IT has already been widely speculated that the campaign for the next General Election in Bermuda will likely be the dirtiest and most intense ever fought here. Ironically, I believe the now deposed United Bermuda Party leader Wayne Furbert was the first to publicly make this prediction. I say “ironically” because I do not think he actually anticipated how heated things would become within his own camp and how opposition to his continued leadership among his MPs would spiral out of control, costing him — seemingly to his complete surprise — his job at the UBP’s helm.In fact, some in the Progressive Labour Party marvel at Mr. Furbert’s continuing loyalty to a political party that — no matter how many statements of appreciation are made about his strength of character and noble demeanour — essentially kicked him to the curb. Even a dog will flee those who ill treat it.

To my mind, the election campaign has actually been underway for some time as is evidenced — at least from where I sit — by the presence of UBP surrogates in the various protest movements that have sprung forth recently.

First there was the campaign to block the building of a new hospital on part of the Botanical Gardens, then the emergence of a movement opposing construction of a hotel at the Southlands Estate in Warwick and, most recently, the protests against the closing of the so-called “indigent” clinic at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital (the origins of this clinic in Bermuda’s racially divided past, detailed in a Letter To The Editor by Dr. George B. McPhee — and later printed as a full page ad by Government — certainly made for interesting reading).

Of course, there will be those who are prepared to swear blindly that there is no UBP political agenda involved in these protests. But if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it is a duck (or maybe a lame duck in the UBP’s case).

In this heightened political climate it was probably a shrewd move on the part of Premier Dr. Ewart Brown not to meet with protesters opposed to the clinic’s closure who marched on the Cabinet Office.

He would only have been faced with UBP proxies who would not have lost the opportunity to harangue him and demonstrate their hostile defiance to the PLP Government.

This march on the Cabinet Office was, to my mind, simply another white riot.

In my lifetime I have witnessed three such organised rebellions by white Bermudians.

The first occured during the protracted debate to desegregate Bermuda’s public school system under the then UBP Government during the 1960s. In those days I used to spend a lot of time in the Visitors’ Gallery in the House of Assembly. And I remember almost being trampled when a horde of white parents, mostly mothers, descended on Parliament to protest the reforms on the day when they were finally approved.

The second such protest occured more recently. A largely white protest movement, again involving many UBP supporters, marched on Government House during a visit by a Foreign & Commonwealth Office to oppose the PLP Government’s plan to introduce single-seat Parliamentary constituencies without first convening a Constiutional Conference.

I was at Government House when they came marching up the hill to confront the FCO delegation, which from the outset was favourably disposed to approve the PLP’s proposal by way of an Order in Council — deeming an all-party Constitutional Conference on the issue to be unnecessary.

Although the protesters claimed they were motivated solely by the fact past precedent was not being followed when it came to this proposed change to Bermuda’s Constitution, we know what was really driving them. The UBP, for the most part, had benefitted from Bermuda’s old Parish-based, dual-seat Parliamentary system which favored voters in constituencies with small, predominantly white populations.

I was not on hand to witness the most recent protest at the Cabinet Office centred around Government’s decision to close the clinic. But on the TV coverage of the march I saw and heard loud voices talking about a so-called dictatorship in Bermuda.

Really?

If these people want to talk about dictatorships, then let them try and organise a protest march in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. There they would be lucky to be able to even begin a march before tear gas, police batons and rubber bullets (or live rounds) started descending on them like a heavy rain.

In Zimbabwe opponents of the regime will get more than bruised egos just because the leader doesn’t choose to meet with them. There they will beaten up, sent to hospital and be told in no uncertain terms by the leadership they deserved what they got and could look forward to more of the same if they publicly challenged his policies.

In the next election, the PLP will doubtless be accused of playing the so-called race card. But let me tell you what I think of this term, which essentially means using racial appeals as a trump card in the poker game that is Bermudian politics.

This phrase first entered the American idiom in the 1970s when Washington was using a system called affirmative action to try and correct some of the raial sins of that country’s past when its black population had largely been denied equal rights and equal opportunities.

Since that time whites have used the term to try and cut off both talk and action when it comes to redressing race-based social or economic injustices.

In fact, for all of the accusations levelled against black leaders when it comes to use of the race card, white politicians have demonstrated themselves to be particulalry adept in this area. “playing the race card”. For instance, during his re-election campaign in 1990 former US Senato Jesse Helms of North Carolina ran a TV ad which showed a black man taking a white man’s job. The commercial was crafted to play on white suspicions about the use of racial quotas and carried a clearly racist subliminal message.

In the Bermudian context, the next election will not be about the PLP’s supposed use of the race card but it will be centred around race. That’s because there are two dynamics currently at play in Bermudian society.

White people increasingly fear they are fated to be once-and-future victims in a Bermuda governed by the PLP while an increasing number of blacks simply don’t care what their white countrymen think — they are going to vote as a racial bloc in just the same way whites have done since the introduction of the two-party political system.

This cultural polarisation, Bermuda, is our legacy for not having dealt with the question of race in an honest and upfront manner when we had the opportunity to do so.

So the stage is set and the choices are clear.

We can either remain at a cultural standstill or perhaps even try and push back the hands of the clock, as former UBP leader Wayne Furbert seemed to suggest we do when he bemoaned the changes he sees taking place in Bermuda. Or we can take Bermuda to a higher level of political and social development as Premier Ewart Brown advocates.

The choice is yours, Bermuda.