before a General Election is yet another blow to the troubled United Bermuda Party.

Dr. Terceira insists that the resignation was planned and that there is no anger or controversy and that he leaves his party without rancour. Dr.

Terceira celebrated his seventieth birthday last month and says that in 1984 he made a decision to retire when he was 70.

The problem is that just about no-one will believe him.

Dr. Terceira is a sensible man and it should be clear to anyone that if he had decided in 1984 to retire at 70 he would have moved the date forward just a little and gone when his running mate Dr. David Dyer retired only a few months ago thus sparing his Pembroke West constituency two by-elections. That is what the party might have expected from a senior minister.

Now it must be almost unthinkable to the party faithful in Pembroke West that they have to undergo another by-election in the wake of one which was not as satisfactory for the UBP as it might have been. And this is happening so that Dr. Terceira can retire "without rancour'' during the months just before what promises to be a very difficult election for his party to win. That will make no sense to the party workers. It makes no sense to the party which will have to find a candidate and will be a nightmare if someone forces a primary in this safe UBP seat.

Clearly if Dr. Terceira had planned to retire at 70 he did not do so and is already a month or so past that date. Surely it would not have been too difficult to announce that he was not going to stand again, allow his party to choose a candidate, and just ride along until the election, thus sparing his party, his district and his campaign workers yet another election.

At this rate the constituency will have three elections in the space of a year. No politician who has served as long as Dr. Terceira does that to his party or his district. It just does not happen without cause.

There are reports of deep divisions in the Cabinet which, of course, everyone will now loudly deny. Given Dr. Terceira's background and political history, he is unlikely to have been at all happy with the going of Colin Coxall. Since he is known to be a man of honesty and integrity, he will not have been at all happy with the implications of the actions of some of his Cabinet colleagues in recent months. He is not a man with whom the continuing McDonald's horror show would sit well.

Perhaps Dr. Terceira is just fed up and can no longer stand being part of an unseemly political circus. If that is the case, he will have a good deal of public sympathy.