February 14, 2002

Dear Sir,

The current Government has a lot to learn. They way they handle issues that affect the people of this country is disenchanting at best.

The comments they come up with to defend their continual inability to live up to not only their promises, but also the essential responsibilities generally expected from one's government would be quite amusing were the future of our country not in jeopardy.

Perhaps they take such a lackadaisical attitude towards running the country - which was really evident when they got into power and one of the first things they concerned themselves with was getting oversized cars - because they have forgotten they were elected. Having been elected, it is not a given they will be elected again, especially when they put their personal agendas ahead of the good of the Country. It looks like this thought has never occurred to them.

As an election will be approaching sooner rather than later we, as a country, should start to examine how involved our Government really is as opposed to how involved and effective it claims to be. The fact that, despite letters being written to the Labour Minister making him very aware that there was a good amount of dissatisfaction within the labour force, Terry Lister can say with confidence that he was "surprised and curious" after Friday's march is a disgrace.

Claiming that because so many letters are written and there is a long list of companies with complaints is no excuse not to be aware that workers from more than one company are so unhappy that they feel the need to publicly display their dissatisfaction in order to get noticed. What is he doing on a regular basis if there is such a long list of people in the labour force that are unhappy - clearly not his job. When asked if articles in the media should have indicated to him that there was unrest within parts of the labour force, he said, "If we paid attention to the media we would do a lot of crazy things".

That Terry Lister was able to tell the country that he was "surprised and curious" after claiming to be in touch with the people of this country and supposedly reading the daily paper (one would hope he reads the paper) makes me want to have an election tomorrow to have the PLP thrown out.

Amusing also was when Jennifer Smith told the people Derrick Burgess has the ability to get into contact with her at any time and him looking astonished and actually informing her that this was not the case at all. She also told the disgruntled group her door is always open. Does anyone really believe that? And let's not even go into the conflict of interest exhibited by the union president being actively involved in politics, at the Premier's side.

Seems as if our Government should band together and write a book on trickery and manipulation. Let's see how long her promised regular meetings last... I'm sure it will be just so long that she can make space in between whatever it is that she is used to doing during the day to actually tend to the people. Equally disheartening is our wonderful Tourism Minister's reasons for why tourism continues to drop. As if it mattered that rooms were out of commission - the rooms weren't needed anyway! Funny how he comes up with all these events that occurred at the tail end of tourist season (hurricanes, the tragedy of September 11, etc.) as the reason why people weren't coming in the summer months. The day to write down will be when he actually does the country a service and resigns from his post giving someone else a shot at bringing tourists back to Bermuda - at least we don't have to worry about it getting worse.

None of this, not to mention everything that occurs on a weekly basis, makes me real confident that the PLP is leading Bermuda - how about you?

JULIA KILLORAN-SMATT

Pembroke