election, its chairman Charles Jeffers said last night.

However Mr. Jeffers said just two or three NLP MPs could mean the Party held the balance of power in the House of Assembly.

The Party recently held a "dinner and discussion'' when between 30 and 40 NLP members met to start planning for the next election, which must be held before October next year.

At the meeting Party leaders appealed for more people to join to help canvas in constituencies, raise funds and stand as candidates.

"At the moment we have about ten people who say provisionally that they will be candidates, but we have stated we want between 15 and 20,'' said Mr.

Jeffers.

"In the next three or four weeks we will also determine which constituencies will have our priority and we will start working in them to get support,'' he added.

Mr. Jeffers said the meeting was the first of the year for the NLP and was primarily a social function.

He said they discussed the state of Bermuda's economy and agreed that attention should still be focused on the tourism industry.

"We did also talk about what we needed to do for the next election and the need for more people to work in constituencies, fund raisers and candidates.

"We did talk about our strategy for the election and we were encouraged by people's enthusiasm. Really, we put ourselves on an election footing,'' added Mr. Jeffers.

"Although we want to field up to 20 candidates, we realise that if we were to get three or four seats in the House of Assembly we could hold the balance of power,'' he said.