New community focus groups sponsored by Government have come under attack for their “inappropriately political” content.

The initiative, commissioned by the Department of Communication and Information and organised by local marketing research agency Research.bm, is designed to bring a broad cross-section of Bermudians together to discuss a range of community issues from housing to health care, providing a “vehicle through which Government can listen directly to the people and acquaint itself with their thoughts” according to DCI Director Beverle Lottimore.

People are contacted at random by Research.bm staff and asked a series of “screening questions” before being offered $100 to participate.

As is usually the case with focus groups world-wide, all those with vested interests in the topics being discussed - in this case anybody who has worked for a political party, the civil service or the media - is automatically excluded.

And while one participant contacted by The Royal Gazette yesterday said in general the discussions were “constructive and informative”, the individual joined a number of others in voicing strong concerns over having been asked specific questions about Premier Alex Scott and the Progressive Labour Party.

The two tasks which raised the participant's ire were “Rate the Premier's performance on a scale of 1-5” and “Use one word to describe how the party is doing”.

“The whole experience was educational and worthwhile,” the participant said.

“And had we spent the whole evening discussing purely community issues then that would have been fine. But I really did feel the questions relating to the performance of the Premier and his party were inappropriate. They came completely out of the blue and accomplished very little in my opinion. Those questions just didn't fit into what we had been talking about all evening.”

But Mrs. Lottimore vigorously defended the questions last night, arguing that as the leader of the country the Premier needs to be made aware of the public's perception of his performance and policies so that he can move, “in the interests of the country”, to address any areas of profound concern.

Asked whether she thought it would be more appropriate to spend PLP funds rather than tax-payers' dollars on an exercise which in part seeks to assess the performance of the Premier and his governing party, Mrs. Lottimore was unequivocal in her response.

“When the Premier wakes up in the morning he does not go to the offices of the PLP but rather to Cabinet office to deal with the affairs of Government and the country,” she said.

“He is the leader of our country, the one we look up to for direction and the one we are going to hold accountable. If he is doing something the public does not approve of, somebody needs to let him know.”

“As sophisticated as this country is,” Mrs. Lottimore continued, “there is no vehicle through which the Government can communicate directly with the people. Our only means of contact is via the media, but through the filtering process something is always lost and sometimes the message is unbalanced and slanted. The public deserves better than that and (through the focus groups) I hope they will receive better than that.”

Mrs. Lottimore said the feedback she had been receiving from the exercise was “generally positive” and revealed a full report on the findings of the focus groups would be complete by the end of February.

Pressed on whether the report would be made public at that time, particularly given that it has been funded by the taxpayer, Mrs. Lottimore said the groups were “originally designed” to provide Government with feedback and that she “could not give a clear answer” to whether the findings would be released into the public domain.