14 August, 2014

Dear Sir,

One Bermuda Alliance MP Susan Jackson’s opinion piece, where she criticises the article “its Groundhog Day every day in Bermuda politics” misses the point, or perhaps she just does not understand a few very important things.

She says: “It has at its root the admirable notion that every citizen should have an equal say in the way his country is run.

“How that works differs from country to country, but most democracies have a two-party system of one type or another.”

Precisely Ms Jackson, but this is where the style we have doesn’t work; I am saddened by this young politician particularly since the One Bermuda Alliance at least was announced to be entering the arena with a new political vision.

First let’s understand that a vote is a proxy and represents each individual’s right to stand in parliament transferred to a representative.

1. Tell me how does each individual’s right get served when it’s not the electorate but a caucus that decides who the representative is?

2. How is everyone’s say having effect when an individual cannot propose legislation through a proposition?

3. How is this issue of equal say served when a group or even mass of individuals cannot create a referendum?

4. How is every individual having equal say when the premier calls the Election Day?

5. How is every individual having an equal say when they have no say in deciding the leader of the country?

6. How does everyone have equal say when even their representative doesn’t have freedom of speech or protection for her/his political opinion?

The current mode of operand for political parties effectively gives parties the ultimate of control, and usurps the right of individuals.

That doesn’t mean that party politics is no good, it’s the rules that need to be modified in order to create freedoms and empowerment of the electorate.

Unfortunately power blinds, and absolute power absolutely blinds persons. “I’m in the boat pull up the ladder now”.

The author of the article she criticised, was not glorifying the idea of a national government, he was saying that what we have isn’t working, and we need to move in a direction that pulls people out of this dogfight into a format that brings us together, but more to the point of “getting outside of the box”.

I would have thought that instead of affirming what we have, a young leader like Ms Jackson would have drawn on more enlightened approaches that exist in various styles of democracy, with the view of suggesting how we may extract from them to incorporate those approaches into ours.

What she has done in her article by supporting our current partisan style, had nothing to do with upholding everyone having equal say, but in fact to celebrate a glorified right to rule after winning a general election and thereafter a contest to see who rules best.

KHALID WASI