I am very proud of the work and dedication exemplified by the group of independent candidates from the 2025 election that have rallied to form the People’s Independent Coalition. This is not a party, and our doors are open to one and all who wish to be apart of this coalition for change.

Many will be aware that over the past couple of years I have been adamant in my view that Bermuda's political, constitutional and economic model is no longer sustainable for growing numbers of Bermudians. As a founding member of the PIC, this is but another important step in advancing that vision and goal towards Bermuda’s long-overdue renewal.

Can anyone deny that we had an election on February 18 that was essentially about nothing except for some ill-defined commitment to fairness by the Government and silence from the Opposition? When asked about “fairness for whom”, the definitive answer is never received.

Perhaps it is fairness for the private insurers, doctors and dentists, as more than 8,000 Bermudians go uninsured — among them 6,000 Black Bermudians.

Or fairness for the grocers, as the spectre of food lines grows.

Or fairness for the employers who pay poverty-level wages in hospitality while the Government and Opposition’s commitment to the living wage remains unfulfilled after eight long years.

More than 12,000 who voted in the 2017 election were nowhere to be found on Election Day 2025. That the 9,000-plus drop in voter participation between 2017 and 2020 only three years later saw an additional departure of more than 3,000 voters in February is rarely, if at all, mentioned.

Certainly, many have lost faith in our political system and this economy, and the two are connected. But those numbers also tell us that increasing numbers who did not vote for the second consecutive election could not because they no longer live here. They have voted with their feet, even those with six-figure salaries, and this fall in confidence on the part of too many Bermudians — especially our Black Bermudians — continues as you read this.

They call it displacement.

This, too, is a story about emigration and the fate of thousands of Bermudians over the past decade and half, principally to Britain. Many have left because they can no longer afford to live in Bermuda or because, in an economy lacking diversity, their education and degrees can no longer guarantee employment.

They call that a brain drain.

The Government brags about this dangerously unbalanced economy. The numbers at face value tell a wonderful story that this economy is booming. But in an economy characterised by higher and higher levels of income and wealth inequality, largely driven by successive expansions of international business over two decades, for those at the bottom of income and wealth distribution this growing inequality has been patently unfair as poverty and homelessness grow.

Did you know that 92 per cent of the 1,100 homeless Bermudians are Black males? Left up to the Home charity, though, just like the Progressive Labour Party, those facts around racial composition were to be treated as taboo and never intended to see the light of day. In other words, we could talk about homelessness, but its victims are to remain invisible, which insidiously compounds the problem.

One of the late great Ottiwell Simmons’s young relatives said to me only recently: “Rolfe, you do know that there is no middle class any more.”

Of course, Bermuda is not alone in this regard; we need look no farther than to the west of us in the United States to have seen the same trend during the period cited. You will also note that the erosion of its middle class has affected its politics, as the notion of White supremacy, 21st-century style, is mainstreamed in its White House.

During that period the middle class in the US comprised 60 per cent of its population; now it is 40 per cent. It might have been an even greater drop in Bermuda during that period, especially for our Black population.

Bermuda, it gives me no pleasure to sing this tale of woe, but it is time to stop listening to feel-good fairytales. I and my colleagues in the coalition believe in you, and we still are optimistic about Bermuda's future. Yet time is not on our side. Our renewal, though, can have a chance to succeed only if we have the courage to face the future without the comfort of illusions.

This is the real spirit of Bermuda; forged in social solidarity.

Join us. Let’s build Bermuda's future together.

• Rolfe Commissiong was the independent candidate for Pembroke Central (Constituency 17) in the 2025 General Election