I have been observing the events that have transpired over the last week with the resignation of Jamahl Simmons from the UBP and his charges of racism, which have been supported by David Dunkley.

While I have very little sympathy for what these gentlemen have been through or are going through, what they have stated is nothing different from what many of us have been stating about the UBP for a very long time now, yet they failed to take heed. Could it be that they were simply political opportunists looking to get ahead with the party that has historically attracted blacks who were looking to do just that?

Many have stated that David Dunkley’s assertions have nothing to do with the UBP, I disagree because those whom Mr. Dunkley has singled out, his neighbours in Fairylands, are UBP financial supporters and it just goes to show that the UBP will accept, allow and tolerate racism as long as those guilty of such are supporting the party in a financial way.

What I find odd is the deafening silence of the other black UBP MPs and Senators. Surely if the statements made by Mr. Simmons and Mr. Dunkley are not valid these members should be very strongly defending the party. Where are the voices of Jon Brunson, Gina Spence-Farmer, Kim Swan, etc.? These persons do not hesitate to take the PLP to task, yet when their own party has been labelled as racist in the public domain we hear nothing from them. Can we assume they feel the same way?

What I also find rather amusing is that these claims of racism are coming from the Shadow Minister of Race Relations. If this is what he has been experiencing why, via his portfolio, has he never addressed the issue of race?

If he could not address racism within his own party how could he be expected to address it within Bermuda society as a whole? Maybe the creation of this Shadow Ministry was for no other reason than to hoodwink the electorate into believing the UBP truly wanted to address the issue of race.

Further, if race is such an important issue to the UBP then it should feel no need to have a black leader in order to have a chance to win an election, it should be very comfortable having who it feels is the right person for the position, irrespective of that person’s race.

Included in his comments this week, UBP leader Wayne Furbert states that he tries very hard to get blacks to join and support the UBP but if the UBP truly reflected Bermuda’s society would it not automatically attract black members and supporters? Many have criticised the PLP for not trying to attract white support but surely a political party support does not come from solicitation as much as it does from its political ideology.

The PLP has never excluded whites. Whites, generally, have simply chosen not to join the PLP because in the past the white supporters and members have been ostracised by the white community. Further, as has been stated before, integration in Bermuda has historically been a one-way street, that is, blacks have stepped out of their comfort zones to enter traditionally white establishments, not the other way around.

The PLP has never been a party to openly attempt to solicit membership, black or white, instead the party lays out its views and positions and those who support those views and positions join and/or support the party. Personally, I was never solicited by the PLP but my support of the party is due to the party having philosophies and positions that I agree with and the fact that the party has been unafraid of addressing the issues facing Bermuda, even if it meant losing some votes.

When I first returned home from university I was fairly aggressively solicited by the UBP to join its ranks and I joined via Leaders of Tomorrow, at the time the youth wing of the UBP. My stay was not very long because I quickly realised why I had been solicited, I was a young, educated and outspoken black male, which is exactly what the UBP needed long term in order to retain the seat of Government.

I cannot say I regret joining because it truly was an eye opening experience for me as it gave me much insight to the workings of the UBP. My time there also allowed me to witness firsthand why some blacks joined the party — for economic advancement. Something I have found extremely distasteful is the assertion by Sir John Swan that the UBP struggles to get quality candidates because businesses are less inclined to allow their professionals to run for politics, whereas the PLP is made up of the self-employed and the un-employed.

Sir John conveniently forgets that Mr. Terry Lister was one of the first black partners in a big accounting firm; he forgets that Ms Paul Cox is in senior management within the international business sector; he forgets that Dr. Ewart Brown is an accomplished physician, Randy Horton and Dale Butler have been hailed as quality educators and that Wayne Perinchief had a stellar career in the Bermuda Police Service.

I would be very interested to have Sir John state which PLP MP or Senator is unemployed. Is Sir John stating that quality candidates can only come from the professional arena?

Was Sir John, himself, not self-employed while he held political office? Is Wayne Furbert, the current leader of the UBP not self-employed? How about Michael Dunkley or Grant Gibbons?

Actually, maybe Sir John’s comments reconfirm that the UBP only represents the business interest and continues to ignore the working class Bermudian, who makes up the majority of the Bermuda workforce, which also accounts for the majority of the vote.

Maybe the UBP cannot find quality candidates because it ignores the working class and only wants those who reflect the UBP imagine, high income earners, when some of the best candidates can come from the working class as they have a better understanding of the average Bermudian, black or white, than does the person who is considered an economic success.

The UBP and its supporters accuse the PLP of being a one race party, however, from an economic perspective the PLP is fully representative of the economic make-up of Bermuda, from working class to the so-called economic elite, whereas the UBP is only representative of the economic elite.

Clearly racism, while still alive in Bermuda, is now outpaced by classism and no party is so reflective of classism than is the UBP. So, now I ask you, when looking at it from that perspective, which party best reflects the make-up of the population of Bermuda?

On his web site, Mr. Christian Dunleavy states that the PLP has had to endure 30 years and nine election defeats and in contrast the UBP has lost two elections in 8 years. He claims that the political records contrast each other.

Well, Mr. Dunleavy, the UBP was very good at manipulating the electorate based on race, which is what you very regularly accuse the PLP of doing. That is why the UBP was able to hold on to the Government for such a long period of time.

The UBP historically used scare tactics to win elections, it made comments that if the PLP was elected the international business community would pack its bags and leave and that the Bermuda economy would go down the drain.

This was done using race because although the UBP never came out and said the words what they meant was that a black political party could not govern Bermuda. Fortunately, Mr. Dunleavy, we blacks are now much more educated, which means that we are no longer so gullible as to believe the tactics of the UBP. Those tactics stopped being effective in the lead up to the 1998 election.

Besides, under the PLP Government, the Bermuda economy has continued to flourish and now leads the world in per capita GDP. Also Bermuda is getting closer, under the PLP leadership, to re-emerging as a competitive tourist destination, an industry, which by the way, was pushed into non-existence, to a large degree, by the UBP and its Bermuda Inc. concept.

Think about it, a re-emerging tourist industry will provide some diversification to the Bermuda economy and the lesser educated will again have the ability to earn a very good living.

Mr. Dunleavy has the audacity to label the commentary of Rolfe Commissiong as tripe because it is partisan, while we have yet to see anything Mr. Dunleavy writes be even remotely critical of the UBP. There have been many occasions where Mr. Commissiong and a number of we PLP supporters who have been publicly critical of the PLP, yet most outspoken PLP supporters are labelled as blind followers. Oh the irony of it all.

Mr. Dunleavy and his UBP cohorts will label anything that is contrary to the UBP to be tripe because they want us to believe that the UBP has no faults, in their view faults represent weakness.

Sure many will say that Bermuda reached the per capita GDP pinnacle despite the PLP yet they will not hesitate to give all the credit to the UBP for the economic growth experienced by Bermuda during its tenure as Government.

Could that not also be stating that a black Government, which is what the PLP is labelled as, simply got lucky? Again, I will say that we black folk are not as na|0xef|ve as we once were so the UBP truly needs to bring a new agenda to the table. The problem for the UBP is that the above mentioned tactics were effective for so long that it has not figured out how to win an election without using them.

In closing, I want the electorate to take a very close look at what has transpired this past week and truly consider if what we have witnessed from the UBP is an anomaly or if it is simply the truth within the party finally being exposed. How different is the “New UBP” from the original UBP? I guess it just goes to show that you can change the packaging but if you don’t also change the ingredients you really have changed nothing.

GUILDEN M. GILBERT, JR.

Nassau, Bahamas