for the future.

Brown was probably the most divisive Bermuda Premier since — well, at least since loquats, and maybe even since pawpaws. And the reason he was divisive was because his personality and upbringing tainted his political persona to such a degree that it blinkered him to confrontational rather than consensual leadership.

Three characteristics, in my opinion, underpinned, underwrote and ultimately undermined Brown’s premiership: one, the thrall of power, which served, two, his instinct for “payback”, towards, three, his infatuation with a legacy of self-aggrandisement. Character was the ballast of Brown’s Premiership. And the displacement and imbalance of character, as in all good Greek tragedies, was what capsized him in the end.

But to return to the poll results. It’s notable that “31 percent (of homes polled) said no Premier over the last 10 years had been effective” and “16 percent just didn’t know” (ie, had no opinion one way or the other). So almost half of all the people polled actually thought that there had been no “effective” leadership in Bermuda for the last ten years. That more than anything, combined with Brown’s poll results, was the clearest indication of Bermuda’s leadership status — some might say vacuum.

Sincerely,

Graham Faiella

London, UK