recent months courting the international companies who are resident in Bermuda. The PLP needed to do that because it has a reputation for being unfriendly to the international company sector. Today those companies produce about half of Bermuda's cash. Indeed, the PLP should have been courting them.

The problem is that the PLP then produced its platform, "A Plan for the 90s''. That platform gave very little comfort and very little encouragement to international companies.

The PLP platform heading, "International Business'' , is only three paragraphs long. It says very little. In it the PLP, which has promised previously to limit the number of cabinet ministries, advocates setting up a Ministry of International Business. That means an expanded Civil Service to create a whole new government department. It would also require international business regulations which may make companies wary.

It is not unusual for the PLP to be heavily divided over policy. Generally the left wing takes over between elections and the more moderate members dominate at election time in an effort to attract voters. Clearly the left wing PLP leaders have great party power and the moderates have little control.

We think the party must have had serious debates over international company policy. Perhaps that is why it took so long to produce a platform. It looks to us as if the moderate wing of the PLP must have lost out to more radical politicians.

We can't believe that people like Mr. Terry Lister, PLP candidate and campaign co-chairman, easily agreed to the platform as it applies to international companies. Nothing upsets Bermuda's resident international companies more than any suggestion that they might have problems with work permits for their key people. They cannot compete or function well without the key people and they will leave if they cannot work well and comfortably in Bermuda. Yet the PLP "Plan For The 90s'' says that the PLP will "mandate that the number of work permit renewals will be further limited''. Note that the PLP policy applies to people who are already here because it says "work permit renewals will be further limited''.

Yet only days ago Mr. Lister attempted to reassure international companies, and the voters, by advocating in a speech that there should be 2,000 more international companies and an increase to 8,000 work permits.

So where is the PLP? We think it is split.

The difference of opinion must be very confusing for the companies which produce half Bermuda's income. These companies are vital to Bermuda and all Bermudians. Surely it is folly to make companies uncomfortable. They are here because it is convenient for them to be here and because it is comfortable for them, and not because they have to be here.

Plenty of other places would welcome this business just as Bermuda welcomed it when the government of Sir Lynden Pindling drove it out of the Bahamas.