Governor Sir John Vereker played it strictly by the rules during the three-day leadership tussle in the aftermath of the General Election.

And he said it would have been “very unlikely” that he would have called another election had the Progressive Labour Party leadership deliberations remained in stalemate.

Last month's general elections and subsequent events which led to Jennifer Smith losing the Premiership had shown that Bermuda has a very robust constitution and a mature system, the Governor said in an hour-long interview yesterday.

“I take no position of course on the outcome of the elections. I take no position on the outcome of a leadership struggle within a political party,” he said.

“But I certainly take the position that the Constitution, the new constituency boundary arrangements, the electoral law, the behaviour of individuals - all stood up very well under this particularly intense scrutiny. I think it bodes well for Bermuda in the future. I think there is every reason to suppose that Bermuda has a rather mature constitutional system.”

And he revealed that out of respect for Bermuda's history of self government, he was determined to avoid a situation where he would have had to assume executive powers.

“It would have been, wouldn't it, a retrograde step, if a Governor from London was holding the reins of power over all the Ministries for 24 hours,” the Governor said. “The permanent secretaries reporting to me - that isn't right. Now obviously for 24 hours with a sensible Governor, it wouldn't have mattered. And I would have been extremely sensible in taking the minimum number of decisions. But 24 hours can become 48 and 48 can become a week and then you have got a new constitutional position which I was quite anxious to avoid. I ‘m not anxious to accumulate power here. My job is to make sure that things run properly not to take power.”

High political drama ensued when it emerged immediately after the PLP's second electoral victory, that half of the party's 22 winning MPs were refusing to endorse then Premier Jennifer Smith or serve in her cabinet.

But, while many pundits and commentators saw a major crisis, and PLP members were at each other's throats for a full 72 hours, heads were cool at Government House.

“I think one of the main things I want to put across is that, throughout this whole process, there wasn't as much uncertainty as many people were suggesting there was that weekend about the nature of the constitutional position,” he said.

“As far as I was concerned the Premier was the Premier and the Government was the Government until such time as she chose not to be and at that point I would appoint someone else. And it was never to me difficult or confusing, except when I listened to the chat shows and I got confused.”

He said: “There was never a constitutional crisis. The Constitution of Bermuda is well written in this respect. It copes very well with these kinds of circumstances.”

Sir John said he would have been loathe to intervene had the PLP not been able to agree on its leadership and would have given them more time.

Had the PLP needed more time, he said, Ms Smith's government would have remained in place, until the party made a decision.

“But there is the other scenario which is when she comes to me and says ‘I'm resigning'. There's a little noticed bit in the Constitution which says that anybody can resign if they want to - you can't stop her resigning,” he continued.

“What would happen then? Actually the answer to that is rather nice. Which is under section 56 of the Constitution all the executive power reverts to the Governor. So we would have had a situation in which although in theory there is no Government the executive authority would have rested in me until we had a Government.”

But Sir John said that he was not “keen” on that scenario - a position underscored by his request to Ms Smith that her resignation, when it did come, be effective the next day.

“It would be a retrograde step for Bermuda for the Governor to be exerting executive authority for any length of time. When the Premier came to see me to talk about her resignation, which was on a Monday, I asked to agree that this was not going to be effective until the following day. So there was not even a day where I had to take over executive decisions. So we managed it in such a way that there was no hiatus.”

While he had many informal discussions over the weekend of July 25, the Governor said his role only kicked in when Ms Smith offered her resignation.

“You'd be surprised at the number of occasions in which the right thing for a Governor to do is nothing,” Sir John said.

“Governors need to keep their finger on the pulse, inform themselves of what might happen and be sure about the constitutional position. Actually intervening to say it's now time to do something else - that needs to happen rather rarely.”

And he said there had been no communication to him from those PLP MPs who were dissatisfied with the former Premier.

“There was no other formal communication to me from the PLP. Nor should there have been. The constitution is silent about the members of the PLP except it talks about the Premier able to command the majority of the House of Assembly.”

On the widely reported possibility that Bermuda may have had to go to the polls again, Sir John said that he would likely not have consented to that.

“We'd just had an election. One party came out with a clear and convincing majority, there was no challenge to the election. It was in my view a very good democratic process with virtually 100 percent registration, 75 percent turnout and if anybody had come to me saying, ‘I think, Governor, there's a stalemate here and we should have another election', I would have said no, for some time. I would have said go away and come back when you have decided which of you can command the confidence of your colleagues.”

And asked how much time he would have given the PLP, he said: “It could have lasted for quite a long time, because, remember, if I had decided to dissolve the parliament which had not yet reconvened, if I had decided to go for another dissolution and have another election, and that would have taken weeks, it would have been hugely unpopular and very expensive - and unnecessary. So while I heard lots of interesting talk and speculation that weekend about how the Governor is facing down the long dark tunnel of constitutional crisis and nobody knew what was going on and he was going to have to call another election, I never for one moment thought I was going to call another election.”

He said he had considered all possible scenarios in the lead up to the election and one of the most difficult ones would have been had the Premier lost her seat and there had been a electoral tie.

“That's a really tricky one because if the Premier loses her seat, she loses her office and if the Premier loses her office, the Ministers lose their offices. And if the election was then tied, it's not at all clear that you've got a government in charge.”

“In general, my objective would be to end up with a stable administration of some authority and not to have the uncertainty and cost and instability involved in extra elections. But I want to emphasise that there wasn't, in any event, a problem. The constitution is pretty robust.”