Party -- a newspaper in Virginia! The Richmond Times-Dispatch, with a circulation of 214,000, said in a December 2 editorial that the UBP victory spared Bermuda a sorry fate.

"All parties tend to grow tired; rotating the crops usually is good for the land,'' the newspaper said in a piece written by Editorial Page Editor Mr.

Ross Mackenzie.

"Yet some of the best minds in Bermuda worry that a UBP loss to the PLP (Progressive Labour Party) the next time out ... would give the Island a future reminiscent of the past imposed by Linden Pindling on the Bahamas -- a contemptible and cloudy ordeal of drugs and graft from which those compelling Caribbean islands have not yet come back fully into the sun.

"Bermuda is too good -- too civil -- to deserve such a fate. The weary UBP has but a few years to rejuvenate itself and reinvigorate this gem of the ocean nearby.'' The editorial describes the Island as "glorious, remote, immaculate, lush, and hushed -- intensely expensive, its people integrated to a commendable degree and courteous almost to a fault, its coral beaches and aqua agua knocking off your socks.'' It noted the UBP had run the country for 25 years, but came close to losing in the recent election.

But in a glaring error, the newspaper said Bermuda had achieved Independence in 1968.

Mr. Todd Culbertson, the chief editorial writer for the Times-Dispatch, said Mr. Mackenzie was a regular visitor and had friends on the Island.

The paper received five telephone calls about the editorial after it ran, he said. That was well above average, particularly for an editorial about a non-local subject.

"We got calls from people who had visited Bermuda,'' Mr. Culbertson said. One woman called and asked if the editors knew who won in a particular constituency, he said.